Inspiring Older Readers

posted on 16 Jan 2019

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway’s short novella – just about 120 pages – is often thought to have been the book that re-established his reputation. It certainly won almost universal plaudits from critics when it was published in 1952 and may have played a significant role in the decision to award him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. By 1961 he had committed suicide, making this his last published fiction during his lifetime.

The book reads rather like an extended fairy tale or morality tale and it’s almost impossible not to try reading layers of meaning under the surface of the seemingly simple tale of an elderly fisherman’s life and death struggle with the ‘great fish’. However, Hemingway was resolutely firm that the story was what the story seemed to be – and nothing more:

"There isn’t any symbolism…The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man … The sharks are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit.”

The story is an uncomplicated one. Santiago is an old fisherman who feels that luck has deserted him. He is stone poor and his inability to land the fish that will give him a decent income has meant that even his apprentice, Manolin has left him to join a more successful boat. But despite all his travails he holds onto the belief that he will one day land the ‘big one’.

“My big fish must be somewhere.” 

When one day the mythical catch becomes a reality he’s drawn into a life and death struggle with a huge marlin that he must play until he wins. With hands cut to ribbons by the rope, an aching back braced against the power of the mighty fish and overcoming thirst and hunger, he eventually gets the better of the fish. But he’s been dragged way out to sea and now he has the problem of getting it back to shore. Throughout his struggles he has time to contemplate life, death and what it means to be human in an elemental environment.

Catching the fish turns out to be the least of his problems because as he makes his way back to the harbour his catch is attacked by sharks intent on eating the marlin. Santiago defends his catch as best he can but eventually has to give up and the old man is found exhausted in his boat with just the skeleton frame of the huge fish still strapped to his boat.

The book ends with Manolin nursing the old man as he lies prone on his bed.

Writing on the blog site ThoughtCo, James Topham makes this astute assessment:

“Hemingway's novella shows how death can invigorate life, how killing and death can bring a man to an understanding of his own mortality -- and his own power to overcome it.  Hemingway writes of a time when fishing was not merely a business or a sport. Instead, fishing was an expression of humankind in its natural state -- in tune with nature. Enormous stamina and power arose in the breast of Santiago. The simple fisherman became a classical hero in his epic struggle.”

Hemingway’s prose is, as usual, punchy and largely unadorned but has an almost elegiac quality about it, a sort of world weariness that perfectly suits the subject matter. It is impossible not to see something of the aging, world-weary Hemingway in the person of Santiago:

“He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on.” 

 As with all archetypal or even mythical stories people will inevitably read into it whatever they find for themselves – regardless of Hemingway’s irritability over how it has been interpreted.

The copy I read is an old BCA edition that was specially illustrated for the book club’s members. Unusually the black and white drawings are a mixture of two artists – C.F. Tunnicliffe and Raymond Sheppard – and despite the quite different styles they work rather well together.

You can get a copy of this illustrated version quite easily on the second hand market and it’s not expensive because it’s a book club edition and these tend to be avoided by collectors (usually for snobbish reasons).

 

Terry Potter

January 2019