A plot summary and meaning analysis of The Old Man and the Sea, an epic tale of human dignity in the face of destruction but not defeat.
Hemingway first came to the world’s attention with the publication of A Farewell to Arms (1929) and For Whom The Bell Tolls (1940), both about his experiences serving in World War I. He followed that up with Cross the River and Into the Trees, but readers were cold and critics were harsh. However, after the publication of The Old Man and the Sea, the accolades came flooding back. Hemingway won the Pulitzer Prize for this work, and the following year he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, restoring his reputation as a writer and reviving his career.
It is said that swans never cry in their entire lives, but make one beautiful sound just before they die, so The Swan Song is often referred to as the artist’s last work. Although some of Hemingway’s works were published after his death, The Old Man and the Sea was the last work he published while he was alive, so it is his last swan song. Hemingway never wrote anything as well-received as The Old Man and the Sea. When it was published in the magazine Life in 1952, it sold more than 5.3 million copies in two days, and a week later it was published in paperback to great success.
From 1940 onward, Hemingway lived near Havana, Cuba, where he fished aboard his own fishing boat, the Pilar, and his personal experiences are reflected in The Old Man and the Sea. Fifteen years before The Old Man and the Sea was published, he wrote a prose piece for Esquire magazine about his saltwater fishing experiences in the Gulf of Mexico. In it, he mentions the experiences of Carlos Gutierrez, an older Cuban sailor aboard the Pilar, which became the basis for The Old Man and the Sea.
The prose tells the story of an elderly fisherman who catches a large marlin in the Gulf of Mexico in a carving boat, but a shark attack eats all of the fish, and the fisherman fights off the shark attack with his oar until he loses consciousness and is rescued by other fishermen. It took 15 years for the author’s thoughts to become fully realized and the masterpiece “The Old Man and the Sea” was born. In it, his intimate knowledge and experience of fishing are vividly realized. It is Hemingway’s ability to convey the empirical facts of a veteran Cuban fisherman to the reader through fiction.
After graduating from high school, Hemingway joined a newspaper and served as a correspondent during World War I and the Spanish Civil War. His concise, realistic prose with little psychological description is known as the “hard-boiled” style. Hemingway’s newspaper-like style came from his long career as a journalist. In a 1954 interview with Time magazine, Hemingway said, “I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea, a real fish, and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough, they would mean a lot of things.” This is a clear indication of his focus on realism. The Old Man and the Sea, which depicts an old man battling a giant fish in the open ocean in an objective tone, is a good example of Hemingway’s stylistic skill.
“The Old Man and the Sea” tells the story of Santiago, a man who goes out to sea and single-handedly tries to catch a huge fish and succeeds in capturing it, but is soon attacked by sharks and returns to his boat with all the flesh ripped off and the bones left behind. This simple story has an inspiring narrative.
Santiago fishes alone and doesn’t catch a fish for 84 days. Manolin, a young boy who once went fishing with the old man, is forced by his parents to take a different boat, and everyone around him teases Santiago that his luck as a fisherman has run out. But only the boy comforts and encourages the old man when he returns empty-handed. The old man is frail and withered, with deep wrinkles at the nape of his neck and brown spots covering his cheeks, but only his eyes, which “resembled the color of the sea, shone with vigor and undefeatable determination.” Eyes mean “to know, to perceive,” and it is clear that the old man is aware of the situation he is facing and
the old man’s awareness of the situation he faces and his refusal to give up.
The boy comforts the old man by telling him that 85 is his lucky number and provides him with the bait and sardines he needs. Recognizing his old age and loneliness, the old man humbly accepts the boy’s help. Despite the old man’s string of bad luck, he never loses his pride in his skills as a fisherman, and he goes fishing again, saying, “Every day is a new day.”
Once out to sea, the old man sees the pull of the line and is convinced it’s a big fish, so he reels it in. But when it doesn’t budge, he tries to hold on with the line over his shoulder, but the fish’s immense strength drags the boat down. The old man laments the boy’s absence, but all he has for him is a bottle of water. After two days and two nights of struggling with hunger, loneliness, and the limitations of his frail body, the old man finally catches the huge marlin.
What’s interesting here is that the old man is hand-fishing with a fishing line, not a fishing rod, and ‘bare-handed’ is a primitive duel without any equipment, which heightens the intensity of the fight. This is supported by the fact that an old man was called a champion after winning an arm wrestling match against a large black man in two days. The old man throws himself into the fray with his bare body. Hemingway’s fascination with bullfighting led him to make existential reflections on death and the courage to face it. If bullfighting is a direct confrontation, hand-fishing is an extension of that. An old man who believes that “it was my destiny to be a fisherman” struggles with a huge fish, catches it, pins it to the side of the boat, and heads home, only to be attacked by a school of sharks who smell the fish’s blood. The old man is exhausted after the fight with the big fish. Nevertheless, the old man, remembering how baseball player DiMaggio overcame the pain of a bunion in his foot, says, “You can be destroyed, but you can’t be defeated,” and with all his strength, he slams his harpoon down on the shark. The situation of fighting a giant fish in the vastness of the ocean over two days, and the human being being attacked by a school of sharks, is a Geworfenheit that is thrown into the universe. In this process, the old man shows the heroism of the human being who faces the giant fish and the shark with an indomitable will.
Santiago is not only superhumanly strong, but also vulnerable and warm-hearted. He feels compassion for the birds that fly over the sea, realizing that the ocean is kind but can turn cruel at a moment’s notice, making it a fragile place to live. It feels love and compassion for the natural creatures of the sea and recognizes them as its brothers, but also accepts the natural law that it has no choice but to catch fish. He sees victory, not defeat, in the old man who catches a huge fish, 5.5 meters long and weighing 700 kilograms, only to have it eaten by a shark and return to the boat exhausted with only the head and tail left. The old man’s indomitable will in the face of difficulties and adversity is a moving demonstration of human dignity and majesty.
The Old Man and the Sea is realistically depicted, but also has Christian imagery. Santiago is James in Spanish, and he is a disciple of Jesus, a former fisherman. When Santiago is attacked by a shark, the “involuntary cry that comes out of him when the nail goes through his hand and into the wood” is reminiscent of the cry of Jesus on the cross. The image of an old man who has lost all his fishing gear and returned exhausted with a skeletal fish hanging from his hook, carrying a mast over his shoulder up the road, and the image of an old man in bed with his arms outstretched, palms up.
sleeping with his arms stretched out, palms facing up, face down, is reminiscent of Jesus carrying his cross up the hill of Golgotha. The Christian imagery superimposed on the realistic depiction is symbolic: the strength of the old man’s struggle against hardship and adversity is elevated to the sublime and sacred. Exhausted, the old man falls asleep and dreams of a lion, and when he wakes up, he will go out to sea again. Like Sisyphus.
