The Old Man and the Sea is a deep reflection on defeat and victory in the battle between man and nature. It explores what true victory is through the story of an old man who loses his fish.
I read it when I was in high school, probably. I once stayed up all night reading Hemingway’s (1899-1961) The Old Man and the Sea. I remember looking out the window in awe as the sun came up and feeling as if I were watching the sun rise on a small sailboat in the middle of the Caribbean. I recently reread The Old Man and the Sea again, and I vaguely recaptured that feeling again. Why did I feel so moved by this simple, if simple, story?
An old fisherman who hasn’t caught a fish in 84 days. The old fisherman is treated like a man with bad luck by everyone except a boy. One day, he goes out alone into the open sea. He goes farther than usual, farther than any fisherman has ever gone before. After two days and two nights of fighting, he catches a huge marlin and brings it back to the harbor. But on the way back, the marlin is torn apart by sharks who smell blood, and by the time the old man reaches the harbor, all that’s left is a bunch of bones and a skull. The old man curls up in his hut and falls asleep, dreaming of lions in the African bush.
I definitely stayed up late reading this short story. It’s a quick read, so it’s unlikely that I stayed up all night reading it. I’m sure I’ve probably closed the book and dreamt of scenes from the story over and over again.
Now that I’m older and rereading it, I’m filled with more warmth than anything else. When I was younger, I would have been mesmerized by Santiago’s heroic struggle with the marlin in the Great Sea of Doom, and the way he fought off the attacking sharks, and I would have felt a deep sense of regret that the sharks ate all the marlin. I probably didn’t feel the warmth I feel now, or the sense of humanity and nature that I feel today. After all, the flavor of a classic is different every time you read it.
The old man in The Old Man and the Sea is definitely a hero. He has all the elements of a hero. He has strength, indomitable spirit, and courage. He says himself that he is an extraordinary man, and the boy who is his apprentice agrees. But he’s not the kind of hero we’re used to seeing in other novels. For one thing, he’s not a tragic hero. To see the difference, you can simply compare The Old Man and the Sea to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.
When you read The Old Man and the Sea, you probably have Moby Dick in your head. In fact, The Old Man and the Sea and Moby Dick are similar in many ways. For one thing, they’re both set in the sea, and Captain Ahab’s battle with the white whale in Moby Dick is similar to Old Man Santiago’s battle with the marlin in The Old Man and the Sea. However, the similarities end there, and the two novels are actually polar opposites in some ways.
First of all, the white whale in Moby-Dick and the big fish in The Old Man and the Sea are completely different in character. “In Moby-Dick, the white whale is a symbol of evil. “In Moby-Dick, Captain Ehave pursues the white whale with hatred and revenge. What makes him a hero is that he does not back down in the face of fateful defeat and doom, even though he knows that defeat and doom are waiting for him. He fights against fate even though he knows that he will surely lose.
But in The Old Man and the Sea, the big fish is never an object of hatred and revenge. The Old Man must kill him anyway, but not because the fish is the enemy. The Old Man loves the fish, considers him a brother, and even identifies with him. It becomes a relationship where it doesn’t matter who kills whom.
“Fish,” he said softly, aloud, ”I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends.”
“If I could feed him, I would, he thought. Then he is my brother. But I must kill him and keep strong to do it.”
“Fish, you are killing me,” the old man thought. ”But you have a right to. Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother. Come on and kill me. I do not care who kills who.”
…
“Now my head is clear,” he thought. ”I have to keep it clear. I must hold my pain where it is and stay strong to last it out. I must hold myself to this just as he does, head clear and knowing the pain as he does. Not one bit of it am I giving up, no matter what comes.”
“You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?”
He even thinks that it is he, not the fish, who is being attacked by a school of sharks.
“He did not want to look at the fish. He knew that half of him had been destroyed. The fish had been mutilated. When the fish had been hit it was as though he himself were hit.”
There is no defeat in that fight, no victory. It is the fate they have chosen. The confrontation between the giant fish and the old man is the fate the two heroes have chosen. They face their chosen fate alone, with no one around to help them. No, not against, but rather with.
“He stayed in the deep water far out beyond all snares and traps and treacheries. My choice was to go there to find him beyond all people. Beyond all people in the world. Now we are joined together and have been since noon. And no one to help either one of us.”
That confrontation is a beautiful confrontation. It is not a confrontation driven by hatred, revenge, jealousy, envy, or greed. It’s a beautiful fight, a noble fight, a heroic fight, because it’s a fight where you feel affection for the other person, where you feel that the other person is one with you, and it doesn’t matter who kills who.
The reason why they are forced to have such a dying and killing fight is not only because the old man and the fish are heroes, but also because the fight itself is fate and the law of nature. The old man fights desperately with the fish, but it is never a bloody fight to survive to the end, a fight in which I must kill the other or I will die. It is an exquisitely gentle fight.
“Fish,” he said, ”I will stay with you until I am dead.”
It’s a humble fight in the sense that it involves conforming to and following the laws of nature, and it’s a courageous fight in the sense that it involves a determination to never be defeated. Hence the famous pledge
“But man is not made for defeat,” he said. ”A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
In Moby Dick, Captain Ehave is defeated and destroyed in a fight with a white whale. And in The Old Man and the Sea, the old man is certainly destroyed. His hard-fought catch is eaten by sharks, and he loses all his fishing gear in the fight. But he says that he can be ruined but not defeated. He was never mentally defeated. The fight is not a one-time thing, but can go on as long as he is alive, because that is the law of nature. Therefore, he is a humble being who never loses courage, because that is the law of nature. To be defeated is to lower one’s tail. He who tails is cowardly. To say that one can be destroyed but not defeated is to say that one will never lower one’s tail and at the same time humbly submit to the laws of nature. Then we might say. The opposite of courage is not humility, but cowardice. We can be courageous and humble at the same time. Conversely, you can be arrogant and cowardly. So the opposite of courage can be arrogance. The opposite of humility can be cowardice. Courage and humility are paired, and arrogance and cowardice are paired. To be doomed but not defeated is the same as to always be courageous and hopeful. So The Old Man and the Sea, unlike Moby Dick, is not tragic, but hopeful. It’s warm, not cold or grim. Maybe it’s because Hemingway wrote it when he was almost old, and I feel old, too. I like that human body odor, that hopeful body odor. No, maybe it was because of that human smell that I read The Old Man and the Sea as a young man and fell in love with it. Isn’t it true that liking warm humanity has nothing to do with age? Wasn’t it true that I fell in love with the following sentence, which I find so beautiful now?
“It is silly not to hope,” he thought. ”Besides, I believe it is a sin. Do not think about sin. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it.
“I do not even know what sin is,” he thought. ”I know what it is to be hungry, and I know what it is to suffer, but I do not know what sin is. Maybe killing the fish is a sin, but I do not care. There are many people who think about sin and that is their business. I am not one of them.”
“But the old man liked to think about all things that were connected with him, and since there was no one else to talk to, he thought a great deal. He thought about sin. It was not that you killed the fish only to eat, or to sell it for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you loved him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?”
One more word. That love and affection and hope for nature, that love and affection and hope for destiny, gives birth to affection between people. It’s a very simple sentence, but I love the following verse.
“He thought, ‘They should not worry about me so much. Of course the boy will be worried. But he has faith in me. The old fishermen will worry. Others will, too.’ He thought, ‘I live in a good town.’”
The sense of solidarity that people felt with nature in the distant ocean, far away from the rest of the world, translates into a sense of solidarity between people.
“The old man looked at the distant water. He was alone but he was not lonely. He had the prism of the sea, the line, and the quiet waves. Clouds were gathering, sign of the trade winds. The ducks flew over and disappeared. They reappeared and he saw them clearly against the sky. Yes, he thought, at sea there is no loneliness.”
I say this because I sometimes see how love of nature and animals leads to hatred of all things human. Isn’t it more natural for love of nature to lead to love of people and life, and isn’t the important thing not the nature/animal/human dichotomy but the love that encompasses them all? Like Old Man Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea, to feel alive in every moment, and to love everything that is alive, even death.
The Old Man and the Sea was published in a special issue of the current affairs weekly Life on September 1, 1952. The novel was an instant hit, with the magazine selling millions of copies within two days of its publication. Published in paperback a week later, The Old Man and the Sea sold 50,000 copies in its first printing and remained on the bestseller list for more than half a year. In May 1953, he won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and in 1954, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for the novel. The movie version of the novel was released in 1958, directed by John Sturges and starring Spencer Tracy as the main character, the elderly Santiago. The movie captures the depth of the book and the brilliance of Spencer Tracy’s performance.
Hemingway’s life was remarkable: he was a writer, journalist, and sportsman. He was also a character who rarely settled in one place. He was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, the second of six children of Clarence Hemingway, a physician, and Grace Hemingway, a music teacher. After graduating from high school in 1917, he forgoes college and takes a job as a trainee reporter for The Kansas City Star newspaper. In 1918, he volunteers to be an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross and goes to the Italian front. As mentioned earlier, A Farewell to Arms is a novel based on this experience. After returning home with a severe leg injury, he became a journalist again and was assigned to Turkey in 1922, traveling to Spain and spending some time in Toronto, Canada. In 1926, The Sun Also Rises was published, but he did not stay as a ‘writer in the library’ and moved to Paris, France in 1927. In 1928, he left France and moved to Key West, Florida, in the United States. In 1936, the Spanish Civil War broke out, and in 1937, he covered the Spanish Civil War as a correspondent for the North American Newspaper Federation. In 1939, he bought a small farm in the suburbs of Havana, Cuba, and stayed there to write a novel, For Whom The Bell Tolls, which was published the following year in 1940, set during the Spanish Civil War. In 1942, during World War II, he volunteered for the U.S. Navy to search for German submarines, and from 1943 onward, as a newspaper and magazine correspondent, he covered the D-Day invasion of Normandy and the entry into Paris. At the end of World War II, he was decorated by the government for his work in the search for German submarines.
In 1952, he published The Old Man and the Sea, which won him the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1954, while traveling in Africa, he was seriously injured in two plane crashes and at one point was rumored to be dead. That year, he becomes the fifth American author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
He leaves Cuba for good in 1961, after Castro’s rise to power, and suffers from depression, alcoholism, and other problems before committing suicide with a shotgun on July 2, 1961. It was later discovered that the cause of his suicide was hemochromatosis, a genetic disease. His father had committed suicide with a pistol in 1928, and his sister and brother had also committed suicide due to the same disease. The disease, which causes liver cirrhosis, diabetes, arthritis, and more, is also known to cause mental illness. His wanderlust also extended to women, as he divorced three times and married four times during his life.
Hemingway is consistently at the top of the list of America’s favorite American authors, and his works are included in textbooks.
