Is the boy Manolin in Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” really a young boy? In this article we will determine his real age based on the original text.

 

About the age of the “boy” in the work

The Old Man and the Sea is considered to be one of Hemingway’s best works. In contrast, the structure of the story is simple. It is the story of an old fisherman who catches a huge fish in the Strait of Cuba, but loses it to a shark and returns home almost empty-handed. Of course, it is implied that the old man has suffered an irreparable injury in the meantime.
However, there is one element that makes this simple story much more like a work, and that is the existence of the “boy”. His name in the work is Manolin. Through the existence of the “boy”, the writer reveals the character of the main character, the old man, and shows the warm “humanity” that is alive even in the harsh world. But how old is this “boy” whom the author called “Boy”?
We probably perceive the age of this “boy” as that of a real “boy” of about 12 years old. This is because the age of the boy in the translated books that have been read over the past few decades has actually been set that way. This is clearly evident in the “manner of speaking” of the translated boy, and in this respect it seems that not only ordinary readers of the original books but also professional translators have misunderstood the matter.
So why did this misunderstanding occur? It may be because the movies and world-famous animations that have been made so far have made the character a “boy. Even though it was only a reinterpretation of the work for the “video.
But how is this possible? The boy in the work was actually at an age when he could go out to sea and catch fish by himself, but since movies and animations did not have to show the scene of the boy catching fish, they could be reinterpreted. In fact, the role of the boy in this work was more of a “recognition” than an act of catching fish.
So what is the age of this “boy” in the work? Do we have to guess? No, we don’t. In fact, the age of the boy is mentioned almost exactly in the work. In fact, there is no room for misunderstanding.
First of all, the original text of the passage that mentions the age of the “boy” is as follows.

“That means nothing. The great DiMaggio is himself again.”
“They have other men on the team.”
“Naturally. But he makes the difference. In the other league, between Brooklyn and Philadelphia I must take Brooklyn. But then I think of Dick Sisler and those great drives In the old park.”
“There was nothing ever like them. He hits the longest ball I have ever seen.”
“Do you remember when he used to come to the Terrace? I wanted to take him fishing but I was too timid to ask him. Then I asked you to ask him and you were too timid.”
“I know. It was a great mistake. He might have gone with us. Then we would have that for all of our lives.”
“I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing,” the old man said. “They say his father was a fisherman. Maybe he was as poor as we are and would understand.” “The great Sisler’s father was never poor and he,

The author Hemingway casually mentions the boy’s age when talking about the baseball player father and son Sisler in his work. However, when the author was talking about DiMaggio and Dick Sisler, he suddenly referred to “his father,” which the translator and the general reader may have simply overlooked. The author introduced Dick Sisler’s father as a piece of information to tell the age of the boy, but he actually cleverly worked him into the story to the point of not even mentioning his name. It was a literary technique used to reveal the boy’s age. It is not clear how this came across to native speakers. Was it something that was innately felt, or did they make inferences based on this fact, as we do?

 

How old was Dick Sisler’s father, George Sisler, at the time?

First, we need to understand George Sisler as a person. He is a legendary figure who set a major league record by hitting 257 home runs in a single season in 1920. He died in 1973 and it took 31 years for that record to be broken. The person who broke that record is Ichiro Suzuki, a Japanese baseball player who played in the major leagues and whom we all know well.
George Sisler is recognized by Americans as a baseball genius. He started playing Major League Baseball at the age of 22. Does this mean that Manolin is 22 years old?
That is not the case. First of all, this is a novel. Although it is based on the age of a real person, it is difficult to give an exact age. In particular, you need to know the following information like a native speaker and recognize the meaning of the sentence to guess the correct age of the boy.
In fact, baseball prodigy George Sisler signed with Akron of the Central League in 1911 when he was 17 years old. It was a truly groundbreaking contract, and he began his career as a professional athlete at the age of 16. The contract later became famous when George Sisler filed a lawsuit to change the contract, and the U.S. Court ruled that the contract was not legally binding because it was signed when he was a minor. George Sisler became a free agent and joined the St. Louis Browns.
Therefore, it is not unreasonable for Americans to believe that George Sisler was already playing in the “big leagues” at the age of 17 or 18, when he was a minor. Therefore, the phrase “when he was my age” from Manolin’s mouth meets all the conditions of reality and literary expression.
In this respect, we cannot even lower the age of the boy in The Old Man and the Sea below 17.
In fact, he cannot be a boy of 11 or 12 when we look at the work as a whole. In the work, he is already a fisherman who drinks beer by himself and catches big fish.
There is also a passage in the work about age.

“I don’t know,” the boy said. “All I know is that young boys sleep late and hard.”

Again, the author uses the word ‘young boy’, not child or boy.
So what is the age concept of the word “boy” that Hemingway uses?
In the original text of his debut novel, “Up in Michigan,” there is a man named Jim Gilmore who has a relationship (sex) with the female protagonist, Liz. The author begins by describing him as follows:

Jim was short and dark with big mustaches and big hands.

Based on this alone, readers may mistakenly think of this man as an old “uncle. And they may read him as an adult who rapes the “young girl,” the main character of this work.
However, the direct information about this man’s age is mentioned at the end of the work.
Smith, who is the same age as Liz’s father who went hunting with them, offers Jim and his friends a drink and says,

“How about another, boys?”

Can “boys” really be translated as “guys” here? Probably not, because you can’t offer alcohol to a boy.
Boys” appear in Hemingway’s masterpiece “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” without fail.
First of all, the “boys” hired for the safari (hunting trip to Africa) of the main characters Harry and Helen. The author does not mention their ages and writes this way.

The two boys had a Tommie slung over their backs and were coming along behind her.

The boys here are “boys” who, as mentioned earlier, follow and assist the hunters. We do not know exactly how old they are. But we can say that they are definitely not young boys of about 12 years old.
Another “boy” appears in the same work.

About the half-witted farm boy who was left on the ranch at the time and told not to let anyone get any hay, and the old bastard from the Forks who beat the boy when he worked for him and stopped to get some feed. The boy refused and the old man said he would beat him again. The boy gets the rifle from the kitchen and shoots him as he tries to get into the barn, and when they get back to the ranch he’s been dead a week, frozen in the corral, and the dogs have eaten part of him.

Here the boy is someone who kills people without hesitation, and at least the age of the boy we imagine from the existing “The Old Man and the Sea” does not overlap with the boy in the novel.
Putting all this together, it is clear that the boy Hemingway uses in his work is not at all the “boy” of our time. Rather, he is more like a “young man. Therefore, there is no doubt that the boy Manolin in “The Old Man and the Sea” is at least 17 years old.