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Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT THE BOOK BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY, THIS IS A COMMENTARY BY R.N. SINGH. FOR THE REAL BOOK, PLEASE CLICK HERE.
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Published January 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 13, 2014
The Old Man and the Sea — Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea is one of those rare books that has never remained the same book for me.
I first encountered it when I was young. I read it again more seriously perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three years ago, and over the years I have returned to it once or twice more. What fascinates me is that every time I revisit it, I seem to take away something different—not because Hemingway has changed a single word, but because I have changed.
On the surface, it is an extraordinarily simple story: Santiago, an ageing Cuban fisherman, has gone eighty-four days without catching a fish. Determined to break his unlucky streak, he sails far into the Gulf Stream and hooks an enormous marlin. His struggle to bring it home becomes a test of endurance, skill, pride and humility. Even after sharks attack and destroy much of his catch, Santiago returns with little more than the marlin’s skeleton—but not without having proved the depth of his courage and commitment.
Yet Hemingway somehow turns that simplicity into a reflection on almost everything that becomes more meaningful as we grow older.
As a younger reader, I saw determination.
Later, I began seeing patience.
Later still, I noticed loneliness, pride, dignity, ageing, respect for an adversary, acceptance of circumstances and the strange relationship between effort and reward.
My understanding of the book has also changed in another way. I no longer see Santiago’s return as either a complete victory or a complete defeat. He loses the material reward he fought for, but he does not lose the experience, the knowledge or the dignity with which he faced the struggle. To me, the moral is that a person cannot always control the result, but can still control the manner in which he meets difficulty. Success may be measured by what we gain, but character is often revealed by what we are willing to endure when everything is taken away.
This interpretation is close to the view many readers and critics have taken since the novella was published in 1952. Contemporary reviewers often admired its simplicity, discipline and emotional power, while critics connected Santiago’s struggle with Hemingway’s recurring ideas of courage, honour and the “code” of living well under pressure. Some have read the marlin as a symbol of an ideal that gives life meaning, while others have emphasised the book’s religious, existential or autobiographical dimensions. There are also readers who see Santiago’s battle less as a triumph than as a painful demonstration of the limits of human effort. For me, these interpretations do not cancel one another out. They make the book richer, because the story allows victory and defeat, pride and humility, suffering and beauty to exist together.
Even small things acquire meaning. Continuing after a long period when nothing seems to work. Trusting skills built over decades even when the body is no longer what it once was. Talking oneself through exhaustion. Respecting something even while struggling against it. Understanding that giving everything you have does not necessarily guarantee the outcome you wanted.
None of these ideas are delivered as lectures. Hemingway simply places a human being against something larger than himself and lets us decide what the struggle means.
Perhaps that is why this book improves with age.
At ten, twenty, thirty or sixty, you may technically be reading exactly the same story, but you are not bringing the same life to it.
For me, The Old Man and the Sea has gradually become less a story about a fisherman and more a story about life itself—about continuing, enduring, adapting and maintaining dignity regardless of what the sea happens to give you.
And I suspect that if I read it again ten years from now, it will teach me something else.
The Old Man and the Sea is one of those rare books that has never remained the same book for me.
I first encountered it when I was young. I read it again more seriously perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three years ago, and over the years I have returned to it once or twice more. What fascinates me is that every time I revisit it, I seem to take away something different—not because Hemingway has changed a single word, but because I have changed.
On the surface, it is an extraordinarily simple story: Santiago, an ageing Cuban fisherman, has gone eighty-four days without catching a fish. Determined to break his unlucky streak, he sails far into the Gulf Stream and hooks an enormous marlin. His struggle to bring it home becomes a test of endurance, skill, pride and humility. Even after sharks attack and destroy much of his catch, Santiago returns with little more than the marlin’s skeleton—but not without having proved the depth of his courage and commitment.
Yet Hemingway somehow turns that simplicity into a reflection on almost everything that becomes more meaningful as we grow older.
As a younger reader, I saw determination.
Later, I began seeing patience.
Later still, I noticed loneliness, pride, dignity, ageing, respect for an adversary, acceptance of circumstances and the strange relationship between effort and reward.
My understanding of the book has also changed in another way. I no longer see Santiago’s return as either a complete victory or a complete defeat. He loses the material reward he fought for, but he does not lose the experience, the knowledge or the dignity with which he faced the struggle. To me, the moral is that a person cannot always control the result, but can still control the manner in which he meets difficulty. Success may be measured by what we gain, but character is often revealed by what we are willing to endure when everything is taken away.
This interpretation is close to the view many readers and critics have taken since the novella was published in 1952. Contemporary reviewers often admired its simplicity, discipline and emotional power, while critics connected Santiago’s struggle with Hemingway’s recurring ideas of courage, honour and the “code” of living well under pressure. Some have read the marlin as a symbol of an ideal that gives life meaning, while others have emphasised the book’s religious, existential or autobiographical dimensions. There are also readers who see Santiago’s battle less as a triumph than as a painful demonstration of the limits of human effort. For me, these interpretations do not cancel one another out. They make the book richer, because the story allows victory and defeat, pride and humility, suffering and beauty to exist together.
Even small things acquire meaning. Continuing after a long period when nothing seems to work. Trusting skills built over decades even when the body is no longer what it once was. Talking oneself through exhaustion. Respecting something even while struggling against it. Understanding that giving everything you have does not necessarily guarantee the outcome you wanted.
None of these ideas are delivered as lectures. Hemingway simply places a human being against something larger than himself and lets us decide what the struggle means.
Perhaps that is why this book improves with age.
At ten, twenty, thirty or sixty, you may technically be reading exactly the same story, but you are not bringing the same life to it.
For me, The Old Man and the Sea has gradually become less a story about a fisherman and more a story about life itself—about continuing, enduring, adapting and maintaining dignity regardless of what the sea happens to give you.
And I suspect that if I read it again ten years from now, it will teach me something else.
August 21, 2014
Hemingway won a Pulitzer for The Old Man and the Sea. A year later he won the Nobel Prize for his “powerful, style forming mastery of the art of narration.” He always wanted to write the Great American Novel and although Old Man probably isn’t that because it takes place in Cuba, it is a compelling story. Santiago, an old, poor fisherman, hasn’t caught a fish in 85 days. He’s desperate for a catch and so he sets out one morning to catch anything that will give him the money to feed himself. What grabs his hook is the biggest fish he’s ever landed, a Marlin that is two feet longer than the skiff he’s in. He rides out the fish for two days and two nights, exhausting himself, but he finally kills it only to realize that he can’t get it into the boat, so he tries to tow it back to shore. He soon realizes his folly when sharks start to eat the fish and he cannot kill them. By the time he gets to shore the fish has been devoured and Santiago is defeated. He keeps saying “I went out too far, I went out too far.”
Many will say that Old Man is symbolic of Hemingway’s story as a writer. He had risen to fame quickly only to produce Across the River and into the Trees in 1950 which was devoured by critics, much like the fish was by the sharks. He returned to Cuba defeated and set out to write Old Man. I think Old Man was a success, I think, because everyone relates to defeat, especially defeat after hard work. There is nothing shameful about it, and that is what Old Man show us.
Many will say that Old Man is symbolic of Hemingway’s story as a writer. He had risen to fame quickly only to produce Across the River and into the Trees in 1950 which was devoured by critics, much like the fish was by the sharks. He returned to Cuba defeated and set out to write Old Man. I think Old Man was a success, I think, because everyone relates to defeat, especially defeat after hard work. There is nothing shameful about it, and that is what Old Man show us.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews