Hemingway’s classic novella, the Old Man and the Sea, begins with one of the greatest opening lines in literature: “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”
The old, Santiago, lives and fishes in Cuba. Most people know the story. He catches a large fish and has trouble bringing it back to shore. Hemingway takes this simple story, and with his nimble and athletic writing style, delivers a thought provoking punch.
The Boy and the Lions
The book is an analysis of the intersection of human nature and the natural world. This is shown in the great reverence Santiago shows for the fish and nature. But it’s more. The story gives us courage, psychology, and biblical themes as well. The story’s depth is as deep as the sea.
Aside from Santiago and the fish, the other main character is a boy who once fished with Santiago. The boy fished with the old man for many years, until Santiago became unlucky and the boy’s parents made him fish with another boat. The youthfulness of the boy juxtaposes the aging Santiago. There is a longing for youth in the fact that the boy, who is actually a young man, is gone just like the old man’s youth.
Digging a bit deeper into this theme of youthfulness slipping away, Santiago repeatedly dreams back to a time in his youth when he saw lions on the beach in Africa.
“He was asleep in a short time and he dreamed of Africa when he was a boy and the long golden beaches and the white beaches, so white they hurt your eyes, and the high capes and the great brown mountains. He lived along the coast now every night and in his dreams he heard the surf roar and saw the native boats come riding through it. He smelled the tar and oakum of the deck as he slept and he smelled the smell of Africa that the land breeze brought at morning…He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, not contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy.”
Even though the boy is not with him and the lions are in a distant past, Santiago sails his skiff out into the ocean in the pre-dawn glow of the night.
“A man can be destroyed but not defeated”
While the old man’s youth might have slipped away and the boy is no longer with him, he has the same instincts he always has. He has the willingness to face the dark seas. He has the internal strength to battle a giant fish to its death – and not by a rod and reel, but by handline.
During the struggle against the giant fish, Santiago’s respect for the fish is great. There is no bravado or self congratulations. The old man loves his adversary. The old man and the fish are hooked together in an ancient battle neither could avoid. One of them must die, and that the old man was willing to die harkens back to youthfulness – and perhaps a spark that has yet to extinguish.
Many have asked, as Hemingway does, if the most meaningful battles have to be fought alone? “We are now joined together and have been since noon. And no one to help either one of us” – sometimes they do. There are as well obvious Christian undertones – sacrifice and struggle, the old man talking to himself about sin, the three-day fishing excursion, and reverence for the excruciating sacrifice made by the fish.
Sharks Come For Us All
Sharks devour the great fish in a series of concluding scenes. As the old man brings his fish back to shore, the sharks relentlessly attack.
In the closing pages, a tourist observes the carcass of the once great fish and mistakens it for a shark. The tourists are ignorant of Santiago’s great catch, his struggle, his life, his purpose. Is this Hemingway showing readers that people outside our story don’t know anything about us? Conversely, is there no way for us to understand other people or for us to know the things they have done and left undone? We see through faulty eyes.
Is Santiago the epitaph Hemingway elected to leave for himself? A tough old man willing to fight to the death who had nobody to help him as he battled a magnificent fish. It’s hard not to wonder if Hemingway was dreaming of days past and wishing the boy was there as he wrote this masterful novella. Who were Hemingway’s sharks? The writer, like the old man, must have felt alone battling the sharks. Did Hemingway want to go out like Santiago, confident enough not to care what the other fisherman thought and courageous enough to stoically face death.
And finally, what is a takeaway worth holding? Maybe it’s, don’t waste your youth. Santiago’s dreams about a wonderful moment from his younger days, but what if he never saw the lions? What would have driven him? If he did not live as a young man, maybe he could not have lived as an old one.
As the tourists sat looking upon the once great fish, “Up the road, in his shack, the old man was sleeping again. He was still sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him. The old man was dreaming about the lions.”
For more reviews, visit Johnsbookshelf.com and use this link to order the book! You may also like one of these reviews.