A fierce battle between an old fisherman and a giant fish on the rough sea. The Old Man and the Sea is a record of struggle depicting human will, solitude, and the nobility of life.
The Old Man and the Sea is the last work published during the lifetime of American novelist Ernest Hemingway and remains his most beloved masterpiece, cherished by readers worldwide. Especially since its copyright protection expired in 2012, the number of translations has increased, allowing it to be enjoyed by even more readers.
The Old Man and the Sea was written in 1951 on Cayo Blanco (White Island) in Cuba and first published in Life magazine on September 1, 1952. The response was overwhelming; the magazine sold 5 million copies in just two days. Published as a book a week later, The Old Man and the Sea had a first printing of 50,000 copies. The cover of the early edition published by Scribner’s boldly proclaimed it a ‘new classic,’ and critics heaped praise upon The Old Man and the Sea, comparing it to works like William Faulkner’s The Bear or Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. For Hemingway, deeply disheartened by the harsh criticism of his 1950 novel Across the River and into the Trees—his first work in a decade—this marked a spectacular comeback. No, it was more than a spectacular comeback. The Old Man and the Sea was selected by America’s “Book of the Month Club,” the forerunner of book clubs, giving wings to Hemingway’s fame. In May 1953, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and in October 1954, it was specifically cited as the work that contributed to his winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Plot-wise, The Old Man and the Sea is an extremely simple work. It tells the story of Santiago, an unlucky fisherman who, after eighty-four days without catching a single fish, heads back out to sea. Finally, a huge marlin takes his line. After battling the marlin for two days and nights, Santiago lands it on the third day and ties it alongside his small boat. However, attacks by sharks leave only the bones of the marlin when he returns home.
Why does such a simple story continue to captivate people’s hearts? We can find clues above all in Hemingway’s own words. In a December 1954 interview with Time magazine, Hemingway stated:
“There isn’t any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The sharks are all sharks, no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is bullshit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.”
“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 many things.”
While The Old Man and the Sea is undoubtedly a simple and realistic story, this doesn’t mean the elements within it should be read one-dimensionally. They were designed, as Hemingway said, to “mean many things,” and the entire story holds the potential to be interpreted through multiple allegories.
First, as the title ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ suggests, among the old man, the boy, the sea, the fish, and the sharks, the most important are the ‘old man’ and the ‘sea.’ The old man is the subject fighting in the sea, and the sea is the arena where the old man wages his battle. It could even be said to represent the world itself. The old man’s unyielding will to fight is starkly revealed in his words: “‘But man is not made to be defeated.’ (…) ‘A man can be destroyed but not defeated.’” This universal theme is something anyone can relate to. Reading The Old Man and the Sea, we easily recognize ourselves in the old man’s solitary struggle against the sea of life. We see him self-deprecatingly admit, “I’m too old to beat a shark with a club,” yet resolve, “But as long as I have my oar and my short club and the tiller handle, I won’t give up the fight.”
Reading The Old Man and the Sea from a somewhat unconventional perspective is not impossible. Hemingway claimed he strove to create ‘real’ subjects, ‘as they are’—but should we take that statement at face value? It’s hard to believe Hemingway never recalled the critics who attacked his earlier work Across the River and into the Trees in droves, or the battered state he was left in, while describing the sharks madly charging at the marlin as prey, and the old man being savagely torn apart by those sharks. Of course, the truth remains unknown, but considering Hemingway’s circumstances at the time, such an interpretation isn’t entirely far-fetched. Viewed this way, the sea becomes a blank page, the old man a writer risking danger to inscribe words upon it, the marlin the grand theme the writer holds in mind, and the sharks the critics mercilessly attacking the writer’s finished work. Furthermore, even though the old man returns empty-handed after losing the marlin to sharks, his image of sleeping soundly and then energetically planning the next fishing trip with the boy can be seen as depicting a writer undaunted, preparing his next work.
Whether the boy is present or not, the old man is always with him. As this shows, The Old Man and the Sea is also a work that serves as an ode to friendship. What is unique is that this friendship transcends age and species, being an extremely universal bond. First and foremost, the friendship between the boy, Manolin, and the old man stands out. Manolin is the greatest source of strength for the old man. Even when he is barred from boarding Santiago’s boat, he looks after Santiago, and when Santiago returns, he is the first to greet him and show concern. One might assume that fishing is what keeps the old man alive, as he feels it is his true calling. Yet, according to the old man, this is not the case. Surprisingly, he says: “Fishing is what kills me, and it’s what keeps me alive. That boy keeps me alive, (……) I mustn’t deceive myself too much.” For the old man, the boy is practically his reason for living.
That said, the old man’s friend isn’t just the boy Manolin. His closest friend at sea is the flying fish, and the marlin he fought for two days and nights is also called his friend. Staring at the half-eaten marlin, the old man muses, “I should have cut off its snout to fight the sharks, (…) If I could have tied the snout firmly to the end of the oar, it would have been a great weapon. Then we might have fought them together.“ He indulges in the pleasant fantasy of joining forces with the very marlin he had just battled to defeat the sharks. But that’s not all. As he nears the harbor, the old man sometimes declares that ”the wind is our friend,“ and ”that vast sea too,“ and ”and the bed is also“ his friend. He says, ”The bed is my friend. All I need is a bed, (…) lying in bed would be so good. When I get back and lie down, it will be so comfortable, (…) I never knew how comfortable a bed could be until now,” he extols his friendship with material things. Indeed, it is undeniably a true friendship, revealed in a remarkably broad and multifaceted way.
Given that the fight with the marlin is the perfect opportunity for the old man, now a “salao,” to prove his existence, The Old Man and the Sea can also be read as a work about the ‘decisive moment’ a person faces in life. As he engages in a one-on-one battle with the enormous marlin, measuring a whopping 5.5 meters, the old man says: “‘I told that boy I was a strange old man. ‘ (…) ‘Now it’s time to prove it.’” The decisive moment had arrived to prove his own unique existence, distinct from other ordinary fishermen, and that luck had not yet deserted him.
Yet this was not the first time the old man had faced such a moment of proving his existence. Hemingway writes:
“The fact that he had already proven it thousands of times meant nothing. Now he was trying to prove it again. Each moment was new, and when he proved it, he never thought of the past.”
Even if he succeeded in this difficult proof of existence, it would soon become invalid, just like all the others before. But he couldn’t abandon proving his existence. That would truly be the end for him as a fisherman. Yet, a single mistake would surely let the marlin escape, meaning countless decisive moments were actually needed for that one proof of existence. To exaggerate slightly, every moment is a decisive moment for the old man. In fact, for two days and nights, he grips the fishing line tightly with one hand while handling everything else with the other. There is no moment when he can afford to relax, even for an instant.
Beyond this, The Old Man and the Sea is a baseball story where the old man departs from ‘home,’ engages in a reconnaissance battle at ‘first base,’ wrestles with the marlin at ‘second base,’ battles sharks at ‘third base,’ and somehow returns safely to ‘home.’ It is a story that constantly questions the true nature of ‘luck’—which comes in many forms—not merely as the lucrative ‘big fish,’ a story that constantly questions the essence of ‘luck’ that ‘comes in many forms’. Santiago’s groans are likened to those of Jesus nailed to the cross, and his image carrying the mast on his shoulders up the hill evokes Jesus bearing the cross up Golgotha. Thus, it can also be read as a religious allegory. In truth, no matter what focal point one chooses to read from, the structural coherence of The Old Man and the Sea remains unshakable. This very fact speaks to how meticulously the work was crafted.
It is astonishing that such a short, simple story can be read in so many diverse ways. But what is even more astonishing is that even when you reread the work with all these interpretations in mind, The Old Man and the Sea remains, above all, the utterly realistic story of a fisherman and the sea—of an old man going out to the open sea, fighting various battles, and returning. By the time you close the book, the myriad symbols that unfolded throughout have already sunk deep beneath the tranquil surface, like the old man’s sleep. The book feels as if it has exerted every ounce of its strength, only to collapse, having shown nothing but the ‘real’ old man and the ‘real’ sea, without asserting any symbolism whatsoever.
