This blog post delves deeply into the Christian symbolism hidden within Hemingway’s characteristic concise style and its meaning.
Hemingway gained worldwide attention by publishing ‘A Farewell to Arms’ (1929) and ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ (1940), inspired by his experiences in World War I. However, his subsequent work ‘Across the River and Into the Trees’ was met with reader indifference and harsh criticism. But after publishing ‘The Old Man and the Sea’, praise for him poured in once again. Hemingway won the Pulitzer Prize for this work and the Nobel Prize in Literature the following year, restoring his reputation as a writer and marking his literary resurrection.
It is said that swans never sing throughout their lives, but emit a single beautiful cry just before death. Thus, the ‘swan song’ refers to an artist’s final work. While some of Hemingway’s works were published posthumously, ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ was the last work published during his lifetime, making it his ‘swan song’. No work received as much acclaim as ‘The Old Man and the Sea’. When it was published in the magazine ‘Life’ in 1952, over 5.3 million copies sold within two days. A week later, it was published as a book and became a huge success.
From 1940, Hemingway lived near Havana, Cuba, enjoying deep-sea fishing aboard his own boat, the ‘Pilar’. These personal experiences are reflected in ‘The Old Man and the Sea’. Fifteen years before publishing ‘The Old Man and the Sea’, he contributed an essay titled ‘Islands in the Stream’ to the monthly magazine ‘Esquire’, recounting his sea fishing experiences in the Gulf Stream off Mexico. It mentions the experiences of Carlos Gutierrez, an elderly Cuban sailor who sailed with him on the Pilar, which became the seed for ‘The Old Man and the Sea’.
The essay ‘Islands in the Stream’ tells the story of an old fisherman who, aboard a small boat in the Gulf of Mexico, catches a large marlin. However, sharks attack and devour most of the fish. The fisherman fights off the sharks using his oar as a weapon, but eventually loses consciousness and is rescued by other fishermen. Starting from this essay, the author’s ideas matured over fifteen years, culminating in the masterpiece ‘The Old Man and the Sea’. It vividly embodies his profound knowledge and experience of fishing. Hemingway’s skill lies in transforming the experiential facts of a veteran Cuban fisherman into a novel that moves readers.
Hemingway graduated high school and got a job at a newspaper. He participated in World War I and the Spanish Civil War, working as a war correspondent, and later served as a newspaper correspondent. His concise, realistic prose style, restrained in psychological description, is called ‘hard-boiled’. Hemingway’s newspaper-like prose stemmed from his long career as a journalist. In a 1954 interview with the American newsweekly ‘Time’, Hemingway stated, “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,” revealing his focus on realistic depiction. ‘The Old Man and the Sea,’ which realistically depicts the old man’s struggle with a giant fish on the open sea in an objective tone, exemplifies Hemingway’s mastery of his style.
‘The Old Man and the Sea’ tells the story of Santiago, the protagonist who goes out to sea alone, hooks a massive fish, and after immense hardship succeeds in landing it. However, sharks soon attack, tearing away all the flesh until only the skeleton remains. He hauls this skeleton back to his boat. This simple story carries a deeply moving narrative.
Santiago fishes alone for 84 days without catching a single fish. The boy Manolin, who once fished with the old man, is forced by his parents to work on another boat. People around him mock Santiago, saying his luck as a fisherman has run out. Only the boy comforts and encourages the old man when he returns empty-handed. The old man is gaunt and emaciated, with deep wrinkles etched into his neck and brown spots covering his cheeks, his aging evident. Yet, “his eyes, the color of the sea, shone with a spirit and a will that knew no defeat.”
The eyes imply ‘to know, to recognize,’ symbolizing the old man’s awareness of his situation and his unyielding spirit of challenge.The boy comforts the old man, saying 85 is a lucky number, and gathers the bait and sardines he needs. Recognizing his old age and loneliness, the old man humbly accepts the boy’s help.
Though it was a day of continuous misfortune for the old man, he did not lose his pride in his skill as a fisherman or his resolve. “Every day is a new day,” he said, and he went out fishing again.
Far out at sea, the old man saw the force pulling on his line and was certain it was a big fish. He pulled the line taut. But when it doesn’t budge, he hoists the line onto his shoulder and tries to hold it steady. Yet the fish’s immense strength drags the boat along. When his strength wanes, he regrets the boy’s absence, but all the old man has prepared is ‘a bottle of water’. For two days and nights, bearing hunger, loneliness, and the limits of his frail body, he struggles desperately. After a grueling battle with the enormous marlin, the old man finally lands the fish.
What’s interesting here is that the old man fishes by hand, using only the line, not a rod. ‘Bare-handed’ signifies a primitive duel fought with ‘bare hands’ and no equipment, heightening the intensity of the struggle. This is supported by the fact that the old man once wrestled a large black man and won after two days, earning him the title of champion. The old man is a warrior who throws himself into a single, decisive battle with his bare hands. Hemingway, who was deeply fascinated by bullfighting, engaged in existential reflection on death and the courage to face it. If bullfighting is a direct confrontation, then handline fishing is an extension of that. The old man, who believes “fishing is my destiny,” struggles with a giant fish, finally catches it, ties it to the side of his boat, and sets off for home. But a pack of sharks, drawn by the fish’s blood, attacks. Exhausted from his battle with the great fish, the old man is spent. Yet, recalling how baseball player DiMaggio overcame the pain of bone spurs in his foot, he declares, “It may be destroyed, but it will not be defeated,” and with all his strength, he hurls his harpoon, repelling the sharks. Facing a two-day battle with a giant fish in the vast ocean and confronting the shark attack, man is a being thrown into the universe, a being of thrownness (Geworfenheit). In this process, the old man demonstrates the heroic image of humanity confronting the giant fish and sharks with unyielding will.
Santiago possesses not only superhuman strength but also a tender and warm heart. He feels compassion for the birds flying over the sea, recognizing them as fragile beings living on the ocean, which can be affectionate yet turn cruel in an instant. He feels love and compassion for the sea’s creatures, perceiving them as brothers, yet accepts the natural law that compels him to catch fish. Though he catches a massive fish measuring 5.5 meters long and weighing 700 kilograms, only the head and tail remain after sharks devour it. We see not defeat but triumph in the old man hauling this mangled fish aboard his boat, returning with a weary body. The old man, struggling with unyielding will against adversity and hardship, movingly demonstrates human dignity and majesty.
‘The Old Man and the Sea’ is realistically depicted while also presenting Christian imagery. Santiago is Spanish for James, and he was a fisherman, a disciple of Jesus. When Santiago is attacked by sharks, “the cry that bursts out of a man unconsciously when a nail pierces his hand and drives into the wood” evokes the cry Jesus uttered when nailed to the cross.
The image of the old man, exhausted and having lost all his fishing gear, returning with only a skeleton of a fish hanging from his line, shouldering the mast and climbing the road, and the image of him sleeping in bed with both arms stretched out, palms facing upward, and his face turned downward, evokes Jesus carrying the cross up Golgotha.
Christian imagery overlays the realistic depiction, lending it symbolism. The old man’s tenacious struggle against hardship and adversity manifests as something sublime and sacred. The exhausted old man dreams of lions; the old man who wakes from his sleep will head back out to sea. Like Sisyphus.
