For Hemingway, the sea was not merely a backdrop, but a stage for life and struggle. His work The Old Man and the Sea deeply explores human limits and willpower, revealing his philosophy through the sea.
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961)
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, in the American Midwest, the second of six children and the eldest son. His father, Clarence Hemingway, an obstetrician, enjoyed sports like fishing and hunting, while his mother, Grace Hall, was a music teacher. His father greatly influenced Hemingway’s strong masculine tendencies. In fact, his father provided him with a fishing rod before he turned three and bought him a shotgun at age ten.
During his time at Oak Park River Forest High School, Hemingway developed an interest in literature. He served as editor of the school’s weekly newspaper and contributed to the quarterly magazine ‘Tubular’. He led an active life, participating in all kinds of sports at school and captaining teams. However, frequent conflicts with his mother and his tendency to enjoy solitude led him to run away from home several times.
In April 1917 (age 18), the year he graduated high school, the United States entered World War I. Hemingway attempted to enlist just before graduation, but his father strongly opposed it. Ultimately, Hemingway abandoned plans for college and became a reporter for ‘The Kansas City Star’ after graduating high school. During his brief seven-month stint as a reporter, Hemingway honed his writing skills considerably. For example, the newspaper had established rules such as ‘Write short sentences’, ‘Avoid extreme adjectives’, ‘Pursue a vigorous style’, and ‘Don’t use stale slang’. This training greatly aided Hemingway in developing his concise writing style and honed his ability for objective observation and dispassionate, unemotional description.
In April 1918 (at age 19), Hemingway left the newspaper and volunteered in May for the Red Cross unit on the Italian front, serving as a driver for field hospital transport vehicles. However, less than two months after arriving at the front, on the night of July 8th, enemy mortar shells fell on the small Italian village of Fossalta di Piave. Hemingway suffered severe injuries to both legs, and the soldier beside him was killed instantly. This bombardment scene is vividly depicted in ‘A Farewell to Arms’.
Hemingway was hospitalized at the Milan Army Hospital. After the armistice, he returned home (1919) and met novelist Sherwood Anderson, which solidified his resolve to become a writer. Then, in September 1921, at the age of twenty-two, he married Hadley Richardson, who was eight years his senior. In November, he went to Paris as a foreign correspondent for Canada’s ‘The Toronto Star’ and ‘Star Weekly’. Traveling throughout Europe in his capacity as a correspondent, he also covered the Greco-Turkish War in 1922.
In Paris, introduced by Anderson, he met the American writer Gertrude Stein and interacted with the many writers who frequented her salon. Among them were the American poet Ezra Pound and James Joyce, author of ‘Ulysses’. Stein and Pound personally mentored Hemingway; Pound, in particular, read Hemingway’s short stories and personally deleted most of the adjectives.
Despite living in poverty in Paris, Hemingway focused on literature and steadily wrote short stories. His Paris life is depicted in ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ and the posthumously published ‘A Moveable Feast’.
In 1923 (at age 24), he published ‘Three Stories and Ten Poems’ in Paris, followed by the sketch-like short story collection ‘In Our Time’ in 1924. Then, in October 1925, the short story collection ‘In Our Time’ was published in the United States.
In 1925 (age 26), introduced to the renowned American publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons by Scott Fitzgerald, whom he met and befriended in Paris, he published his first novel ‘The Torrents of Spring’ in May 1926. Subsequently, all of Hemingway’s works were published by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Hemingway became an overnight sensation with the October 1926 (age 27) publication of his novel ‘The Sun Also Rises’. Set in post-war Paris and Spain, this work depicting the hedonistic lifestyles of international exiles became a favorite among young readers, establishing Hemingway as the leading writer of the ‘Lost Generation’. Following this success, Hemingway published the short story collection Men Without Women in October 1927. He had been separated from Hadley since before that and divorced her in April of that year. A month later, he married Pauline Pfeiffer, a Paris-based correspondent for Vogue.
In 1928 (at age 29), he left Paris and returned to the United States, settling in Key West, Florida, where he wrote his major works. He continued writing the masterpiece ‘A Farewell to Arms’, which he had begun in Paris that March, after returning to America. He revised it repeatedly even after finalizing the manuscript, completing it in January 1929. However, when it was decided to serialize it in Scribner’s Magazine, he revised it again, and then revised it once more for the book publication. The final chapter alone was revised seventeen times, reflecting the passion poured into the work. While writing the first draft, Pauline gave birth to their second son, Patrick. During the revision period, his father committed suicide with a pistol at their Oak Park home. His father’s suicide deepened Hemingway’s pessimistic worldview, casting an even darker shadow over the work. ‘A Farewell to Arms’ became an instant bestseller upon its September 1929 publication (when Hemingway was 30), selling 80,000 copies within four months. Adapted for stage and screen, and translated into numerous languages, this single work cemented Hemingway’s reputation as America’s foremost writer.
The Great Depression, triggered by the October 1929 stock market crash in New York, plunged the entire world into recession throughout 1930. During this period, Hemingway wrote while enjoying fishing and travel in Key West, Florida. In 1932 (age 33), he published the nonfiction work ‘Death in the Afternoon’ about Spanish bullfighting, and in October 1933, he released the short story collection ‘Winner Take Nothing’. In October 1935 (age 36), he published the nonfiction ‘Green Hills of Africa’, chronicling his hunting trips in Africa. His famous short story ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ was inspired by this trip to Kenya, Africa.
When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, he actively worked to defend democracy. He organized fundraising campaigns for the Republican government forces and, in February 1937, traveled to Spain as a correspondent for the North American News Agency (NANA) to report on the conflict. In October, he published the social novel ‘To Have and Have Not’. He collaborated on propaganda films for the Spanish Republican government, and in June 1938 (at age 39), the screenplay ‘The Spanish Earth’ was published. That October, ‘The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories’ was published, containing his only play, ‘The Fifth Column’, based on his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway continued to travel between Spain and the United States thereafter.
In March 1939, the Spanish Civil War ended with the victory of the fascist Republican forces. In November, Hemingway separated from Pauline Pfeiffer and moved his residence to the outskirts of Havana, Cuba. Returning to the United States, Hemingway published his major work ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ in October 1940 (at age 41), a novel he had spent over a year completing. Set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War, this novel became a bestseller, achieving explosive popularity. Shortly after its release, he divorced Pauline and married Martha Gellhorn, a reporter for Collier’s Weekly whom he had met in Spain, in November.
During World War II, when German submarines reached the Caribbean, Hemingway converted his boat, the ‘Pilar’, in 1942 (age 43). For two years until spring 1944, he led a crew of nine to patrol the Cuban coastline. When Martha left for Europe in 1943 as a correspondent for ‘Collier’s Weekly’, Hemingway also went to London in 1944 as a correspondent for ‘Collier’s Weekly’. Around this time, the distance between Martha and Hemingway began to grow.
In June 1944 (aged 45), when the Normandy landings commenced, Hemingway covered the event as a correspondent. He remained with the troops until the German advance and was among the vanguard of Allied forces when Paris was liberated.
After World War II ended in 1945, he returned home, settled in Cuba, and devoted himself to writing while enjoying fishing there. He divorced Martha that December and married Mary Welsh, a reporter for ‘Time’, in March 1946.
In 1950 (age 51), he published the novel ‘Across the River and into the Trees’, his first full-length work in ten years since ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’, but it did not receive favorable reviews. The following year, in June 1951, his mother passed away. Hemingway sent only a letter and money, not attending the funeral.
In September 1952 (age 52), The Old Man and the Sea was published. It first appeared in full in the September 1 issue of Life magazine, then was published as a book on September 8. This work, showcasing his signature concise and powerful prose, restored Hemingway’s reputation and earned him the Pulitzer Prize in 1953.
In early 1954 (age 55), while traveling in Africa, his plane crashed in the jungle near Kilimanjaro. Reports even claimed Hemingway had died, but he miraculously survived. However, he suffered serious injuries, and his wife Mary also broke two ribs. In 1954, ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ served as the direct catalyst for his selection for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was unable to attend the award ceremony in Sweden because his injuries from the plane crash had not healed.
After receiving the Nobel Prize, Hemingway lived and wrote in Havana, Cuba. However, following the success of the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro in 1959, he left Cuba permanently in 1960 (at age 61) and moved to Ketchum in southeastern Idaho. Hemingway’s estate ‘Finca Vigía’ (‘The Watchtower Farm’), located in the suburbs of Havana, is now used as the Hemingway Museum.
After ‘The Old Man and the Sea’, Hemingway published almost nothing, living while suffering from depression, alcoholism, and other illnesses. After returning to the United States, his condition worsened, and he underwent electroconvulsive therapy multiple times. After repeated hospitalizations and discharges, he was discharged on July 1, 1961 (aged 62) and returned to his home in Ketchum. The next day, around 7:30 a.m. on Sunday, his wife Mary heard a gunshot and rushed downstairs. There she found Hemingway collapsed, having committed suicide by placing the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. Thus ended the tumultuous life of Ernest Hemingway, America’s great literary giant and Nobel Prize-winning author. His body was buried in Sun Valley, Idaho.
The Old Man and the Sea book plot
The subject matter for ‘The Old Man and the Sea’, considered Hemingway’s final masterpiece published in his later years, was mentioned in an article he contributed to the magazine ‘Esquire’ in the spring of 1936 titled ‘On the Blue Waves—News from the Gulf Stream’. In it, he referenced a true story he had personally heard. This suggests the author had been conceiving this work for a long time. After nearly a decade without significant work following ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’, published at a time when whispers of ‘Hemingway is finished’ were circulating. While receiving mixed reviews from critics, it stands as a representative work that directly reflects Hemingway’s existential philosophy. It symbolizes the author’s own inner world—a life spent pursuing art through the protagonist’s solitude, courage, and endurance.
Santiago, an old man who has lived his entire life as a fisherman, has no interest beyond fishing except for baseball. The only person he shares his heart with and relies on is the boy Manolin. Living alone, fishing in the Gulf Stream, the old man had not caught a single fish in 84 days. Initially, he fished with the boy, but after repeatedly returning with an empty boat, the boy transferred to another boat, leaving the old man to go out alone. Yet, despite deep wrinkles etched into his face and neck and his mind sometimes wandering, the old man’s eyes alone were full of strength and unwavering confidence. On the 85th day, determined to break his streak of bad luck and catch a big fish, he ventures as far out to sea as possible. In the middle of the sea, where the coastline was no longer visible, the old man sat alone in his small boat. He conversed with the clouds, seabirds, and fish as his companions, watching the fishing line he had cast deep into the water. Around noon, a fish took the bait on his line, but it did not surface. Instead, it continued to pull the boat out into deeper waters. The old man endures the pain in his shoulder where the line is slung, the scrapes on his hands from the line, hunger, thirst, drowsiness, fear, and loneliness, waiting for the fish to surface. On the third day, when the exhausted fish surfaces, the old man summons “all his remaining strength and long-lost pride, overcoming every pain,” and thrusts his harpoon into the fish.
Victorious in his battle with the great fish, the old man hauls the fish, larger than his own skiff, alongside his boat and sets sail for Havana. But sharks, drawn by the scent of the great fish’s blood, surge from the deep toward the old man’s skiff. He strikes down one shark that bites the fish, but senses more will come. “Man is not made to be defeated,” he mutters, refusing to lose hope. “He may be destroyed, but never defeated.” He may be destroyed, but he will never be defeated.” He does not lose hope. Yet, after enduring the sharks’ attacks all night, the old man finally returns home with only the bare backbone of the fish hanging from his boat, stripped clean of all flesh between its head and tail.
‘The Old Man and the Sea’ showcases the pinnacle of Hemingway’s signature concise and powerful prose. Moreover, in the image of the old man battling alone in the middle of the vast ocean, murmuring only his thoughts and soliloquies, one can glimpse the lonely figure of the author himself, now in his twilight years. Through the old man’s solitary fight against a fish larger than his skiff, overcoming his own limitations with sheer willpower, solitude, pride, and physical strength, we realize how resilient and dignified the human spirit truly is. Moreover, the traveler’s final line upon seeing the fish bones the old man hauled aboard—“I never knew a shark’s tail could be so beautiful”—speaks to the beauty of human struggle, never losing hope even in defeat. It is precisely this reverence for the sublime human struggle depicted in the real world within the work that earned Hemingway the honor of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
