This blog post introduces a chronology of Ernest Hemingway’s life organized by year and the key meaning and characteristics of his masterpiece ‘The Old Man and the Sea’.
Ernest Miller Hemingway Chronology
Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899–1961) was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, USA.
His father was an obstetrician who enjoyed hunting and fishing, while his mother was a devout woman who loved music.
During summers, he spent his boyhood at the family’s cottage on Waloon Lake in northern Michigan, accompanying his father who loved fishing and hunting. Taking after his active father rather than his introverted mother, Hemingway developed interests and hobbies in football, swimming, boxing, music, hunting, and literary pursuits during high school, accumulating diverse experiences. These experiences would later form the consistent themes of his literary world.
In 1918, at age 19, he was severely wounded while serving as a Red Cross worker on the Italian front. After three months of recuperation at the Army Hospital in Milan, he returned to the front. This wartime experience became the backdrop for ‘A Farewell to Arms’.
In 1921, at age 22, he married Hadley Richardson and lived in Toronto. That December, he settled in Paris as the European correspondent for the Star Weekly.
In 1922, introduced by Sherwood Anderson, he met Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound, who exerted an absolute influence on Hemingway during his formative years.
In 1923, he published his first collection, ‘Three Stories and Ten Poems’, in Paris.
In 1926, he published ‘The Torrents of Spring’ and ‘The Sun Also Rises’. ‘Men Without Women’, published in 1927, received a favorable response from readers.
In 1929, he published ‘A Farewell to Arms’, selling 80,000 copies in just four months and instantly achieving fame.
He published ‘Death in the Afternoon’ in 1932, ‘Winner Take Nothing’ in 1933, and ‘The Green Hills of Africa’ in 1935.
In 1936, at age 37, the Spanish Civil War broke out. He worked to raise funds to aid the Republican government while also publishing the short stories ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ and ‘The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,’ both set in Africa.
In 1937, at age 38, he traveled to Spain to collaborate on the production of the film ‘The Spanish Earth’. ‘To Have and Have Not’ was published that October. In 1940, he published ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’, which became a bestseller selling hundreds of thousands of copies. In 1946, he married Mary Welsh, his fourth wife, and in 1950, he published ‘Across the River and into the Trees’.
In 1952, at age 53, he published ‘The Old Man and the Sea’, which earned him the 1952 Pulitzer Prize.
In January 1954, he suffered the misfortune of being injured in a plane crash in Uganda, yet that same year he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In 1961, at age 62, he died by a mysterious shotgun suicide at his home in Idaho, where he was recuperating from hypertension and diabetes. Upon his passing, condolences were reportedly expressed not only by the White House, but also by the Vatican Palace and the Kremlin—an unusual gesture.
The Meaning and Characteristics of ‘The Old Man and the Sea’
Hemingway, a representative writer of the ‘Lost Generation’ of the 1920s, shifted from a negative to a positive attitude toward life. After publishing ‘To Have and Have Not’ and then ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ in 1940, he remained silent for a decade. This hiatus appears to stem from his loss of motivation to write fiction after his biographical novels, penned during this shift from pessimism to optimism, failed to garner favorable reception.
However, in the 1950s, Hemingway shattered criticism of his waning creativity by publishing ‘The Old Man and the Sea,’ thereby restoring his literary reputation.
‘The Old Man and the Sea’ (1952) stands as the crowning achievement that sums up Hemingway’s literature, encapsulating his philosophy on both literature and life.
According to Kit Singer, who uncovered the source material for this work, Hemingway based it on the experiences of a fisherman he met at the dock. The protagonist Santiago is based on the real-life fisherman Manuel Olivari Montes. He fled from Cuba to the United States in 1963. The fact that Hemingway rewrote this work over 200 times before its publication alone shows how much heart and soul he poured into completing it. The author himself said of ‘The Old Man and the Sea’, “It feels like I’ve finally written the work I’ve been preparing for my entire life.”
‘The Old Man and the Sea’, hailed by ‘The New York Times’ as ‘a masterpiece by a master’, possesses several notable characteristics.
First, one can discover the author’s profound philosophy on life within its pages.
Though the plot is merely an episode of a simple fisherman, we are deeply moved by the old man Santiago, who refuses to admit defeat and endures with an indomitable spirit. The old man triumphs in his struggle with the great fish, but an unexpected attack by a pack of sharks leaves him stripped of everything, with only the carcass remaining. Yet, the old man has no regrets. He sleeps only for tomorrow. For him, life may seem meaningless and futile, yet he lives by obeying nature’s laws for the sake of tomorrow. For such a man, defeat is impossible.
If our very existence is like a fisherman casting his line from a small boat upon the vast ocean, then by steadfastly enduring any hardship, we too will never be defeated in life.
Through the old man Santiago in this work, we discover the true human spirit that endures the suffering of humanity. This is the very essence of the author’s fundamental philosophy.
Second, we can discover the rich symbolism embedded within.
From the old man and the boy, to the sea, the clouds, the dolphins, the sharks, the baseball players, the lion, and the creatures of the sea, each carries profound meaning.
The sea represents the world in which humans live, and the old man can be seen as representing humanity. In the boy who cares for the old man, we find human affection. The baseball game and players the old man recalls evoke humanity’s interdependence and the indomitable spirit that endures suffering. The lions playing on the sunset-drenched shore bring to mind the purity of strength and peace.
The old man views all sea creatures as equals to humans, perceiving all things on the same level as people. He even regards the wind, his bed, the stars, the sun, and the moon as brothers. This represents the pinnacle of the author’s universal love philosophy. While feeling love and respect for the great fish, the author accepts the necessity of killing it as the natural order. The author’s spirit of universal love is recognized within the bounds of accepting nature’s providence, revealing his ethical perspective.
Finally, the prose style is notable for its conciseness and clear focus.
Most sentences are colloquial, characterized by simple syntax and structure. Words are short and commonplace, yet the vocabulary usage is extremely economical and fresh. It is said the author reread this work a staggering 200 times before finalizing it. This meticulous attention to every single word, weaving the work vividly, also reveals his masterful craftsmanship.
