Hemingway’s ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ is a masterpiece depicting human endurance and challenge. This review explores its depth.
Hemingway’s Greatest Masterpiece
“The Old Man and the Sea” is considered Hemingway’s finest work, earning him the Pulitzer Prize (1953) and the Nobel Prize in Literature (1954) in his later years. The Swedish Academy specifically cited this work when awarding the Nobel Prize, commenting, “It is a work of powerful and elegant style, demonstrating the mastery of a great writer at the height of modern narrative art.” The renowned American literary critic Clifton Fadiman once remarked, “Hemingway’s literature, in a word, is fifty short stories.” This refers to combining The Old Man and the Sea with his first forty-nine short stories published in 1938, meaning the essence of Hemingway’s literature lies in the short story.
The Life of Author Hemingway
Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. His father was a doctor who loved hunting and fishing, while his mother was a housewife deeply interested in art and music. Hemingway felt strong affection for his father, who taught him hunting and fishing, but he felt intense resistance toward his mother, who was overbearing—forcing him to play the cello, a hobby he had little interest in. It was this family environment that led him to jump straight into the workforce after graduating high school. Throughout Hemingway’s works, recollections and longing for his father are frequently mentioned, yet references to his mother are unusually scarce. Notably, his father committed suicide by gunshot when Hemingway was 29, leaving him with a lifelong obsession with death.
After graduating high school in 1917, his experience editing the school paper and his exceptional writing skills landed him a job at The Star, a prominent Kansas City newspaper, where he began his career as a journalist. He soon sought to enlist in World War I but was rejected due to poor eyesight. Instead, he served as a Red Cross worker. While serving as an ambulance driver in Italy, he was wounded on the Austro-Italian front before turning nineteen and was evacuated to Milan. There, he fell in love with Red Cross nurse Agnes von Kurowsky, though they never married. This experience later inspired his novel ‘A Farewell to Arms’.
After recovering from his injuries and returning home, Hemingway balanced writing with journalism work. In 1921, he married Hadley Richardson and traveled to France as a correspondent for the Toronto Star Weekly. In Paris, he befriended American writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound, immersing himself in serious literary pursuits. These experiences are vividly captured in ‘A Moveable Feast,’ published posthumously. In 1926, he divorced his first wife and remarried Pauline Pfeiffer. He repeated this pattern: divorcing his current wife to pursue a new woman, then remarrying the woman he was seeing. Thus, he married four women four times. The first three wives clashed with Hemingway’s macho nature and eventually separated, but his last wife, Mary Welsh, remained obedient and patient for 17 years, staying by his side until his death. His divorces from his former wives were primarily due to Hemingway’s selfish attitude and his affairs with other women. Having gained fame as a writer in the 1920s, Hemingway subsequently solidified his image as a tough and courageous macho man through hobbies like bullfighting, fishing, and hunting, as well as through travel. He also cemented his reputation as a brave warrior by directly participating in the Spanish Civil War and World War II.
Having already loved Spain and traveled extensively throughout the region in the 1920s and 1930s, Hemingway, upon the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, launched fundraising campaigns for those defending the Republic. He visited Spain four times, either as a correspondent or for travel purposes. Around this time, he met journalist Martha Gellhorn, who would become his third wife. She was the model for the female protagonist Maria in ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls,’ and the novel was dedicated to her.
After marrying Martha, Hemingway purchased the Finca Bahía estate near Havana, Cuba, and settled there. While living in Cuba, he and his wife traveled to China to cover Japan’s invasion, conducted espionage against Germany, and was dispatched to Europe as a journalist, participating in the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. Though a journalist, he fought with the courage of a soldier in combat and played a significant role in military matters, guerrilla activities, and especially intelligence gathering. After the war, Hemingway returned to his home in Cuba. His third marriage also ended in failure, and he married his fourth wife, Mary. After publishing ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’ in 1940, he failed to produce any notable work, leading to rumors that his writing career was over. However, he published ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ in 1952, silencing such criticism in one fell swoop.
Hemingway’s literary career followed an uneven trajectory of successes and failures. In the 1920s, he established his reputation as a modernist writer with outstanding short stories and novels like ‘A Farewell to Arms’ and ‘The Sun Also Rises’. Yet in the 1930s, his mediocre novel ‘To Have and Have Not’ drew harsh criticism from reviewers who dismissed it as third-rate fiction. However, he regained his reputation in the early 1940s with the publication of ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’. Yet, his late 1940s novel ‘Across the River and Into the Trees’ was judged even more trivial than ‘To Have and Have Not’, leading to claims that Hemingway was finished. Then came The Old Man and the Sea, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. But failure mode returned, and he released the mediocre nonfiction work The Dangerous Summer in 1960.
Forced to leave his Finca Vigía estate in Cuba due to the 1960 revolution, Hemingway returned to the United States and devoted himself to writing his final masterpiece. Reflecting on his past cycle of failures and successes, he whipped himself into writing a grand work that would serve as the culmination of Hemingway literature. Critics who disparaged Hemingway’s literature diagnosed it as (all action and no thought). They also harshly criticized Hemingway’s major characters—Frederick Henry in ‘A Farewell to Arms’, Jake Barnes in ‘The Sun Also Rises’, and Robert Jordan in ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’—arguing they merely aged without truly maturing. However, in The Old Man and the Sea, which became his final novel, the actions and thoughts of the protagonist, the old man Santiago, were well integrated. This heightened expectations that a monumental masterpiece would emerge, serving as the culmination of Hemingway’s 60-year literary career.
This expectation became an unbearable pressure for Hemingway. He suffered from severe anxiety and depression, caught between the obsession to write a masterpiece that would silence critics’ slander and the frustration of failing to achieve it. An ordinary person might have found satisfaction in his existing achievements and stepped back, but Hemingway could not. The indomitable, brave Hemingway myth he had built throughout his life through the press, magazines, and news would not allow it. This became an immense burden, leading him to suffer a nervous breakdown and manic-depressive paranoia. He told those around him that the FBI was wiretapping and tailing him, suspecting that everyone close to him had been recruited by the FBI to report on his every move. He even worried that his bank balance wasn’t sufficient to pay the IRS tax bill on time (he left his wife Mary a staggering $1.4 million after his death, an amount more befitting a banker than a writer), and he hurled insults at his dutiful wife Mary, accusing her of being on their side, not his.
After two hospitalizations in the fall of 1960 and spring of 1961, where he underwent more than ten sessions of electroconvulsive therapy, Hemingway failed to overcome his illness. He returned to his home in Ketchum, Idaho, and two days later, on July 2, 1961, he committed suicide by placing a shotgun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. His body was buried in Ketchum, and the memorial erected nearby bears this inscription: (He loved autumn above all else. The yellow leaves of the poplar grove, the leaves drifting on the trout stream, and the high, blue, windless sky beyond the hills. Now he is forever one with these landscapes.)
Background of 「The Old Man and the Sea」
「The Old Man and the Sea」was a work Hemingway had long envisioned. The April 1936 issue of ‘Esquire’ featured an article in which Hemingway discussed (the joy of fishing) with an acquaintance in the Gulf of Mexico. Here, he recounted a story he had heard from a Cuban fishing enthusiast named Carlos about an old man. The story went something like this.
An old man fishing in a small skiff in the Gulf of Mexico near Cabañas caught a huge marlin. Two days later, fellow fishermen found him 60 miles east, with the marlin tied to the bow of his boat. More than half of the fish had been torn away, but the remaining portion still weighed 800 pounds. The old man had fought the fish for two days, but sharks had attacked and torn away chunks of its flesh. When his fellow fishermen found him, he was crying on his boat, distraught over the loss of the fish and beside himself. Sharks still circled around him.
This story remained deeply embedded in Hemingway’s mind. Three years later, in 1939, he wrote to Max Perkins, an editor at Scribner’s. He stated he intended to write the story as a novel and was conducting field research daily, sailing out into the waters off Cuba aboard the small boat of a Cuban fisherman named Carlos. Thus, “The Old Man and the Sea” was originally slated for publication around 1940, but Hemingway’s work on “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” about the Spanish Civil War, delayed it. He finally began writing in January 1951, completed the manuscript in eight weeks, and then meticulously refined every word and phrase over 200 readings before publication. It was completed a full 15 years after he first told the story of the Cuban old man (whose real name was Manuel Ulibarri Montespan) to Esquire.
Another episode relates to the publication of ‘The Old Man and the Sea’. The work appeared in the September 1, 1952, special issue of ‘Life’, with the entire magazine devoted solely to this single story. The novel caused an immediate international sensation, and as a result, the magazine sold an astonishing 5.32 million copies. For Life magazine at the time, it was a tremendous gamble to dedicate an entire issue to just one Hemingway novel. This was because Hemingway’s recent novel, Across the River and Into the Trees, had been panned as a failure, and many critics viewed Hemingway as a writer past his prime. To preempt such critical backlash, ‘Life’ sent galley proofs of ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ to approximately 600 prominent figures across the United States and Europe, soliciting their opinions. Each recipient was asked to maintain confidentiality. Thus, in the summer of 1952, the Tokyo bureau of ‘Life’ approached novelist James Michener, who was serving on the Korean front at the time. Michener reportedly read the manuscript in one sitting. Overwhelmed by the excitement of encountering a masterpiece, he went for a walk in the Korean summer night to calm his agitation. Upon returning, he wrote a blurb expressing his boundless joy as a fellow writer that a literary giant had produced a work worthy of his stature. This blurb was featured in a full-page national advertisement in Life.
After its magazine publication, “The Old Man and the Sea” was released as a book by Scribner’s on September 8, 1952, with an initial print run of 50,000 copies. It subsequently became a global bestseller, going through multiple printings.
The protagonist Santiago is the Spanish pronunciation of St. James. James is the patron saint of Spain and was a fisherman before becoming a disciple of Christ. For this reason, Santiago is sometimes read as an allegory of Christ. For instance, both Christ and Santiago are fishermen and moral teachers. The Greek word for fish is ichthys, which is an acronym formed from the first letters of the Greek phrase meaning “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.” Viewed this way, Christ, fish, and fisherman are one and the same. Santiago’s 84 days of hardship at sea parallels Christ’s 40 days in the wilderness, and his three-day struggle with the fish mirrors Christ’s three days of suffering on the cross. Just as Christ’s hands were pierced by nails, Santiago’s hands were torn by the fishing line. Just as Christ was flogged on His back before going to Golgotha, Santiago’s back was lacerated by the fishing line. Furthermore, Santiago suffers from a severe headache, similar to Christ enduring pain in His head from the crown of thorns. The scene of Santiago returning to port, carrying the mast, and heading back to his hut resembles the sight of Christ bearing the cross to Golgotha. Furthermore, Santiago’s posture lying on the bed in the hut resembles that of Christ hanging on the cross.
The short stories selected here, aside from “The Old Man and the Sea,” were chosen from those Hemingway identified as his representative short stories in the preface to The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938). In that preface, he cited “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” “Hills Like White Elephants,” “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” and “The Light of the World” as representative stories. This book adds “Indian Camp” and “The Killers” to these five. These two stories were selected because they are thought to aid in understanding the author’s life and his theory of the short story. Reviewing their publication history: “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” first appeared in the September 1936 issue of ‘Cosmopolitan’, while “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” debuted in the August 1936 issue of ‘Esquire’. Both were later reprinted in ‘The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories’. “Hills Like White Elephants” first appeared in the August 1927 issue of ‘Transition’. It was later reprinted in the short story collection ‘Men Without Women’ (1927), alongside “The Killers”, which appeared in the March 1927 issue of ‘Scribner’s Magazine’. “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” appeared in the March 1933 issue of Scribner’s Magazine and was later included in the collection Winner Take Nothing (1933). “Indian Camp” appeared in the April 1924 issue of Transatlantic Review and was later included in the short story collection In Our Time (1925). “The Light of the World” was not published in a magazine and first appeared in the short story collection Winner Take Nothing.
Commentary on The Old Man and the Sea
When reading a novel, the most important thing is the story, and The Old Man and the Sea is a superb tale that makes you feel as if you are actually there. However, the more excellent the work, the more you discover aspects beyond the story itself—this is the meaning beyond words, namely symbolism. Hemingway stated, “There is no good novel that does not have some symbolism hidden within it.” This symbolism is abundantly found in The Old Man and the Sea. So, how exactly did Hemingway define symbolism?
In his nonfiction work Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway made this noteworthy remark about symbolism: (If a novelist knows very well what he is trying to write, he can omit what he knows. If he has written well indeed, the reader will have a distinct feeling about it, as if it (what the novelist deliberately omitted) had been explicitly stated. The movement of an iceberg acquires its majesty because only one-eighth is above the water, while the rest is submerged. Conversely, an author who omits what he does not know well leaves only empty gaps in his writing.)
According to this definition, (a symbol) is something the reader can understand as if it had been stated, even though it was not explicitly said. Earlier, I mentioned the similarity between Santiago and Christ. Though the story of Christ does not appear in this work, it is narrated in such a way that the reader who reads the novel gets that feeling.
Another symbol in The Old Man and the Sea is viewing the fisherman as an artist at work. The artist ventures alone into the sea of the unconscious, casting various baits into the deep abyss of the self, striving to reel in a magnificent fish (the work’s theme). Thus, the artist believes he has caught a magnificent fish (the work), but on the journey back to port (having ventured too far into the sea of the unconscious), he is attacked by a pack of sharks (the critics), leaving the work as nothing but an empty shell. This interpretation seems all the more plausible considering the harsh criticism the author received for his previous work, ‘Across the River and Into the Trees’.
So what does the lion, mentioned eleven times in the work, symbolize? To properly understand this lion image, we must read Hemingway’s African travel short stories, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” together. The former features a lion, while the latter replaces the lion with a leopard. The lion specifically symbolizes Hemingway’s philosophy of life. Hemingway defines man as will, pride, and endurance. Man must possess the endurance to accept pain or loss, and even when such loss is inevitable, he must demonstrate courage in adversity. Pride signifies that man has exerted his maximum capacity based on his character within the given circumstances. Will represents the attitude of accepting life’s hardships with dignity, without succumbing to self-pity or sentimentality, whether facing defeat or victory. Santiago is a character who embodies this philosophy. Though old and poor, he is a true man. Though his physical strength is past its prime, his endurance and will remain intact. Even when facing defeat, he fought to the end, and thus he is a man who does not lose. Viewed this way, the lion is the symbol of Santiago’s life philosophy. There is also a scene where the boy Manolin and the lion are equated, conveying Santiago’s wish that Manolin, who loves him, will become a lion-like figure—that is, a person like Santiago himself.
Hemingway emphasized conveying symbols and experienced emotions in his writing, and to explain this more concretely, he spoke of the difference between a novelist and a newspaper reporter. For example, suppose a newspaper reporter and a novelist witness the scene of a young girl’s traffic accident. The reporter need not actually witness the event. To maintain objectivity, it might even be better for the reporter not to witness the accident. Necessary details can be obtained from the police report. Conversely, the novelist must convey what he truly felt (not something he felt or was taught to feel, but what he genuinely experienced). The novelist’s true calling is to make the reader feel exactly what the writer felt. Hemingway wrote his novels based on this theory during the 1920s and 1930s, when he produced his gem-like short stories. Works like “Hills Like White Elephants” and “The Killers” effectively convey the characters’ experiences.
Earlier, I mentioned symbolism. “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” uses the symbol of a clean, well-lighted place to present the human longing for a state transcending the dark, dirty, and futile existence people endure. However, Hemingway’s symbols don’t always work perfectly. As Hemingway himself admitted, “The Light of the World”—a work he considered a masterpiece but which received harsh criticism from reviewers—fails to make its symbolism work effectively. While the white boxer Steve Chetel is described as symbolizing Jesus Christ and the fat prostitute Alice as symbolizing Mary Magdalene, unlike the Santiago=Christ symbolism, readers find it difficult to readily accept these symbols. Comparing “The Light of the World” with “The Old Man and the Sea” reveals how subtle and skillful the latter’s symbolism truly is.
The most famous line from “The Old Man and the Sea,” which also encapsulates Hemingway’s philosophy, is: “A man isn’t born to be defeated. He can be destroyed, but not defeated.” Considering that the old man Santiago is practically Hemingway’s alter ego, we are led to ask this question in relation to the author’s suicide: “How can killing oneself be not being defeated?” The work that answers this question is “Indian Camp.” Nick (a young Hemingway), visiting an Indian village with his doctor father, sees an Indian who has committed suicide there and asks his father why people kill themselves. His father replies, “Probably because he couldn’t bear life.”
It seems Hemingway himself, in his final years, could not bear life either. In The Old Man and the Sea, we find the line: “It didn’t matter that he had proved it a thousand times before. Now he had to prove it again. Each time was new, and when he proved it, he didn’t think about the past.” Hemingway had written many great works before, but now that he couldn’t produce them, he felt he was no longer a writer. He couldn’t bear that meaningless life.
Hemingway, who maintained a macho image throughout his life through boxing, war service, bullfighting, hunting, fishing, and womanizing, showed an almost obsessive fixation on violence and death. Having witnessed death in his youth and resolved to confront it, Hemingway became even more fixated on the issue after his father’s suicide, spending his entire life battling death. This fierce confrontation was the theme running through his entire body of work. As mentioned earlier, “The Old Man and the Sea” operates on multiple symbolic layers. Viewed this way, the translator interprets Santiago as the god of death, the marlin in the deep sea as Hemingway himself, the hook that caught the marlin as an obsession with death, and the marlin’s act of swimming for two days through the deep sea, towing the old man’s small boat, as boxing, combat, bullfighting, hunting, fishing, and womanizing. Here, the fishing line becomes the rope of confrontation linking death and Hemingway, the thread of fate.
In The Old Man and the Sea, the marlin circles the boat, then, realizing it cannot defeat the old man, leaps powerfully into the air, tragically revealing its beauty. (The fish, as if foreseeing its death, suddenly sprang to life and leaped high into the air. Its immense length, breadth, and sheer power and beauty were fully exposed. It seemed suspended in the air above the old man’s head, standing on the boat.) Translating this passage, the translator perceived Hemingway’s indomitable spirit: if he could not conquer death, he would conquer it by taking his own life first. In the East, there is the saying, “If you cannot escape, die.” Wasn’t Hemingway’s suicide itself a demonstration of that unyielding courage? Gregory, Hemingway’s youngest son, said, “My father showed his courage by taking the only choice left to him.”
