This blog post examines why Hemingway focused on Santiago’s fishing amidst the tumultuous world history, exploring the literary significance and direction of thought behind that choice.
In theater, the setting—whether spatial or temporal—is merely the stage upon which events unfold. In novels, however, such settings are invariably closely linked to the work’s theme, whether directly or indirectly. In Hemingway’s works especially, the setting carries immense weight. He frequently employed spatial settings as arenas for the human condition, where all manner of people struggle.
The setting of The Old Man and the Sea shows considerable differences compared to his earlier works. As already noted, in this work, one hears neither the sound of guns firing nor exploding shells from a battlefield, nor the roar of the bullring where a man faces death in a duel with a bull, nor the clamor of cafes in a metropolis like Paris. The only sounds reaching the ears are the roar of the vast ocean’s rough waves and the sound of oars being rowed. While a small fishing village near Havana appears as the geographical setting at the beginning and end of the work, the events unfold almost entirely in the Gulf of Mexico. In this respect, the fact that the sea serves as the primary spatial setting reveals similarities to Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851), a major work of the mid-19th-century American literary renaissance, and Joseph Conrad’s The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ (1897), by the Polish-born British author.
Hemingway had good reason to choose the sea as his spatial backdrop. Just as poets often liken life to a voyage, the sea is an exceptionally apt metaphor for the foundation upon which human life is lived. Of course, for Hemingway, the battlefield where Frederick risks his life transporting wounded soldiers in A Farewell to Arms is also a foundation for life, and the rear where Robert Jordan carries out dangerous operations to blow up bridges in For Whom the Bell Tolls is undoubtedly such a foundation as well. Moreover, the bullring where matadors like Pedro Romero face off against the bull in The Sun Also Rises can also be seen as a valid metaphor for the struggle for survival. Indeed, Hemingway himself remarked that the bullring was not so different from the battlefield, merely moved to a safer rear position.
However, in his later years, Hemingway adopted the sea as the most fundamental and powerful metaphor for the arena of survival. Deeply fascinated by the sea, he even referred to the Bible as the ‘Book of the Sea’ or the ‘Sea of Knowledge’. While this could be understood metaphorically as the Bible being a vast repository of knowledge like the sea, it more closely resembles likening the Bible itself to a deep and boundless ocean. Few writers have elevated the sea to such a religious dimension as Hemingway did. Considering this, it becomes clear why Hemingway chose the title 「The Old Man and the Sea」 rather than ‘The Old Man and the Boy’. Santiago’s small boat adrift in the Gulf Stream is, in a sense, a microcosm.
In The Old Man and the Sea, the temporal setting carries as much unique significance as the spatial one. Hemingway set this work in the late 1940s to early 1950s, just before its publication. This was a period of tremendous upheaval, marked by successive major events not only in the United States but worldwide. For instance, in 1948, India’s Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated, and in South Africa, the white regime officially began implementing apartheid policies, placing small nations and oppressed peoples under more severe threats than ever before. The establishment of the state of Israel also occurred this very year. Subsequently, in 1949, China adopted communism as its state system, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was launched, and the Soviet government succeeded in developing the atomic bomb. By 1950, the Korean War erupted, the communist witch hunt spearheaded by Senator Joseph McCarthy intensified, and U.S. President Harry Truman ordered the development of the hydrogen bomb to counter the Soviet atomic bomb. Thus, the early 1950s, as evidenced by the Korean War, was a period when the East-West Cold War reached its peak.
Despite this, Hemingway pays little attention to these major historical events that left indelible marks on world history. Instead, he focuses solely on the fishing of his protagonist, Santiago. In other words, he turns his gaze away from the grand events unfolding in America and around the world, focusing instead on Santiago’s fishing boat adrift on the vast ocean. This choice likely stems from an intention to focus on the inner world rather than the external one, on the problems of the individual rather than those of society. Therefore, when reading this work, one must listen not to the rough pulse of history, but to the sound resonating deep within a single individual. It is precisely at this point that the essential meaning of this work becomes clearly revealed.
