Author: Ernest Hemingway · Published: 1952 · Genre: Literary fiction, Novella
The Old Man and the Sea is a short, spare story about an aging fisherman locked in a days-long fight with a huge marlin. It’s Hemingway’s style at its most concentrated: plain words, patient description of action, almost no wasted motion. At barely more than a hundred pages, it’s an easy recommendation. Its heavy religious symbolism and its romantic view of suffering are the weak spots.
What it’s about
Santiago is an old fisherman in a small Cuban village who has gone eighty-four days without catching a fish. A boy named Manolin, who used to fish with him, has been sent by his parents to a luckier boat, because they now consider the old man the worst kind of unlucky. The younger fishermen make fun of him; the older ones look at him with pity. The boy still looks after Santiago, bringing him food and bait and talking baseball with him in the evenings.
On the eighty-fifth day Santiago rows far out into the Gulf Stream alone. He hooks an enormous marlin, longer than his skiff, and it tows him farther out to sea. For days he holds the line with his bare hands, cramped, cut and exhausted, talking to himself, to the fish and to the birds. The book is mostly this struggle, told almost minute by minute.
The novella appeared in full in a single issue of Life magazine before it came out as a book. It restored Hemingway’s reputation after a poorly received previous novel, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953, and was singled out when he received the Nobel Prize in 1954.
What works
- The detail. Hemingway knew deep-sea fishing, and it shows. The way Santiago braces the line across his back, eats raw fish to keep up his strength and fights a cramp in his left hand makes the struggle physical and believable.
- Respect for the fish. Santiago calls the marlin his brother and admires it even as he tries to kill it. That mix of love and violence gives the story its moral depth.
- Santiago and the boy. Their scenes are tender without being soppy. Their shared hero-worship of Joe DiMaggio, and Santiago’s dreams of lions on an African beach, give the old man an inner life beyond the fight.
- Its central idea. Santiago’s belief that a man can be destroyed but not defeated is the book’s most famous line, and the story tests it honestly rather than simply cheering it on.
What doesn’t
The Christian symbolism is heavy. Santiago’s torn hands and the way he later shoulders his mast like a cross have been pointed out by generations of English teachers, and they feel pasted on. The story would be stronger with less of it.
Some critics also felt the style was tipping into self-parody. The repetition that sounds like a prayer on one page can sound like a mannerism on the next, and Santiago’s constant muttering to himself wears thin over long stretches of waiting.
It is also a very male, very romantic idea of heroism, in which suffering alone is noble and endurance is the highest virtue. Readers who don’t share that view may admire the craft without being moved. And there is only one real character, so if Santiago doesn’t grab you, nothing else will. Even Manolin is more a symbol of devotion than a fully drawn boy.
Who should read it
Readers new to Hemingway, and anyone who wants a short classic they can finish in a single sitting. Readers who dislike obvious symbolism or tough-guy stoicism may find it overrated.
Rating: 4/5
Photo credits — Featured image: Photo by Dhia Eddine on Pexels.
