The Old Man and the Sea
LC Class | PS3515.E37 |
The Old Man and the Sea is a 1952 novella written by the American author Ernest Hemingway. Written between December 1950 and February 1951, it was the last major fictional work Hemingway published during his lifetime. It tells the story of Santiago, an aging fisherman, and his long struggle to catch a giant marlin. The novella was highly anticipated and was released to record sales; the initial critical reception was equally positive, but attitudes have varied significantly since then.
Hemingway began writing The Old Man and the Sea in
Over the following year, Hemingway became increasingly convinced that the manuscript would stand on its own as a novella.
Early reviews were positive, with many hailing what they saw as a return to form for Hemingway after Across the River's negative reception. The acclaim lessened over time, as literary critics began to think the initial reception overblown and over-enthusiastic. Whether The Old Man and the Sea is inferior or equal to Hemingway's other works has since been the subject of scholarly debate. Thematic analysis has focused on Christian imagery and symbolism, on the similarity of the novella's themes to its predecessors in the Hemingway canon, and on the character of the fisherman Santiago.
Plot
Santiago is an elderly fisherman who has not caught a fish in eighty-four days and is considered salao (very unlucky). Manolin, who had been trained by Santiago, has been forced by his parents to work on a different, luckier boat; Manolin still helps Santiago prepare his gear every morning and evening and brings him food. They talk about baseball and Joe DiMaggio, before the boy leaves and Santiago sleeps. He dreams of the sights and experiences of his youth.
On the eighty-fifth day of his streak, Santiago takes his skiff out early, intending to row far into the Gulf Stream. He catches nothing except a small albacore in the morning before hooking a huge marlin. The fish is too heavy to haul in and begins to tow the skiff further out to sea. Santiago holds on through the night, eating the albacore after sunrise. He sees the marlin for the first time—it is longer than the boat. Santiago increasingly appreciates the fish, showing respect and compassion towards his adversary. Sunset arrives for a second time and the fisherman manages some sleep; he is awoken by the fish panicking but manages to recover his equilibrium. On the third morning the marlin begins to circle. Almost delirious, Santiago draws the marlin in and harpoons it. He lashes the fish to his boat.
A
In the morning Manolin cries when he sees Santiago's state. He brings coffee and sits with Santiago until he wakes. He insists on accompanying Santiago in the future. A fisherman measures the marlin at eighteen feet long, and a pair of tourists mistake its skeleton for that of a shark. Santiago goes back to sleep and dreams of lions on an African beach.
Background and publication
The Old Man and the Sea was Ernest Hemingway's sixth major novel, following
In the mid-1930s, the Cuban guide Carlos Gutiérrez had related a story involving an old man and a giant marlin to Hemingway, who retold it in
Having put off a novelisation for sixteen years, but aided by his love and knowledge of fishing and the sea, Hemingway suddenly found himself writing a thousand words a day—twice as fast as usual.[7] Although Ivancich's departure on February 7, 1951, caused Hemingway some disquiet, the novella was essentially finished by February 17; Mary, who read each day's production in the evenings, commented that she was "prepared to pardon [Hemingway] for all the disagreeable things [he] had done."[8] Hemingway was himself struck by the quality of this seemingly simple story, which he had written in little more than six weeks. Over the next few months, he sent copies to trusted friends and associates including his publisher Charles Scribner and his friend A. E. Hotchner, who all responded very positively.[9]
The 26,531-word manuscript was held in temporary abeyance for over a year, during which time Hemingway became increasingly certain he wished to publish it on its own merits, rather than as an addendum to the "sea trilogy".[10] Conversations with Leland Hayward and Wallace Meyer encouraged him in this direction—Hemingway was delighted when Hayward secured the publication of the entire novella in one issue of Life magazine in May 1952. As he wrote to Meyer, Hemingway wished to rebuff the idea he should only write War and Peace or Crime and Punishment-like novels.[11] He rejected the initial cover designs from his publisher Charles Scribner's Sons, and asked Ivancich to draw a set of sketches which he found much more suitable.[12] He had intended to dedicate the book to Mary and to his boat, the Pilar, but changed his mind on Memorial Day when thinking about friends he had lost; Mary generously accepted the new dedication, to Scribner and Max Perkins.[13] Events moved slowly yet positively during the summer. William Faulkner, Hemingway's old rival, released a highly positive review in Washington and Lee University's literary journal, Shenandoah, praising the novella as "[Hemingway's] best. Time may show it to be the best single piece of any of us, I mean his and my contemporaries."[14] Word-of-mouth reached such proportions that both the Life and Scribner's editions were heavily bootlegged.[15]
Life released their Labor Day printing, containing the first publication of The Old Man and the Sea, on September 1, 1952; they sold a record 5.3 million copies in two days. Advanced sales of Scribner's edition in America and Jonathan Cape's edition in Britain reached a total of 70,000, and afterwards combined weekly sales in the two countries averaged 5,000. It remained on the New York Times bestseller list for twenty-six weeks and had been translated into nine languages by the start of 1953.[16]
Reception and legacy
The Old Man and the Sea met with popular acclaim. In the three weeks after publication, Hemingway received more than eighty letters a day from well-wishers, and Life received many more. Religious figures began to cite the book's themes in their
After the early adulation faded, less positive reviews began to appear. Delmore Schwartz believed that the initial reviewers had prejudiced public opinion in their relief that the novella was not as bad as Across the River. Seymour Krim wrote that The Old Man and the Sea was "only more of the same", while John W. Aldridge felt himself "unable to share in the prevailing wild enthusiasm" for the novella.[21] Years later, Jeffrey Meyers called it Hemingway's "most overrated work", a "mock-serious fable" with "radical weaknesses".[22] Despite the cooling critical outlook, The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction on May 4, 1953—this was the first time Hemingway had received the award, having been overlooked previously for A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls.[23] He also accepted a Medal of Honor from Fulgencio Batista's newly-established Cuban dictatorship, despite personally disapproving of the new regime.[24] The Old Man and the Sea's highest recognition came on October 28, 1954, as the only work of Hemingway's mentioned by the Swedish Academy when awarding him the Nobel Prize in Literature; they praised its "powerful, style-making mastery of the art of modern narration".[25]
The Old Man and the Sea has been the subject of a significant amount of critical commentary. Wirt Williams noted that early scholarship focused upon "the naturalistic tragedy, the Christian tragedy, the parable of art and the artist, and even the autobiographical mode".[26] Analysis of these themes continued into the 1960s, during which John Killinger connected the novella with Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Friedrich Nietzsche, and Richard Hovey linked its themes to the Oedipus complex. However, Philip Young's republication of Ernest Hemingway: A Reconsideration in 1966 was much less positive than the original edition in 1952, setting the disinterested scholarly tone that would dominate the next decades. Analysis only restarted in earnest with the publication of Gerry Brenner's hyper-critical The Old Man and the Sea: The Story of a Common Man in 1991, and has continued unabated since.[27]
Writing in 1985, Meyers noted that The Old Man and the Sea was used in
Critical analysis
Quality
Some literary critics find The Old Man and the Sea inferior to Hemingway's earlier works. Dwight Macdonald criticises the pseudo-archaic prose which pretends it is high culture, but in reality is anything but.[34] He compares the novella unfavourably with Hemingway's earlier works; he deplored The Old Man and the Sea as garrulous and repetitive when compared to the "disciplined, businesslike understatement" of The Undefeated, a short story Hemingway wrote in 1927.[35] Similarly, Brenner characterises the novella as riddled with amateurish mistakes in style and prose.[36] Meyers criticises The Old Man and the Sea's melodrama, symbolism, and irony, concluding, like Macdonald, that "Hemingway either deceived himself about the profundity of his art" or expertly satisfied the desires of a pretentious audience.[37]
Robert Weeks notes that the novella abounds in factual impossibilities—he cites Santiago's near-clairvoyance in identifying fishes and judging weather patterns. Weeks maintains that Hemingway—previously criticized for his distaste for narrative invention—had instilled insincerity at the heart of his novel. He concluded that The Old Man and the Sea is "an inferior Hemingway novel."[38] Bickford Sylvester comments that most of the errors Weeks outlined were based upon faults in then-current science, and some others were intended to nudge readers towards the work's subtext and deepest details.[39] Sylvester argues that seemingly-implausible narrative details in The Old Man and the Sea are actually hints. He cites the baseball conversation between Santiago and Manolin, which subtly indicates not only the precise dates of the novella's events (September 12–16, 1950) but also parallels the fisherman with his hero DiMaggio, also the son of a fisherman, who similarly resurged in performance during that week.[40]
Themes
Classical
The novella contains significant Christian symbolism. The name "Santiago" is Spanish for St. James, the Apostle who had previously, according to the New Testament, been a fisherman, and who posthumously became the patron saint of Spain with his shrine at Santiago de Compostela.[41] In a letter to a Father Brown in 1954, Hemingway wrote "You know about Santiago and you know that the name is no accident"; the academic H. R. Stoneback argues that this means The Old Man and the Sea has deep connections to the pilgrimage to Santiago, which is also heavily drawn upon in The Sun Also Rises. Stoneback draws an explicit link between the events of the novella and the miraculous catch of fish in the Gospel of Luke—both involve fishermen experiencing bad luck, going out into the deep sea, and taking a great catch; he also connects repeated allusions to stars in Hemingway's text to the traditional Latin etymology of "Compostela"—campus stellae (lit. 'field of stars').[42] Stoneback argues that Hemingway emphasises "the humility and gentleness, the poverty, resolution and endurance of St. James the pilgrim" while de-emphasising the warrior James Matamoros; this choice "reconstruct[s] the paradigm of sainthood".[43]
One of Santiago's credos is that "a man can be destroyed but not defeated", a theme which is present in most of Hemingway's protagonists and stories, from Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises to Robert Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Richard Cantwell in Across the River; it is also a primary theme in To Have and Have Not.
Many critics have drawn parallels not only between Santiago and St. James, but between Santiago and Jesus himself, especially with regard to Christ's Passion and crucifixion. Melvin Backman outlines several, beginning with the Santiago's wish to "rest gently ... against the wood and think of nothing"; Sylvester, Grimes, and Hays also cite the preceding scene, in which Santiago is cut and bleeds from near the eye, as a stigmatic evocation of the wounds inflicted by the crown of thorns.[47] An often-cited passage occurs when Santiago spots two sharks:[48]
"Ay," he said aloud. There is no translation for this word and perhaps it is just a noise such as a man might make, involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood.
This passage was characterised by Sylvester, Grimes, and Hays as "a clear reference to a crucifixion"; taking place, like Christ's death, at three o'clock on a Friday afternoon, it acts as the climax of the religious parallels.[49] Brenner finds the Christian allusions deeply problematic, commenting that the "facile linking of Santiago's name with Christ's" was unnecessary and disrespectful towards the New Testament.[50] Dismissing both Brenner's conclusion and any approach which defines Santiago as a Christ-figure as overly simplistic, Stoneback argues that the figure of Santiago ultimately embodied Hemingway's ideals, and was intended to be esteemed as such.[51]
Modern
Brenner's 1991 critique characterises Santiago as a supremely flawed individual: unintelligent, arrogant,
Susan Beegel, analysing The Old Man and the Sea from an
References
Citations
- ^ Baker 1962, p. 1; Kosiba 2012.
- ^ Reynolds 1999, pp. 228–229; Baker 1988, p. 486.
- ^ Reynolds 1999, pp. 250–257; Baker 1988, pp. 488–489.
- ^ Sylvester, Grimes & Hays 2018, p. xiii.
- ^ Cruz 1981, pp. 168–170.
- ^ Baker 1988, p. 264; Sylvester, Grimes & Hays 2018, p. xiv.
- ^ Baker 1988, p. 489; Sylvester, Grimes & Hays 2018, p. xiv.
- ^ Baker 1988, pp. 489–490; Reynolds 1999, p. 238.
- ^ Reynolds 1999, pp. 238, 249; Baker 1988, pp. 490, 492.
- ^ Baker 1988, pp. 492–493, 499.
- ^ Meyers 1985, p. 485; Baker 1988, pp. 499–501.
- ^ Baker 1988, p. 501.
- ^ Reynolds 1999, p. 250.
- ^ Sessions, William Alfred (Spring–Fall 2010). "Shenandoah and the Advent of Flannery O'Connor". Shenandoah. 60 (1–2): 229+. Retrieved April 16, 2024 – via Gale Literature Resource Center.
- ^ Baker 1988, pp. 503–504.
- ^ Meyers 1985, p. 485; Reynolds 1999, p. 258; Baker 1988, pp. 504–505.
- ^ Baker 1988, p. 505.
- ^ Reynolds 1999, pp. 258–259; Meyers 1982, p. 412; Meyers 1985, pp. 486–487; Schorer 1962, p. 134.
- ^ Sylvester, Grimes & Hays 2018, pp. xix–xx.
- ^ Baker 1988, p. 505; Reynolds 1999, p. 259.
- ^ Meyers 1985, pp. 487–488; Reynolds 1999, p. 259.
- ^ Meyers 1985, pp. 488–489.
- ^ Reynolds 1999, p. 263; Baker 1988, p. 510; Meyers 1985, p. 489.
- ^ Baker 1988, p. 506.
- ^ Oliver 1999, p. 246; Nobel Prize citation.
- ^ Williams 1981, p. 173; Sylvester, Grimes & Hays 2018, p. xxi.
- ^ Sylvester, Grimes & Hays 2018, pp. xxiii–xxvii.
- ^ Meyers 1985, p. 485.
- ^ "Regime Strategic Intent – Central Intelligence Agency". Central Intelligence Agency. Archived from the original on June 13, 2007.
- British Broadcasting Corporation. Archivedfrom the original on November 19, 2003. Retrieved September 21, 2023.
- ^ Oliver 1999, pp. 247–248; Meyers 1985, pp. 489–493.
- ^ Oliver 1999, p. 248.
- ^ "The 72nd Academy Awards, 2000". Oscars.org. Archived from the original on April 17, 2018. Retrieved October 17, 2023.
- ^ Macdonald 1960, pp. 593, 596.
- ^ Macdonald 1960, pp. 597–598.
- ^ Brenner 1991, pp. 68–78.
- ^ Meyers 1985, p. 489.
- ^ Weeks 1962, pp. 188–192.
- ^ Sylvester 1996, pp. 265–266.
- ^ Sylvester 1996, pp. 246–249, 256–261.
- ^ Oliver 1999, p. 246.
- ^ Stoneback 2014, pp. 170–173.
- ^ Stoneback 2014, pp. 173, 176.
- ^ Oliver 1999; Meyers 1985, p. 489.
- ^ Backman 1962, pp. 142–143.
- ^ Waldmeir 1962, pp. 145–149.
- ^ Backman 1962, p. 142; Sylvester, Grimes & Hays 2018, p. 69.
- ^ Backman 1962, p. 143; Oliver 1999, pp. 57, 247; Waldmeir 1962, p. 144.
- ^ Sylvester, Grimes & Hays 2018, p. 104.
- ^ Brenner 1991, pp. 37–38.
- ^ Stoneback 2014, pp. 176–177.
- ^ Brenner 1991, pp. 54–66.
- ^ Brenner 1991, pp. 80–96.
- ^ Stoneback 2014, pp. 167–168; Sylvester, Grimes & Hays 2018, p. xxvi.
- ^ Sylvester, Grimes & Hays 2018, p. xxvi.
- ^ a b Sylvester, Grimes & Hays 2018, p. 49.
- ^ Beegel 1985, pp. 141–142, 146.
- ^ Beegel 1985, pp. 141–146.
- from the original on August 17, 2019. Retrieved January 6, 2020.
- ISBN 978-9042034099. Archivedfrom the original on August 17, 2019. Retrieved September 21, 2020.
Sources
- OCLC 564729505.
- ISBN 0-02-0016905.
- Backman, Melvin (1962) [1955]. "Hemingway: The Matador and the Crucified". In OCLC 564729505.
- Beegel, Susan (1985). "Santiago and the Eternal Feminine: Gendering La Mar in The Old Man and the Sea". In Broer, Lawrence; Holland, Gloria (eds.). Hemingway and Women: Female Critics and the Female Voice. ISBN 978-0-8173-1136-0.
- Brenner, Gerry (1991). The Old Man and the Sea: Story of a Common Man. New York: ISBN 978-0-8057-8040-6.
- Cruz, Mary (1981). Cuba y hemingway en gran río de azul [Cuba and Hemingway on the Great Blue River] (in Spanish). Translated by Delpino, Mary. Havana: Unión de Escritores y Artistes de Cuba.
- Kosiba, Sara (2012). "Ernest Hemingway". ISBN 978-0-19-982725-1.
- Macdonald, Dwight (1960). "Masscult and Midcult: II". Partisan Review. Vol. 27, no. 4. pp. 589–631. Archived from the original on May 4, 2023. Retrieved May 4, 2023 – via Boston University.
- ISBN 978-0-0601-5437-0.
- ISBN 978-0-0601-5437-0.
- "The Nobel Prize in Literature 1954". NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach. Archived from the original on February 9, 2023. Retrieved September 10, 2023.
- Reynolds, Michael S. (1999). Hemingway: The Final Years. New York: ISBN 978-1-8460-3376-6.
- Oliver, Charles M. (1999). Ernest Hemingway A to Z: The Essential Reference to the Life and Work. New York: Facts on File. ISBN 978-0-8160-3934-0.
- OCLC 564729505.
- ISBN 978-1-6063-5181-9.
- Sylvester, Bickford (1996). "The Cuban Context in The Old Man and the Sea". In Donaldson, Scott (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Hemingway. Cambridge: ISBN 9781139000345.
- Sylvester, Bickford; Grimes, Larry; Hays, Peter L. (2018). Reading Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea: Glossary and Commentary. ISBN 978-1-6063-5342-4.
- Waldmeir, Joseph (1962). "Confiteor Hominem: Ernest Hemingway's Religion of Man". In OCLC 564729505.
- Weeks, Robert (1962). "Fakery in The Old Man and the Sea". JSTOR 373283.
- ISBN 978-0-8071-0884-0.
Further reading
- OCLC 564729505.
- ISBN 0691013055.
- Burhans Jr., Clinton S. (1962). "The Old Man and the Sea: Hemingway's Tragic Vision of Man". In OCLC 564729505.
- Jobes, Katharine T., ed. (1968). Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Old Man and the Sea. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. ISBN 0136339174.