The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway is the last of Hemingway’s great fiction books. This short novella was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and is often cited as one of the defining factors (along with several near-death experiences) in Hemingway’s selection for the Nobel Prize for Literature.  The story follows Santiago, a poor Cuban fisherman who is suffering from a long streak without successfully catching anything. He hooks an enormous marlin, the biggest he’s ever seen and the majority of the novella follows him trying to reel in this gigantic fish.

Key Facts about The Old Man and the Sea

• Title: The Old Man and the Sea
• When/where written: 1951 in Cuba
• Published: 1952
• Literary Period: Modernism
• Genre: Parable
• Point-of-View: Third-person omniscient, mostly limited to Santiago
• Setting: 1940s, Cuban fishing village, the Gulf of Mexico
• Climax: When Santiago finally catches the marlin
• Antagonist: The sharks and the marlin

Ernest Hemingway and The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea is one of his most popular novels. The story is moving, endearing, and emotional. His direct style of writing is suited perfectly to the life and death situation that Santiago finds himself in. During the period of time in which Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea, he was living in Cuba. It was the 1940s and he spent a great deal of time on the water, fishing off his boat The Pilar. He lived in Cuba for almost 20 years and became an important figure, well-known through Havana. Hemingway lived much more luxuriously than Santiago, the main character of The Old Man and the Sea, but he was well acquainted with hardship. He’d been part of the First World War as a war reporter and was even present on D-Day during WWII. It was his exposure to the realities of life and death as well as his knowledge of the Cuban people that helped this novel become the success that it was and still is. Some scholars have also suggested that the solitude, struggle, and desperation that Santiago experiences in the novella mirror the same emotions in Hemingway’s life at the time he wrote the story. His writing career was at a low point, and he was relatively isolated from his contemporaries while living in Cuba.

Books Related to The Old Man and the Sea

While Hemingway is almost always associated with Cuba, he also spent a good deal of time in Paris. While there, he became part of the “lost generation” of writers. This is a term used to refer to Americans who moved to Europe after WWI. Others included Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein with whom Hemingway was well acquainted. Works by these authors, as well as those by F. Scott Fitzgerald are similar in style and technique to Hemingway’s novels. His books and stories often rebel against ideas of patriotism and express the same disillusionment with tradition that can be found in Pound’s poetry. Novels of adventure and determination can also be counted as similar to The Old Man and the Sea. These include The Call of the Wild by Jack London, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and Hemingway’s own The Sun Also Rises. 

The Lasting Impact of The Old Man and the Sea