“The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway tells the story of an old Cuban fisherman’s quest to break his eighty-four-day streak of unsuccessful fishing. Before sunrise the next day, Santiago is on the water again, his eyes focused on a new, distant fishing spot. When a fish takes his line, and Santiago realizes how large it is, his struggle begins. Through miles of water and hours and days of struggle, Santiago suffers for what he hopes will be a success while being reminded of what it means to be human.
The introduction of “The Old Man and the Sea“ features the main character, Santiago, returning from a fishing trip, 84 days long, without catching a fish. Although downtrodden, the old man maintains hope his luck will change. The boy with whom he used to fish, Manolin, bolstered his attitude. Unfortunately, by his parent’s orders, Manolin is no longer allowed to accompany Santiago out onto the water. They want their son to fish and learn from someone who is not as struggling as the old man at this time. The boat he’s moved to is much more prosperous, but the new fisherman does not inspire Manolin’s allegiance as Santiago has.
Manolin is devoted to the old man. He cares for him when he returns from fishing, helps him carry gear, and finds food for the two to eat together. The old man is desperately poor and often unable to feed himself without Manolin’s help. The boy’s kindness shines through as he berates himself for not thinking of other ways he could better Santiago’s life. A passion the two share is baseball. They discuss upcoming games and their favorite player, Joe DiMaggio.
The old man wakes the next day, “as old men do,” and walks to Manolin’s hut to wake him. In the story’s rising action, they prepare Santiago’s boat, and he sails into the waters. He determined the night before that he would sail farther than usual. Santiago sails so far as to enter into the Gulf Stream. As he moves through the water, he takes note of the wildlife around him, showing an evident appreciation for the natural world and its creatures. The reader is told the story throughout the novel through Santiago’s thoughts. They often flit to his past, such as when he worked on a turtle boat, saw lions on a beach in Africa, and then returned to his present moment. Santiago continues to remind himself to stay focused on the task at hand.
“Write what you know” is a writing axiom commonly attributed to Mark Twain. Hemingway embodies this axiom and often writes only on topics he is well versed in. In the narrative of “The Old Man and the Sea,” you can see his keen knowledge of the open sea, big-game fishing, and getting on in years.
At noon that day, a fish takes the bait on one of his lines, which ushers in the novel’s turning point. The old man is very cautious, using all his knowledge gained through decades of experience on the water to know what to do with the line and when. The line was one hundred fathoms deep, and the fish he hooked a marlin. Santiago immediately knows he’s got a massive fish on his line, but he isn’t sure how large it is. One hint of its size is that the old man can’t pull it in. Instead, it starts to pull the boat out to sea. While this might frighten some sailors, the old man is nonplussed. He knows that he can navigate back to the island no matter where he ends up. It’s a “long” island, he states, and the lights are bright.
Over the next hours and days, the fish pulls the old man out into the sea. He does not tie the line off for fear that it will snap from the tension. Instead, he wraps it around his shoulders and back. His back begins to ache, but he knows he can bear it. He speaks out loud to himself, a habit that started after Manolin left his boat. Santiago talks about life, death, and brotherhood with the fish on his line. Although he knows they are connected and that the fish is a majestic creature, he is determined to kill it. He wants to show the fish what man can do and desperately needs something to sell.
One of the reoccurring themes in “The Old Man and the Sea” is that of the human body and its limitations, and this is a factor in the story’s central conflict: the old man pitted against powerful nature. Santiago’s hands, the left, in particular, fail him. The left cramps up, and he struggles to get it to relax. But he never panics. He knows he can bring the fish in. The struggle lasts for three days. Santiago catches a fish and then a dolphin with two flying fish in its belly to eat.
Before the struggle progressed for miles or days, the old man longed for the fish to jump. He wants to see what “he’s up against.” It finally does, and he is baffled by its size, so much so that he almost can’t believe what he’s seeing.
I cannot imagine fighting a sea creature big enough to swallow me for three hours, let alone three days. I wonder if this is even realistic. Are there real accounts of solitary fishermen who wrestle with big fishes for days out in the ocean and live to tell the story? The recorded most prolonged fight with a marlin was 32 hours, by a fitter younger man, in a large boat, and with a crew.
On the third day, Santiago is on the verge of giving up. His body is failing him, his mind is slipping, and he starts to doubt his abilities. But the fish is circling. He tries, again and again, to kill the marlin with his harpoon and, in the novel’s climax, finally succeeds. A part of him mourns as if the fish was his brother. But he’s also proud of himself. He continues to wish, as he had since the struggle began, that Manolin was at his side.
The old man ties the marlin to the side of his boat, as it’s too big to haul on board, and sets off home. For a time, he’s unable to take his eyes off the fish at his side. It’s enormous and beautiful, and he worries about the market’s reaction. He doesn’t want this creature to be consumed frivolously, but he knows he has to sell it to feed himself.
Sharks begin to attack the boat in a grueling turn of events, but one that is not unpredictable. This sets the tragic tone for the novel’s falling action, souring the old man’s triumph. They follow the trail of blood the marlin is leaving in the water. In the first few, Santiago can kill with the harpoon, but eventually, he loses it. He creates a makeshift weapon by attaching his knife to the end of an oar. With this, he kills more sharks but cannot keep them from taking more and more of his fish. He stops looking at the fish, unable to bear its sight.
It takes a great deal of time for Santiago to return to the village, but when he does, it’s clear that the entire fish has been devoured. All left is a skeleton, the head, the sword, and the tail. He spends the next hours sleeping and wakes to find Manolin again taking care of him. The villagers marvel at Santiago’s fish’s skeleton; no one has ever seen a fish that large. It was around 1500 pounds, if not more when Santiago caught it.
I like how the consolation prize of the fish skeleton is the only thing Santiago fetches. It grounds the story and makes it more believable. It says, in essence, that Life’s gifts hardly ever come as fully as we wish.
The resolution of “The Old Man and the Sea” has Santiago sleeping peacefully after reading the baseball scores and dreaming about the lions playing on the African beaches.