The Old Man and the Sea

“He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride.”

The old man has experienced much in his long life. The shame of failing for weeks to catch a big fish to sell no longer haunts him. He knows luck can turn in both directions, and there is no one to blame. Mostly, he greets the vagaries of life as challenges rather than misfortunes.

“‘When I come back you can tell me about the baseball.’ ‘The Yankees cannot lose.’ ‘But I fear the Indians of Cleveland.’ ‘Have faith in the Yankees my son. Think of the great DiMaggio.’ ‘I fear both the Tigers of Detroit and the Indians of Cleveland.’ ‘Be careful or you will fear even the Reds of Cincinnati and the White Sox of Chicago.’”

This back-and-forth between the boy and Santiago is part of a long and affectionate tradition between them. Santiago loves baseball, and the boy worries about the teams, even those that do poorly, that might threaten Santiago’s beloved Yankees. The boy feels very protective of the old man; he wants no setback, not even a trifling loss in a baseball game, to trouble Santiago.

“His shirt had been patched so many times that it was like the sail and the patches were faded to many different shades by the sun.”

Hemingway uses his minimalist writing style to describe the old man’s poverty indirectly. The many shades of sun bleach on the shirt’s patches describe an important article of clothing still in use long after most other people would have purchased a new one. The similarly sun-beaten sail indicates that the man’s boat has served many years with little renewal. Santiago’s poverty is through-and-through; his long days at sea have, over the years, added up to very little.

“He was asleep in a short time and he dreamed of Africa when he was a boy and the long golden beaches and the white beaches, so white they hurt your eyes, and the high capes and the great brown mountains. He lived along that coast now every night and in his dreams he heard the surf roar and saw the native boats come riding through it. He smelled the tar and oakum of the deck as he slept and he smelled the smell of Africa that the land breeze brought at morning.”

The dreams of the old man tell something of his history, of the magical years of his youth sailing off Africa near his birthplace, the Canary Islands. His reveries no longer contain his long-dead wife or the dangerous fish he has faced; instead, they are simple and colorful, the sleeping thoughts of a man long past the yearnings of earlier years—someone at peace with his life.

“It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.”

The old man is an excellent fisher who keeps his lines nicely vertical in the water so that their loads of bait hang at the proper depths. His luck lately has been terrible, but he knows that all things change and that he is competent and prepared. He has the mind of someone who thinks deeply, plumbing the depths of the ocean of thought as he hunts for wisdom.

“Most people are heartless about turtles because a turtle’s heart will beat for hours after he has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too and my feet and hands are like theirs.”

Santiago likes turtles, especially the ones that eat the jellyfish whose tendrils sting him. He regrets how turtles are mistreated and admires the way their hearts keep pulsing beyond their deaths. He likens this to his own heart that still beats after years of being sliced up by life’s sorrows.

“Eat them, fish. Eat them. Please eat them. How fresh they are and you down there six hundred feet in that cold water in the dark. Make another turn in the dark and come back and eat them.”

Like a gambler in Las Vegas or a baseball fan hoping for a sudden home run, Santiago urges the giant fish to swallow the hooked tuna and catch itself on his line. He tries to will the animal to do his bidding. He needs this victory, but life rarely gives up its gifts easily.

“No one should be alone in their old age, he thought. But it is unavoidable.”

The author again suggests, but does not explain, the deep meaning behind his words. He leaves it to the reader to understand that age takes away friends and relatives and makes the elderly alone with the wisdom and pain they cannot easily share with younger people.

“Then he began to pity the great fish that he had hooked. He is wonderful and strange and who knows how old he is, he thought. Never have I had such a strong fish nor one who acted so strangely. Perhaps he is too wise to jump. He could ruin me by jumping or by a wild rush. But perhaps he has been hooked many times before and he knows that this is how he should make his fight. He cannot know that it is only one man against him, nor that it is an old man. But what a great fish he is and what will he bring in the market if the flesh is good. He took the bait like a male and he pulls like a male and his fight has no panic in it. I wonder if he has any plans or if he is just as desperate as I am?”

Caught in a lengthy standoff with the great fish, Santiago has time to think about the battle and what it means. The old man begins to admire the marlin because it shows determination, calm persistence, and smart tactics—traits he greatly respects. The fisherman is in the ironic position of respecting the creature he wants and needs to kill.

“‘Fish,’ he said softly, aloud, ‘I’ll stay with you until I am dead.’ He’ll stay with me too, I suppose, the old man thought […]”

The determined old man and the equally determined marlin settle in for a long fight. This battle is life-and-death for both of them—the marlin on the lethal hook and Santiago at the edge of ruin from his poor run of luck. The fight may turn on which of them gives up first; Santiago is determined that it will be the fish.

“‘Fish,’ he said, ‘I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends.’”

The old man issues his challenge to the fish. It is an ancient tradition to speak respectfully to a hunted animal as if it has a mind like its hunter. Hunting large game can be risky and even deadly; hunters know not to treat prey with contempt, lest they fight even harder. Santiago also understands the irony of loving the world and its creatures, even when he must slay some of them to stay alive.

“I wonder why he jumped, the old man thought. He jumped almost as though to show me how big he was. I know now, anyway, he thought. I wish I could show him what sort of man I am. But then he would see the cramped hand. Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so.”

The battle between man and beast is now one of wits, and Santiago must win the mental fight if he is to win the physical one. This involves winning over himself to the belief that he can prevail. Against this giant of a fish, that is a challenge; alone, he must coach himself toward victory.

“[…] it is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.”

Santiago ponders the need for killing and how it only seems justified if it’s a battle between creatures whose lives depend on the death of the other. The deaths don’t bother him so much as would a world without the brotherhood of all beings. Sometimes a person does not recognize that fellowship until faced with battle.

“[…] pain does not matter to a man.”

Again and again, as the fishing line cuts his hands and sears his back, the old man reminds himself that pain is a cost of victory, to be paid gladly. It is a theme that recurs often in Hemingway’s writings: He pondered long and hard about what it means to be a human—especially what it means to be a man in a cruel world—what’s demanded of them, and how one must meet life’s challenges with endurance and determination. In the story, Santiago serves as an exemplar of that philosophy.

“‘He is making the far part of his circle now,’ he said. I must hold all I can, he thought. The strain will shorten his circle each time. Perhaps in an hour I will see him. Now I must convince him and then I must kill him.”

The old man knows, despite his growing admiration and love for the great fish, that his job is to kill that creature. He manages to hold his respect in one part of his mind while focusing on the tactics of killing in another part, but sometimes they cross over and meet ironically in his thoughts.

“You are killing me, fish, the old man thought. But you have a right to. Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother. Come on and kill me. I do not care who kills who. Now you are getting confused in the head, he thought. You must keep your head clear.”

Neither man nor fish will go down easy; both are near the end of their strength. The sheer size of the marlin and its tremendous resolve make Santiago admire it greatly, even as he must kill it. Like an athlete during a climactic moment in an exhausting game, he coaches himself to stay focused and persist until he wins.

“The shark was not an accident. He had come up from deep down in the water as the dark cloud of blood had settled and dispersed in the mile deep sea. He had come up so fast and absolutely without caution that he broke the surface of the blue water and was in the sun. Then he fell back into the sea and picked up the scent and started swimming on the course the skiff and the fish had taken. Sometimes he lost the scent. But he would pick it up again, or have just a trace of it, and he swam fast and hard on the course.”

The author describes the first of many sharks that catch the scent of blood in the water and hurry toward its source, the huge marlin lashed to Santiago’s skiff. These large and powerful predators have no fear and will devour any available meat. Santiago knows well that his catch is in danger; his battle is not yet over.

“He did not like to look at the fish anymore since he had been mutilated. When the fish had been hit it was as though he himself were hit. But I killed the shark that hit my fish, he thought. And he was the biggest dentuso that I have ever seen. And God knows that I have seen big ones.”

Santiago has spent two days capturing and killing a giant marlin. Now, he must spend 18 hours defending it against sharks. He is in the ironic position of slaying more animals while protecting the catch than he killed in the first place while fishing.

“‘But man is not made for defeat,’ he said. ‘A man can be destroyed but not defeated.’”

The story now presents its deepest conundrum: how, in the face of utter, tragic failure, a person can continue. Giving up is an option, since no action now will prevent the inevitable, yet Santiago refuses to quit. He may lose the battle, but he will go down fighting. Several sharks thus will challenge him to their regret.

“‘They must have taken a quarter of him and of the best meat,’ he said aloud. ‘I wish it were a dream and that I had never hooked him. I’m sorry about it, fish. It makes everything wrong.’”

The sharks spoil the entire fishing expedition by tearing apart the lovely marlin. The giant fish won’t be worth much when it arrives at the harbor. This disconcerts the old man, who spent so much time in battle with the honored opponent and now must watch it get chewed up by scavengers.

“‘I wish I had a stone for the knife,’ the old man said after he had checked the lashing on the oar butt. ‘I should have brought a stone.’ You should have brought many things, he thought. But you did not bring them, old man. Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is. ‘You give me much good counsel,’ he said aloud. ‘I’m tired of it.’”

Santiago argues with himself as if he is two different people. He contains both a man with regrets and one with resolve. Their argument, held while sharks slowly destroy his wondrous catch, contains sardonic humor, the only thing that can lighten the failure.

“He stopped for a moment and looked back and saw in the reflection from the street light the great tail of the fish standing up well behind the skiff’s stern. He saw the white naked line of his backbone and the dark mass of the head with the projecting bill and all the nakedness between.”

Hemingway’s trademark unspoken eloquence is alive in this passage: The hero, having failed in his great task, looks at the remains of the magnificent marlin he caught and sees only its bones. The simple nakedness of the skeleton speaks powerfully of the long, horrible night just past, when Santiago had to watch his superb catch consumed by ravenous sea scavengers. It speaks to the mistakes he made, the bet on victory that first pays off and then takes back his winnings, and the inevitability of the disaster that took place.

“He started to climb again and at the top he fell and lay for some time with the mast across his shoulder. He tried to get up. But it was too difficult and he sat there with the mast on his shoulder and looked at the road. A cat passed on the far side going about its business and the old man watched it. Then he just watched the road. Finally he put the mast down and stood up. He picked the mast up and put it on his shoulder and started up the road. He had to sit down five times before he reached his shack.”

Once again, the author speaks of one thing but points to another. Santiago’s fall and his sitting are the tip of the iceberg of his deep exhaustion and his utter defeat at the hands of Nature. The humiliation of being too old, too tired, and too defeated to get back up is witnessed only by an alley cat. Santiago knows that he will stand again and endure whatever life throws at him, no matter what. He does get back up, and in that simple act he justifies his life.