THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA

Author: Ernest Hemingway
Year: 1975 (1952)
Publisher: Stiftelsen Litteraturfrämjandet
Language: Swedish (translator unknown)

”A man can be destroyed, but not defeated” is one of the most well-known quotes from what is arguably Ernest Hemingway’s most prominent novel, “Den gamle och havet” (“The Old Man and the Sea”) from 1952. In his inimitable minimalistic writing style, Hemingway manages to encapsulate the whole message of the novel in one potent sentence.

SPOILER ALERT

“Den gamle och havet” is a story about Santiago, an old fisherman well past his prime who has had a streak of really rotten luck not having caught a single fish for eighty-four days. His misfortunes have become the talk of the town, and the parents of his young helper and apprentice have even taken the boy away from him and allocated him to a boat that has proved to be more successful in recent times. The boy, deeply loyal to his mentor, keeps visiting Santiago and run errands for him but he cannot act against the will of his parents and therefore cannot sail with his aged friend.

Santiago knows that the gossip around town is that he has been cursed and even that he is finished as a fisherman, but he does not pay much attention to it. He is too old and experienced to believe in such nonsense. After all, he has been through this before. Rather than praying to God or performing magical rituals, he relies on his knowledge, experience, and patience.

On the eighty-fourth day of fishing without catch, like all days before it, Santiago sails out onto the Sargasso Sea in his small fishing-boat. Reading the signs of the sea and the animal life in and above it, he soon picks up the trail of what should be an attractive prize. When the fish bites his hook, the fight is on. Hour after hour, day after night after day, Santiago struggles with the largest fish that he has ever encountered and when it finally breaks the surface of the sea, Santiago’s assumption that it must be an enormous marlin is confirmed. This monstrosity is even bigger than Santiago’s boat. After finally having killed it, he ties it to the side of his vessel and turns the bow toward Havana, which during the prolonged tussle has disappeared below the horizon.

Alas, to kill the marlin, Santiago has to drive his harpoon through it, spilling its blood into the ocean. An ocean rife with all types of sharks. Soon enough, the first sharks begin to attack the carcass and Santiago attempts to fight them off. He uses his harpoon to kill the first ones. When one of them disappears with it lodged to its dead body, he ties his knife to one of the oars and continues the fight. When the knife breaks, he proceeds to hitting the feeding sharks over their heads with the rudder. Shark after shark annihilated or chased away, but not before taking a chunk of the marlin with it. When Santiago finally reaches the shores of his fishing village, all that remains of the once mighty fish is the head, the tail, and the spine to hold them together, meticulously cleaned of all meat.

It takes a great writer to make a story about a fishing trip, albeit one involving a remarkable catch, thrilling, touching, and thought-provoking at the same time, and Hemingway does just that. The protagonist’s fight against the forces of nature but also his musings about life, death, love, fate, and the meaning of identity and personal integrity are all interwoven into the fabric of the story in a way that it never loses pace. The reader never gets the feeling that the author pauses the chain of events for philosophy. It is all embedded in the progress of the plot. This short, simple, and linear novel without any elaborate subplots, interpersonal drama, despicable villains, betrayal, misunderstandings, money, sex, or violence is consequently laden with symbols. It is the universe captured in the meeting between a modest man in a tiny skiff and a fish.

No matter how important our personal challenges seem to us, on the vast ocean of life they are but insignificant trifles. The ocean is too great to be aware of every single fish in it, no matter how big, or every single man in a dinghy on it, no matter how determined.

“The ocean is very big and a skiff is small and hard to see.”

Santiago did not blame bad luck for his poor performance. Nor did he blame God, the weather, the fish, his boat, or his equipment. He certainly did not blame himself. He was old enough to know that any fisherman sometimes goes through a bad patch. He did not give up. He set out to sea like he had done every single one of the days prior to this one.

His epic battle with the fish goes on for two days. The old man’s endurance, experience, attention, and ingenuity are put to the test as never before. He is old and not as agile as he used to be. And he is alone. This is his fight. To each and every one of us, to Santiago as well as everyone else, that struggle is essential not for survival alone, but for the definition of who we are. We are, Hemingway seems to say, defined by our actions and choices more than by their outcomes. To choose to continue to live is to choose to continue to choose.

“- They beat me Manolin, he said. They truly beat me.
- He didn't beat you. Not the fish.”

Santiago’s marlin would have brought him a small fortune if he had been able to haul it back in one piece to the market. But he ended up not receiving even a dime. The man is destroyed but not defeated.

We learn one more thing in the very end of the story. While Santiago is recovering after the ordeal, two groups of people notice the remains of the fish by his boat. The first are his peers in the village. Those who looking at the carcass are able to assess and appreciate the old man’s achievement. The other is a group of tourists who mistake the animal for a shark and shrug it off as a mere curiosity. How often do you allow tourists to determine the value of your accomplishments and to put you down by the force of their numbers and ignorant confidence?

It is no mystery why “Den gamle och havet” has become a classic not only in American but in world literature, and Hemingway’s Nobel Prize and widespread renown are, in my view, very well motivated.