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Just as Melville's epic novel, Moby Dick is far more than just an extended "whale-tale", Hemingway's brief novel, The Old Man & The Sea is considerably more than a story about an old man, a young boy & a big fish. In rereading Ernest Hemingway's memorable fable about the abiding endurance & prevailing hope of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who has spent a seeming eternity afloat in a failed quest for a fish, something that will restore meaning to his life, served to to fill in the gaps, the keen literary edges lost to fleeting memory since the last reading.



For Santiago was "an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream & he had gone 84 days now without taking a fish." He is reckoned to be salao or very unlucky by the villagers but many of them consider that he is also a touch demented and Manolin, the boy who has accompanied him for 40 days is no longer permitted to go to sea with the old man.

Now (on the 85th day at sea) is the time to think of only one thing. That which I was born for. He could not see the green of the shore now but only the tops of the blue hills that showed white as though they were snow-capped & the clouds that looked like snow mountains above them. The sea was very dark & the light made prisms in the water. The myriad flecks of the plankton were annulled now by the high sun & it was only the great deep prisms in the blue water that the old man saw now with his lines going straight down into the water that was a mile deep.

Yes, very simple prose but narrative strains that I find quite uplifting! Beyond Hemingway's "fish-tale", there is also an abiding sensitivity for the milieu the old man becomes a part of each day. Santiago remembers the time he hooked a female marlin & the male of the pair stayed along side the boat, finally rising in the water in an attempt to see what had become of his mate, something that had saddened both the old man and the boy.

When the old man finally hooks a large fish, he declares in the ensuing nautical duel: "fish, I love you & respect you very much but I will kill you dead before the day is done." Santiago is alone & misses the presence & the encouragement of the young boy almost continuously. Often, he mutters to himself & just as often, he responds to his own mutterings. At one point, the old man promises to recite 10 "Our Fathers" and to make a pilgrimage to the Virgende de Cobre if he lands the fish he has finally hooked.



In fact, The Old Man & The Sea at times resembles an extended meditation on life & death, as well as the memory of the aging man's former self. Santiago has seen many great fish & has caught two that weighed more than a 1,000 lbs. Now alone & out of sight of land, he had snared the biggest fish that he had ever seen & even bigger than any he had heard of. He says, "thank God, they are not as intelligent as we who kill them; although they are more noble and more able."

In the pursuit to land this great fish, reckoned to be 1,500 lbs., Santiago tries to consider how the fish will maneuver to avoid death and in the extended contest that lasts several days & nights, the old man begins to tire but declares,

A man's not made for defeat; a man can be destroyed but not defeated. Don't think old man (he said aloud), just sail on this course & take it when it comes. But I must think, (he responds to himself) it's all I have left--that & baseball.

For, as the old man becomes drowsy & intermittently nods off, he dreams of lions and just as often when alert, thinks of the New York Yankees' icon, Joe DiMaggio. He ends up with a head wound in the battle to land the huge fish & begins to feel dizzy but ups the ante as time progresses, promising God to say "100 Our Fathers & Hail Marys but not now!"

And yes, there is a hint of Melville's Captain Ahab in the old man's increasingly obsessive quest for the large fish he has snared, as he says to himself: "I'm tireder than I've ever been but I must last! A man is never lost at sea. Be calm & strong old man." And, while drifting in & out of consciousness & beginning to hallucinate, he declares to the fish:

You are going to die any way. Must you kill me too? I'm not good for many more turns. Yes you are, he told himself. You're as good as ever. Never have I seen a greater or a more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you brother. Come & kill me. I don't care who kills who.

But, after finally securing the great fish to the side of the skiff, a mako shark soon begins a hunt of a different sort, attracted to the old man's catch "as if it were bait". And as the old man takes one look at the shark closing in, he says to himself, "it might as well have been a dream."

Santiago's gigantic catch is gradually decimated & lacking any further ability to defend his prize, he gradually finds his way to shore, leaving the remnants of the most memorable fish he has ever landed. Exceedingly exhausted & emotionally as well as physically wounded, the old man bears the mast of his small boat on his shoulders, falling 5 times before reaching the shack he calls home.

But the young lad named Manolin comes to visit Santiago, bringing him coffee & the comfort of his presence. "They beat me Manolin, they truly beat me", the old man declares. But the boy promises to stay with him until he becomes well again, to learn from him & in time to fish with him once again, offering the balm of his encouragement as the old man falls asleep, again dreaming of lions.



For me at least, The Old Man And The Sea is an uplifting narrative on many levels and just over a decade ago, I saw a most memorable theatrical version of the Hemingway tale at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven. Just a small boat, briefly a young boy, a guitarist in the background and an older man (rendered by Mateo Gómez) very dramatically reciting the words from the author's novel, a captivating experience with only a whispered hint of the sea & an imagined large fish--driven just by the words.

*Within my review are images of Hemingway in Cuba; a large marlin at sea; a photo from the Long Wharf Theater production of The Old Man & The Sea.