Book #105: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
August 10, 2014
This is a book that I read in preparation for the coming school year. A class set of copies is available through our local education agency, and so it is a book that I feel I’ll be able to use with one, or perhaps both, of my language arts sections. I’ve never read a full-length work by Hemingway, and while I’ve read that his style is pretty simplistic, I hadn’t really gotten a feel for what that meant until I read this book today (just one go, in the bathtub, haha). But now I see it. Sometimes it’s simplistic in a way that’s a little irritating to me, describing some seemingly small detail or another. On the other hand, the observations and reflections made by Santiago (mostly referred to as “the old man” in the text…Coelho paid tribute to this in The Alchemist), who is a seemingly simple man, are poignant and even beautiful. Yes, Hemingway was a deep guy, with a tough, manly exterior. That shows in this work.
The Old Man and the Sea is Hemingway’s most famous work, obviously; it even won the Pulitzer. The basic premise is well-known, of course: an old man sets out alone to fish, catches a huge one, but while it’s impossible for him to haul it in, he refuses to give up. The story is both tragic and triumphant, as old Santiago, in spite of his aches and pains and numerous injuries to his hands, holds the line and tries to outsmart this huge marlin, whom he comes to respect, over the course of about two days. He finally outwits the fatigued fish, but has to tie it to the side of his boat. Inevitably, in the waters surrounding Cuba, the fish is devoured by a series of sharks. Santiago works to keep them a way, killing a few and injuring many, but he returns to the shores of Havana with a giant carcass that has been picked clean.
Some readers have found this book to be redundant, maybe even pointless, but they are obviously missing the big idea here. For this old man, fishing is all that he knows. He’s a very simple man, of course: he lives in a little shack, he gets up early to fish everyday, sometimes accompanied by Manolin (who is mostly referred to as “the boy”), and gets out on his skiff to fish. As he’s gotten older, it seems like he’s lost his touch; he’s currently on an 80+ day streak of no major catches, and is a laughingstock. But he is determined; he has a good attitude, and he has strategies, and he sticks to his plans. The relationship between him and the boy is very touching, as the boy looks out for this down and out old fisherman whom he respects, the man who taught him everything. The old man keeps thinking, as he struggles with the huge marlin, that he wishes the boy were there.
Some parts of the book were a little difficult for me to follow, as I’m not familiar with fishing much at all. I know it requires a lot of patience, which Santiago seemed to have in spades. I’ve never done much fishing, it’s not really my kind of activity. But I’ve read other works about fisherman, I’ve seen those crazy fishing shows on TV, I know that it’s a tough but important and time-honored way to make a living. When I teach this book, I will try to show students pictures of skiffs like the one Santiago and other Cuban fisherman circa 1950’s-ish would be using. I would also bring in some information on baseball at that time, especially information on Joe DiMaggio, who seems to be a hero for Santiago. He thinks to himself, I wonder what DiMaggio would think…his father was a fisherman…would he have toughed it out with me? That made me think of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, how Trisha would imagine her hero/crush along with her as she was lost in the woods.
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