Critically Overview of 'The old Man and The Sea'

Name:- Kailash Baraiya
Course:- M.A. EnglishSemester:- 03Batch:-2016-2018
Enrollment no:- PG2069108420170001Submitted to:-Smt. S.B. Gardi Dept. of English MKBU
Email id:- kailashbaraiya21@gmail.com
Paper no:- 10, The American LiteratureTopic:- Critically Overview of ‘The Old Man and the Sea’

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     Introduction Of  The Writer:-

 Ø Early Life and Career:-

             Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Cicero (now in Oak Park), Illinois. Clarence and Grace Hemingway raised their son in this conservative suburb of Chicago, but the family also spent a great deal of time in northern Michigan, where they had a cabin. It was there that the future sportsman learned to hunt, fish and appreciate the outdoors.

In high school, Hemingway worked on his school newspaper, Trapeze and Tabula, writing primarily about sports. Immediately after graduation, the budding journalist went to work for the Kansas City Star, gaining experience that would later influence his distinctively stripped-down prose style.

                 He once said, "On the Star you were forced to learn to write a simple declarative sentence. This is useful to anyone. Newspaper work will not harm a young writer and could help him if he gets out of it in time."

v      About ‘Old Man and the Sea’:-

                      

The Old Man and the Sea is a short novel written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Bimini, Bahamas, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it tells the story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba.

In 1953, The Old Man and the Sea was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to their awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954.

v      Plot Overview:-

                            

                         The Old Man and the Sea is the story of an epic struggle between an old, seasoned fisherman and the greatest catch of his life. For eighty-four days, Santiago, an aged Cuban fisherman, has set out to sea and returned empty-handed. So conspicuously unlucky is he that the parents of his young, devoted apprentice and friend, Manolin, have forced the boy to leave the old man in order to fish in a more prosperous boat. Nevertheless, the boy continues to care for the old man upon his return each night. He helps the old man tote his gear to his ramshackle hut, secures food for him, and discusses the latest developments in American baseball, especially the trials of the old man’s hero, Joe DiMaggio. Santiago is confident that his unproductive streak will soon come to an end, and he resolves to sail out farther than usual the following day.

                  

                        On the eighty-fifth day of his unlucky streak, Santiago does as promised, sailing his skiff far beyond the island’s shallow coastal waters and venturing into the Gulf Stream. He prepares his lines and drops them. At noon, a big fish, which he knows is a marlin, takes the bait that Santiago has placed one hundred fathoms deep in the waters. The old man expertly hooks the fish, but he cannot pull it in. Instead, the fish begins to pull the boat.

                    Unable to tie the line fast to the boat for fear the fish would snap a taut line, the old man bears the strain of the line with his shoulders, back, and hands, ready to give slack should the marlin make a run. The fish pulls the boat all through the day, through the night, through another day, and through another night. It swims steadily northwest until at last it tires and swims east with the current. The entire time, Santiago endures constant pain from the fishing line. Whenever the fish lunges, leaps, or makes a dash for freedom, the cord cuts Santiago badly. Although wounded and weary, the old man feels a deep empathy and admiration for the marlin, his brother in suffering, strength, and resolve.

                      On the third day the fish tires, and Santiago, sleep-deprived, aching, and nearly delirious, manages to pull the marlin in close enough to kill it with a harpoon thrust. Dead beside the skiff, the marlin is the largest Santiago has ever seen. He lashes it to his boat, raises the small mast, and sets sail for home. While Santiago is excited by the price that the marlin will bring at market, he is more concerned that the people who will eat the fish are unworthy of its greatness.

                    As Santiago sails on with the fish, the marlin’s blood leaves a trail in the water and attracts sharks. The first to attack is a great mako shark, which Santiago manages to slay with the harpoon. In the struggle, the old man loses the harpoon and lengths of valuable rope, which leaves him vulnerable to other shark attacks. The old man fights off the successive vicious predators as best he can, stabbing at them with a crude spear he makes by lashing a knife to an oar, and even clubbing them with the boat’s tiller. Although he kills several sharks, more and more appear, and by the time night falls, Santiago’s continued fight against the scavengers is useless. They devour the marlin’s precious meat, leaving only skeleton, head, and tail. Santiago chastises himself for going “out too far,” and for sacrificing his great and worthy opponent. He arrives home before daybreak, stumbles back to his shack, and sleeps very deeply.

                     The next morning, a crowd of amazed fishermen gathers around the skeletal carcass of the fish, which is still lashed to the boat. Knowing nothing of the old man’s struggle, tourists at a nearby café observe the remains of the giant marlin and mistake it for a shark. Manolin, who has been worried sick over the old man’s absence, is moved to tears when he finds Santiago safe in his bed. The boy fetches the old man some coffee and the daily papers with the baseball scores, and watches him sleep. When the old man wakes, the two agree to fish as partners once more. The old man returns to sleep and dreams his usual dream of lions at play on the beaches of Africa.

v      Characters in ‘The Old Man and the           Sea’:-

1. Santiago:-

              

                  Santiago is an old fisherman of undetermined age. As a young man he traveled widely by ship and fondly remembers seeing lions on the beaches of East Africa. His wife died, and he has taken her picture down because it makes him sad to see it.  Now he lives alone in a shack on the beach. Every day he sets forth alone in his boat to make a living.

2. Manolin :-

         

                          Manolin is a young man, based on someone Hemingway knew in Cuba. Who was then in his twenties. In the story, however, Manoline is referred to as “the boy”. Like, Santiago,  Manolin comes from a family of fisherman and has long admired Santiago as a masterful practitioner of his trade.

            Manolin undergoes as important change between the beginning and end of the story. At the beginning he still defers to the wishes of his parents that he not accompany Santiago fishing since the old man’s luck has turned bad. By the end of the story, however, Manolin has turned bad. By the end of the story, however, Manolin has resolved to go with the old man, lucky or not, in spite of his parents wishes.

3. Manolin’s father :-

            Mnolin’s father forbids Manolin from going out with Santiago after the old man’s fortiegth day without a fish. By the end of the story Manolin decides to disobey his father out of his love for Santiago.

v   Themes:-

Ø The Human Condition:-

              In his novella about a fisherman who  struggles to catch a large marlin only to lose it, Hemingway has stripped down the basic elements. A single human being, represented bt the fisherman Santiago, is blessed with the intelligence to do big things and to dream of even grander things. Santiago shows great skill in devising ways to tire out the huge fish he has hooked and ways to conserve his strength in order to land it. Yet in the struggle to survive, this human must often suffer and even destroy the very thing he dreams of. Thus Santiago cuts his hands badly and loses the fish to shark in the process of trying to get his catch back to shore. Yet the struggle to achieve one’s dreams is still worthwhile, for without dreams, a human remains a mere physical presence in the universe, with no creative or spiritual dimension. And so at the end of the story, Santiago, in spite of his great loss, physical pain, and exhaustion, is still “dreaming about the lions”- the same ones he saw in Africa when he was younger and would like to see again.

Ø Love:-

                  Against the seeming indifference of the universe, love is often the only force that endures. This force is best seen in the relationship of Santiago and Manolin, Which has endured since Manolin’s early childhood. Over the years, Santiago has  taught   Manolin to fish and given him  companionship and a sense  of self –worth that  Manolin failed to get from his own father. Manolin in return shows his love for Santiago by bringing him food and by weeping for him when he sees how much he suffered in fighting the marlin. Manolin also plans to take care of Santiago during the coming winter by bringing him clothing and water for washing.

            Santiago’s love, of course, extends to other people as well. He loved his wife when they were married, though when she died he had to take down her portrait because it made him feel lonely. Similarly, even in his suffering he thinks of others, remembering his promise to send the fish head to his friend Pederico to use as bait. Santiago’s love also extends to include nature itself, even though he has often suffered at its hands. His love for all living creatures, whether fish, birds or turtles, is often described, as is love for the sea, which he sees as a woman who gives or withholds favors. Some of the younger fishermen, in contrast, often spoke of the sea as a “contestant” or even an “enemy”.

Ø Youth and Old Age:-

                       The comparison and contrast of these two stages of human life runs throughout the story. Although Santiago is obviously an old man, in many ways he retains a youthful perspective on life. For example, he is a keen follower of baseball, and admires players like Joe DiMaggio and Dick Sisler  for their youthful skills and abilities. His friendship with Manolin is also based partly on Santiago’s fond recollections of his own youth.  For example, he recalls the time he saw the lions on the beach in Africa or when he beat a well-known player in a hand-wrestling match that lasted all day. His repeated wish that the boy were in the boat is not made just because that would make it easier to fight the fish. He also misses the boy as a companion  with his own youthful perspective. Yet Santiago does not admire all youth indiscriminately. For example, he contrasts his own attitude toward the sea as a woman with that of “some of the younger fishermen, those who used buoys as floats and had motorboats,” who think of the sea as a male enemy who must be defeated. By the same token, Santiago is aware that not everything about old age is attractive to youth. For example, he keeps from Manolin the knowledge that he doesn’t care very much about washing or eating on a regular basis. Santiago is also very aware of the disadvantages of old age. Although he retains much of his youthful strength, for example, he knows that at his age he is no longer able to fight of the shark that attack his fish. Yet in the end, despite his defeat, Santiago is still able to plan his next fishing expedition and to dream again of the lion who perhaps represent to him the strength and freedom of youth.

 

Ø Luck vs. Skill:     

                 Many people believe in the concept of destiny, a concept in which spiritual forces and luck are combined. When one is lucky, it is considered a sigh that one has the spiritual qualities to succeed. By the same token, when one has been unlucky, as Santiago is considered after eighty-four days of not catching any fish, he is dismissed by Manolin’s parents as salao , “which is the worst form of unlucky,” and therefore someone to avoid. Santiago himself believes to some extent in the concept of luck. He sense that his eight-fifth day of fishing will be a good one and wants to buy that number in lottery. Later in the story, when his big fish has already been half- eaten by sharks, he says he would pay “what they asked” for some luck “in any form.”

                    Earlier in story, however, before he has caught the big fish, Santiago reflects that “It is better to be lucky [than unlucky]. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.” In this reformulation of the luck- vs.-skill question, Santiago is clearly favoring skill. This preference is shown by his actions throughout the novel, from the way he gauges the strength of the fish by the pull on the line to the manner in which he calculates and conserves his own strength for battle he knows lies ahead. After his defeat he says the boy should not fish with him because “I am not lucky anymore.” Yet Santiago quickly changes his mind about going out with Manolin when the boy says that “We will fish together now, for I still have much to learn.” Toward the end, Santiago asks himself “[w]hat beat you” and answers “Nothing. I went out to far.” So in the end, Santiago finds that it is matters of judgment and skill that determine success not luck.

 

v   Style:-

Ø Point of view:-

                  All novels use at least one point of view, or angle of vision, from which to tell the story. The point of view may be that of a single character or of several characters in turn. The Old Man and the Sea uses the omniscient, or “all – knowing,” point of view of the author, who acts as a hidden narrator. The omniscient, point of view enables the author to stand outside and above the story itself, and thus to provide a wider perspective from which to present the thoughts of the old man and the other characters. Thus at the beginning of the tale, the omniscient narrator tells us not only what Santiago and the boy said to each other, but what the other fishermen thought of the old man. “The older fishermen…looked at him and were sad. But they did not show it…”

 

v   Setting:-

         The old Man and the Sea takes place entirelt in a small fishing village near Havana, Cuba, and in the waters of the Gulf Steram, a current of warm water that runs north, then east of Cuba in the Caribbean Sea. Hemingway visited Cuba as early as 1928, and later lived on the coast near Havana for nineteen years, beginning in 1940, so he knew the area very well. The reference to Joe Dimaggio and a series of games between the Yankees and the Detroit Tigers in which Dimaggio came back from a slump have enabled scholars to pinpoint the time during which the novel takes place as mid September is the peak of the blue Marlin season. The story takes three days, the length of the battle against the fish, but as Manolin reminds the old man, winter is coming on and he will need a warm coat.

v   Structure:-

              Like the three – day epic struggle itself of Santiago against the fish, Hemingway’s story falls into three main parts. The first section entails getting ready for the fishing trip; then the trip out, including catching the fish and being towed by it, which encompasses all of the first two days and part the third; and finally the trip back. Another way of dividing and analyzing the story is by using a dramatic structure devised by Aristotle. In the opening part of the story, or rising action, the readers are presented  with various complications of the conflict between the other fishermen’s belief that Santiago is permanently unlucky and Santiago and the boy’s belief that the old man will still catch a fish. For example, readers learn that some of the other villagers, like the restaurant owner Pedrico, help Santiago, while others avoid him. The climax of the story, when Santiago, kills the fish, marks the point at which the hero’s fortunes begin to take a turn for the worse. This turning point becomes evident when sharks start to attack the fish and leads inevitably to the resolution of the drama, in which Santiago, having no effective weapons left to fight the sharks, must watch helplessly as they strip the influence of modern short story writers, however, Hamingway has added to the ending what James Joyce called an epiphany, or revelation of Santiago’s true character. This moment comes when the author implicitly contrasts the tourist’s ignorance of the true identity of the Marlin’s skeleton to Santiago’s quiet knowledge of his skill and his hope, reflected in his repeated dreams of the lions on the beach, that he will fish successfully again.

 

 

 

v   Symbolism:-

             A symbol can be defined as a person, place, or thing that represents something more than its literal meaning. Santiago, for example, has often been compared to Christ in the way he suffers. His bleeding hands, the way he comes the boat must like a cross, and the way he lies on his bed with his arms outstretched, all have clear parallels in the story of Christ’s crucifixion. In this interpretation of the story,                          Manolin is seen as a disciple who respects and loves Santiago as his teacher. In this context, the son could be said to represent earthly existence. Humans is stated in Genesis, have been created by god to have dominion over all other living creatures, including the fish in the sea. Yet humans like Santiago still suffer because of Adam and Eve’s original sin of eating the apple from the tree of knowledge. Santiago, however, says he does not understand the concept of sin. Santiago can also be seen more broadly as a representative of all human beings who must struggle to survive, yet hope and dream of better things to come. Hemingway himself does not seem to mind it his characters, setting, and plot have deferent meaning to deferent readers. He once said that “tried  to make it real old man, a real boy, a real sea and fish and shark. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things”.

 

 

v   Critical Overview:-

                 The early critical reception of The Old Man and the Sea upon its publication in 1952 was very favorable, and its reputation has been generally high ever since, notwithstanding negative reactions in the 1960s by critics like Kenneth Lynn and Philip Young. Yet what the critics have seen worthy of special note in the story has changed noticeably over the years.

                The early reviews of Humanity’s first novel since the disastrous reception two years earlier of Across the River and into the trees especially praised the central character, Santiago. In his original 1954 evaluation of the book which Gerry Brenner including in The Old Man and Sea: The Story of a Common Man, Philip Young wrote, “It is the knowledge that a simple man is capable of such decency, dignity and even heroism, and that is struggle can be seen in heroic terms, that largely distinguishes this book.”In this book Ernest Hemingway: Critiques of four Major Novel, Carlos Baker noted that critic Clinton S. Burhans  saw in Santiago “a noble and tragic individualism revealing what a man can do in an indifferent universe which defeats him, and the love he can feel for such a universe and his humility before it.” The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1953 and played a large role in Hemingway’s being honored the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. 

                      Though several posthumous volumes of his fiction would follow in the 1970s, Hemingway’s suicide in 1961 was the occasion for a major, and perhaps less inhibited, reevaluation of his work. Philip Young’s Ernest Hemingway: A Reconsideration was one of the most influential of these. According to Young’s “wound theory,” Hemingway’s entire life and art was an attempt to master the traumatic event of his wounding in World War 1. To do this, said Young , Hemingway evolved a “code” as Young describe this hero code, it was a ‘grace under pressure’…made of the controls of honor and courage which in a life of tension and pain make a man and distinguish him from the people who follow random impulses. Let down their hair, and are generally messy, perhaps cowardly, and without inviolable rules for how to live holding tight”.

                    In his life and his heroic struggle against the fish, Santiago fits Young’s definition. His pride in his physical strength, still noteworthy in his old age, is shown in his fond recollection of the time he beat a “giant’ in an all – day hand – wrestling match in Casablanca. In his mental  suppression of physical pain, Santiago also reminds the reader of Jake Barnes in The Sun Rises and Frederic Henry in A Farewell to Arms.

               Young’s “wound theory” and “code hero” concepts continued to influence much of Hemingway Criticism in the 1960s and 1970s, despite the posthumous publication during this period of nine new volumes of Hemingway’s fiction and notification, including his Toronto newspaper dispatches, his high school literary efforts, his poetry, A Movable Feast and Island in the Stream. In fact, as Susan F. Beegel has pointed out, “the idea of the code hero would smother the originality of lesser critics and stifle alternative views for a long time.” The best source of basic facts about Hemingway’s life, however, remains Baker’s 1969 biography, Ernest Hemingway.

                  Though the Hemingway “industry” of posthumous publications, memories of old friends, and newsletters and annual of Hemingway critics continued to mount, it was not until after 1986, with the publication of The Garden of Eden, that Young’s theory began to be  replaced in most critical readers’ minds by Kenneth Lynn’s “theory of androgyny,” or the state of having both male and female   characteristics, as described in Lynn’s influential psychoanalytic biography was partly the result of his mother’s having dressed Ernest as a toddler in girl’s clothes that were identical to his older sister’s. In Hemingway’s Quarrel with Androgyny, Mark Spilka sees Santiago’s androgyny as a typical example in Hemingway’s late fiction of the “return of the repressed” female side of the author’s personality.

                  The androgyny theory allows readrs to view Santiago, and indeed Manolin, from a wider perspective. Many people see, for example, that while women themselves play only a small role in the novel, nevertheless, the sea itself is Regarded as feminine in Santiago’s eyes, unlike some of the other younger fishermen in the story, who regard the sea as a male enemy to be conquered. Santiago describes how Manolin cries not once, but twice, after seeing the man’s condition soon after he returns to shore. This is  perhaps more significant than it may appear, because Manolin, although called “the boy”, is actually at least twenty two years old as noted by Bickford Sylvester in “The Cuban Contest of The Old man and the Sea.” A critic laboring under the more rigid notion of the code hero would probably expect Manolin, as a full – grown man, to keep his emotions held in check.

                  No matter through which prism the reader analyzes Hemingway’ great sea story, it seems there will always be new revelations to find. Beegel notes that new areas for study may be found in Hemingway’s ecological consciousness or the multicultural background of several of his novels. And with the increased use of the computer to analyze prose text and style, who knows what other discoveries await the Hemingway scholars of the future.

  

Work Cited

Editors, Biograpy.com. The Biograpy.com Website. A&E Television Networks. 27 october 2017 <https://www.biography.com/people/ernest-hemingway-9334498>.

Wikipedia. 26 october 2017 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Man_and_the_Sea>.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

              

Name:- Kailash Baraiya

Course:- M.A. English

Semester:- 03

Batch:-2016-2018

Enrollment no:- PG2069108420170001

Submitted to:-Smt. S.B. Gardi Dept. of English MKBU

Email id:- kailashbaraiya21@gmail.com

Paper no:- 10, The African Literature

Topic:- Critically Overview of ‘The Old Man and the Sea’

v     Introduction Of  The Writer:-

 

Ø Early Life and Career:-

             Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Cicero (now in Oak Park), Illinois. Clarence and Grace Hemingway raised their son in this conservative suburb of Chicago, but the family also spent a great deal of time in northern Michigan, where they had a cabin. It was there that the future sportsman learned to hunt, fish and appreciate the outdoors.

In high school, Hemingway worked on his school newspaper, Trapeze and Tabula, writing primarily about sports. Immediately after graduation, the budding journalist went to work for the Kansas City Star, gaining experience that would later influence his distinctively stripped-down prose style.

                 He once said, "On the Star you were forced to learn to write a simple declarative sentence. This is useful to anyone. Newspaper work will not harm a young writer and could help him if he gets out of it in time."

v      About ‘Old Man and the Sea’:-

                     

                                  The Old Man and the Sea is a short novel written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Bimini, Bahamas, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it tells the story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba.

In 1953, The Old Man and the Sea was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to their awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954.

v      Plot Overview:-

                            

                         The Old Man and the Sea is the story of an epic struggle between an old, seasoned fisherman and the greatest catch of his life. For eighty-four days, Santiago, an aged Cuban fisherman, has set out to sea and returned empty-handed. So conspicuously unlucky is he that the parents of his young, devoted apprentice and friend, Manolin, have forced the boy to leave the old man in order to fish in a more prosperous boat. Nevertheless, the boy continues to care for the old man upon his return each night. He helps the old man tote his gear to his ramshackle hut, secures food for him, and discusses the latest developments in American baseball, especially the trials of the old man’s hero, Joe DiMaggio. Santiago is confident that his unproductive streak will soon come to an end, and he resolves to sail out farther than usual the following day.

                  

                        On the eighty-fifth day of his unlucky streak, Santiago does as promised, sailing his skiff far beyond the island’s shallow coastal waters and venturing into the Gulf Stream. He prepares his lines and drops them. At noon, a big fish, which he knows is a marlin, takes the bait that Santiago has placed one hundred fathoms deep in the waters. The old man expertly hooks the fish, but he cannot pull it in. Instead, the fish begins to pull the boat.

                    Unable to tie the line fast to the boat for fear the fish would snap a taut line, the old man bears the strain of the line with his shoulders, back, and hands, ready to give slack should the marlin make a run. The fish pulls the boat all through the day, through the night, through another day, and through another night. It swims steadily northwest until at last it tires and swims east with the current. The entire time, Santiago endures constant pain from the fishing line. Whenever the fish lunges, leaps, or makes a dash for freedom, the cord cuts Santiago badly. Although wounded and weary, the old man feels a deep empathy and admiration for the marlin, his brother in suffering, strength, and resolve.

                      On the third day the fish tires, and Santiago, sleep-deprived, aching, and nearly delirious, manages to pull the marlin in close enough to kill it with a harpoon thrust. Dead beside the skiff, the marlin is the largest Santiago has ever seen. He lashes it to his boat, raises the small mast, and sets sail for home. While Santiago is excited by the price that the marlin will bring at market, he is more concerned that the people who will eat the fish are unworthy of its greatness.

                    As Santiago sails on with the fish, the marlin’s blood leaves a trail in the water and attracts sharks. The first to attack is a great mako shark, which Santiago manages to slay with the harpoon. In the struggle, the old man loses the harpoon and lengths of valuable rope, which leaves him vulnerable to other shark attacks. The old man fights off the successive vicious predators as best he can, stabbing at them with a crude spear he makes by lashing a knife to an oar, and even clubbing them with the boat’s tiller. Although he kills several sharks, more and more appear, and by the time night falls, Santiago’s continued fight against the scavengers is useless. They devour the marlin’s precious meat, leaving only skeleton, head, and tail. Santiago chastises himself for going “out too far,” and for sacrificing his great and worthy opponent. He arrives home before daybreak, stumbles back to his shack, and sleeps very deeply.

                     The next morning, a crowd of amazed fishermen gathers around the skeletal carcass of the fish, which is still lashed to the boat. Knowing nothing of the old man’s struggle, tourists at a nearby café observe the remains of the giant marlin and mistake it for a shark. Manolin, who has been worried sick over the old man’s absence, is moved to tears when he finds Santiago safe in his bed. The boy fetches the old man some coffee and the daily papers with the baseball scores, and watches him sleep. When the old man wakes, the two agree to fish as partners once more. The old man returns to sleep and dreams his usual dream of lions at play on the beaches of Africa.

v      Characters in ‘The Old Man and the           Sea’:-

1. Santiago:-

              

                  Santiago is an old fisherman of undetermined age. As a young man he traveled widely by ship and fondly remembers seeing lions on the beaches of East Africa. His wife died, and he has taken her picture down because it makes him sad to see it.  Now he lives alone in a shack on the beach. Every day he sets forth alone in his boat to make a living.

2. Manolin :-

         

                          Manolin is a young man, based on someone Hemingway knew in Cuba. Who was then in his twenties. In the story, however, Manoline is referred to as “the boy”. Like, Santiago,  Manolin comes from a family of fisherman and has long admired Santiago as a masterful practitioner of his trade.

            Manolin undergoes as important change between the beginning and end of the story. At the beginning he still defers to the wishes of his parents that he not accompany Santiago fishing since the old man’s luck has turned bad. By the end of the story, however, Manolin has turned bad. By the end of the story, however, Manolin has resolved to go with the old man, lucky or not, in spite of his parents wishes.

3. Manolin’s father :-

            Mnolin’s father forbids Manolin from going out with Santiago after the old man’s fortiegth day without a fish. By the end of the story Manolin decides to disobey his father out of his love for Santiago.

v   Themes:-

Ø The Human Condition:-

              In his novella about a fisherman who  struggles to catch a large marlin only to lose it, Hemingway has stripped down the basic elements. A single human being, represented bt the fisherman Santiago, is blessed with the intelligence to do big things and to dream of even grander things. Santiago shows great skill in devising ways to tire out the huge fish he has hooked and ways to conserve his strength in order to land it. Yet in the struggle to survive, this human must often suffer and even destroy the very thing he dreams of. Thus Santiago cuts his hands badly and loses the fish to shark in the process of trying to get his catch back to shore. Yet the struggle to achieve one’s dreams is still worthwhile, for without dreams, a human remains a mere physical presence in the universe, with no creative or spiritual dimension. And so at the end of the story, Santiago, in spite of his great loss, physical pain, and exhaustion, is still “dreaming about the lions”- the same ones he saw in Africa when he was younger and would like to see again.

Ø Love:-

                  Against the seeming indifference of the universe, love is often the only force that endures. This force is best seen in the relationship of Santiago and Manolin, Which has endured since Manolin’s early childhood. Over the years, Santiago has  taught   Manolin to fish and given him  companionship and a sense  of self –worth that  Manolin failed to get from his own father. Manolin in return shows his love for Santiago by bringing him food and by weeping for him when he sees how much he suffered in fighting the marlin. Manolin also plans to take care of Santiago during the coming winter by bringing him clothing and water for washing.

            Santiago’s love, of course, extends to other people as well. He loved his wife when they were married, though when she died he had to take down her portrait because it made him feel lonely. Similarly, even in his suffering he thinks of others, remembering his promise to send the fish head to his friend Pederico to use as bait. Santiago’s love also extends to include nature itself, even though he has often suffered at its hands. His love for all living creatures, whether fish, birds or turtles, is often described, as is love for the sea, which he sees as a woman who gives or withholds favors. Some of the younger fishermen, in contrast, often spoke of the sea as a “contestant” or even an “enemy”.

Ø Youth and Old Age:-

                       The comparison and contrast of these two stages of human life runs throughout the story. Although Santiago is obviously an old man, in many ways he retains a youthful perspective on life. For example, he is a keen follower of baseball, and admires players like Joe DiMaggio and Dick Sisler  for their youthful skills and abilities. His friendship with Manolin is also based partly on Santiago’s fond recollections of his own youth.  For example, he recalls the time he saw the lions on the beach in Africa or when he beat a well-known player in a hand-wrestling match that lasted all day. His repeated wish that the boy were in the boat is not made just because that would make it easier to fight the fish. He also misses the boy as a companion  with his own youthful perspective. Yet Santiago does not admire all youth indiscriminately. For example, he contrasts his own attitude toward the sea as a woman with that of “some of the younger fishermen, those who used buoys as floats and had motorboats,” who think of the sea as a male enemy who must be defeated. By the same token, Santiago is aware that not everything about old age is attractive to youth. For example, he keeps from Manolin the knowledge that he doesn’t care very much about washing or eating on a regular basis. Santiago is also very aware of the disadvantages of old age. Although he retains much of his youthful strength, for example, he knows that at his age he is no longer able to fight of the shark that attack his fish. Yet in the end, despite his defeat, Santiago is still able to plan his next fishing expedition and to dream again of the lion who perhaps represent to him the strength and freedom of youth.

 

Ø Luck vs. Skill:     

                 Many people believe in the concept of destiny, a concept in which spiritual forces and luck are combined. When one is lucky, it is considered a sigh that one has the spiritual qualities to succeed. By the same token, when one has been unlucky, as Santiago is considered after eighty-four days of not catching any fish, he is dismissed by Manolin’s parents as salao , “which is the worst form of unlucky,” and therefore someone to avoid. Santiago himself believes to some extent in the concept of luck. He sense that his eight-fifth day of fishing will be a good one and wants to buy that number in lottery. Later in the story, when his big fish has already been half- eaten by sharks, he says he would pay “what they asked” for some luck “in any form.”

                    Earlier in story, however, before he has caught the big fish, Santiago reflects that “It is better to be lucky [than unlucky]. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.” In this reformulation of the luck- vs.-skill question, Santiago is clearly favoring skill. This preference is shown by his actions throughout the novel, from the way he gauges the strength of the fish by the pull on the line to the manner in which he calculates and conserves his own strength for battle he knows lies ahead. After his defeat he says the boy should not fish with him because “I am not lucky anymore.” Yet Santiago quickly changes his mind about going out with Manolin when the boy says that “We will fish together now, for I still have much to learn.” Toward the end, Santiago asks himself “[w]hat beat you” and answers “Nothing. I went out to far.” So in the end, Santiago finds that it is matters of judgment and skill that determine success not luck.

 

v   Style:-

Ø Point of view:-

                  All novels use at least one point of view, or angle of vision, from which to tell the story. The point of view may be that of a single character or of several characters in turn. The Old Man and the Sea uses the omniscient, or “all – knowing,” point of view of the author, who acts as a hidden narrator. The omniscient, point of view enables the author to stand outside and above the story itself, and thus to provide a wider perspective from which to present the thoughts of the old man and the other characters. Thus at the beginning of the tale, the omniscient narrator tells us not only what Santiago and the boy said to each other, but what the other fishermen thought of the old man. “The older fishermen…looked at him and were sad. But they did not show it…”

 

v   Setting:-

         The old Man and the Sea takes place entirelt in a small fishing village near Havana, Cuba, and in the waters of the Gulf Steram, a current of warm water that runs north, then east of Cuba in the Caribbean Sea. Hemingway visited Cuba as early as 1928, and later lived on the coast near Havana for nineteen years, beginning in 1940, so he knew the area very well. The reference to Joe Dimaggio and a series of games between the Yankees and the Detroit Tigers in which Dimaggio came back from a slump have enabled scholars to pinpoint the time during which the novel takes place as mid September is the peak of the blue Marlin season. The story takes three days, the length of the battle against the fish, but as Manolin reminds the old man, winter is coming on and he will need a warm coat.

v   Structure:-

              Like the three – day epic struggle itself of Santiago against the fish, Hemingway’s story falls into three main parts. The first section entails getting ready for the fishing trip; then the trip out, including catching the fish and being towed by it, which encompasses all of the first two days and part the third; and finally the trip back. Another way of dividing and analyzing the story is by using a dramatic structure devised by Aristotle. In the opening part of the story, or rising action, the readers are presented  with various complications of the conflict between the other fishermen’s belief that Santiago is permanently unlucky and Santiago and the boy’s belief that the old man will still catch a fish. For example, readers learn that some of the other villagers, like the restaurant owner Pedrico, help Santiago, while others avoid him. The climax of the story, when Santiago, kills the fish, marks the point at which the hero’s fortunes begin to take a turn for the worse. This turning point becomes evident when sharks start to attack the fish and leads inevitably to the resolution of the drama, in which Santiago, having no effective weapons left to fight the sharks, must watch helplessly as they strip the influence of modern short story writers, however, Hamingway has added to the ending what James Joyce called an epiphany, or revelation of Santiago’s true character. This moment comes when the author implicitly contrasts the tourist’s ignorance of the true identity of the Marlin’s skeleton to Santiago’s quiet knowledge of his skill and his hope, reflected in his repeated dreams of the lions on the beach, that he will fish successfully again.

 

 

 

v   Symbolism:-

             A symbol can be defined as a person, place, or thing that represents something more than its literal meaning. Santiago, for example, has often been compared to Christ in the way he suffers. His bleeding hands, the way he comes the boat must like a cross, and the way he lies on his bed with his arms outstretched, all have clear parallels in the story of Christ’s crucifixion. In this interpretation of the story,                          Manolin is seen as a disciple who respects and loves Santiago as his teacher. In this context, the son could be said to represent earthly existence. Humans is stated in Genesis, have been created by god to have dominion over all other living creatures, including the fish in the sea. Yet humans like Santiago still suffer because of Adam and Eve’s original sin of eating the apple from the tree of knowledge. Santiago, however, says he does not understand the concept of sin. Santiago can also be seen more broadly as a representative of all human beings who must struggle to survive, yet hope and dream of better things to come. Hemingway himself does not seem to mind it his characters, setting, and plot have deferent meaning to deferent readers. He once said that “tried  to make it real old man, a real boy, a real sea and fish and shark. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things”.

 

 

v   Critical Overview:-

                 The early critical reception of The Old Man and the Sea upon its publication in 1952 was very favorable, and its reputation has been generally high ever since, notwithstanding negative reactions in the 1960s by critics like Kenneth Lynn and Philip Young. Yet what the critics have seen worthy of special note in the story has changed noticeably over the years.

                The early reviews of Humanity’s first novel since the disastrous reception two years earlier of Across the River and into the trees especially praised the central character, Santiago. In his original 1954 evaluation of the book which Gerry Brenner including in The Old Man and Sea: The Story of a Common Man, Philip Young wrote, “It is the knowledge that a simple man is capable of such decency, dignity and even heroism, and that is struggle can be seen in heroic terms, that largely distinguishes this book.”In this book Ernest Hemingway: Critiques of four Major Novel, Carlos Baker noted that critic Clinton S. Burhans  saw in Santiago “a noble and tragic individualism revealing what a man can do in an indifferent universe which defeats him, and the love he can feel for such a universe and his humility before it.” The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1953 and played a large role in Hemingway’s being honored the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. 

                      Though several posthumous volumes of his fiction would follow in the 1970s, Hemingway’s suicide in 1961 was the occasion for a major, and perhaps less inhibited, reevaluation of his work. Philip Young’s Ernest Hemingway: A Reconsideration was one of the most influential of these. According to Young’s “wound theory,” Hemingway’s entire life and art was an attempt to master the traumatic event of his wounding in World War 1. To do this, said Young , Hemingway evolved a “code” as Young describe this hero code, it was a ‘grace under pressure’…made of the controls of honor and courage which in a life of tension and pain make a man and distinguish him from the people who follow random impulses. Let down their hair, and are generally messy, perhaps cowardly, and without inviolable rules for how to live holding tight”.

                    In his life and his heroic struggle against the fish, Santiago fits Young’s definition. His pride in his physical strength, still noteworthy in his old age, is shown in his fond recollection of the time he beat a “giant’ in an all – day hand – wrestling match in Casablanca. In his mental  suppression of physical pain, Santiago also reminds the reader of Jake Barnes in The Sun Rises and Frederic Henry in A Farewell to Arms.

               Young’s “wound theory” and “code hero” concepts continued to influence much of Hemingway Criticism in the 1960s and 1970s, despite the posthumous publication during this period of nine new volumes of Hemingway’s fiction and notification, including his Toronto newspaper dispatches, his high school literary efforts, his poetry, A Movable Feast and Island in the Stream. In fact, as Susan F. Beegel has pointed out, “the idea of the code hero would smother the originality of lesser critics and stifle alternative views for a long time.” The best source of basic facts about Hemingway’s life, however, remains Baker’s 1969 biography, Ernest Hemingway.

                  Though the Hemingway “industry” of posthumous publications, memories of old friends, and newsletters and annual of Hemingway critics continued to mount, it was not until after 1986, with the publication of The Garden of Eden, that Young’s theory began to be  replaced in most critical readers’ minds by Kenneth Lynn’s “theory of androgyny,” or the state of having both male and female   characteristics, as described in Lynn’s influential psychoanalytic biography was partly the result of his mother’s having dressed Ernest as a toddler in girl’s clothes that were identical to his older sister’s. In Hemingway’s Quarrel with Androgyny, Mark Spilka sees Santiago’s androgyny as a typical example in Hemingway’s late fiction of the “return of the repressed” female side of the author’s personality.

                  The androgyny theory allows readrs to view Santiago, and indeed Manolin, from a wider perspective. Many people see, for example, that while women themselves play only a small role in the novel, nevertheless, the sea itself is Regarded as feminine in Santiago’s eyes, unlike some of the other younger fishermen in the story, who regard the sea as a male enemy to be conquered. Santiago describes how Manolin cries not once, but twice, after seeing the man’s condition soon after he returns to shore. This is  perhaps more significant than it may appear, because Manolin, although called “the boy”, is actually at least twenty two years old as noted by Bickford Sylvester in “The Cuban Contest of The Old man and the Sea.” A critic laboring under the more rigid notion of the code hero would probably expect Manolin, as a full – grown man, to keep his emotions held in check.

                  No matter through which prism the reader analyzes Hemingway’ great sea story, it seems there will always be new revelations to find. Beegel notes that new areas for study may be found in Hemingway’s ecological consciousness or the multicultural background of several of his novels. And with the increased use of the computer to analyze prose text and style, who knows what other discoveries await the Hemingway scholars of the future.

  

Work Cited

Editors, Biograpy.com. The Biograpy.com Website. A&E Television Networks. 27 october 2017 <https://www.biography.com/people/ernest-hemingway-9334498>.

Wikipedia. 26 october 2017 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Man_and_the_Sea>.