The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
In September of 1952, Scribner’s publishing house released to bookstores Ernest Hemingway’s new novel, The Old Man and the Sea. The story of an aging fisherman’s heroic struggle against a marlin, people flocked to pick it up, and it instantly became a blockbuster classic. "I went sailing off Edgartown the other day and Hemingway’s book was with me," wrote I. Donald Adams in his review in The New York Times, "but he will be with me for a long time, wherever I am."
The Old Man and the Sea is short. Scribner’s also called it a ‘novella,’ a term not much used today. It is the tale of an old Cuban fisherman named Santiago. Once the most able and fearless of fishermen, Santiago is now a tired old man, and the younger men of his village look upon him with pity or derision.
One day Santiago sets out to catch a fish, and after a while he hooks a marlin. The fish he catches is very different, however—on this day the fish is a gigantic fish, the largest fish Santiago has ever seen. The fish is so huge that it dwarfs his boat, and he cannot bring it in. For his own safety Santiago should let the fish go, but he yearns to conquer it, so he does not cut the line. The monster pulls Santiago and his tiny boat far into the ocean. Santiago lies crumpled against the bow, and the taut line slices into his hands. Still, he does not let go. He helps to sustain himself by thinking about American baseball and his hero, Joe DiMaggio. He wonders how skillful a fisherman the great DiMaggio must be. He admires the strength and the spirit of the fish, and he calls it a noble foe. But it will be the fish, he resolves, and not himself, who will lose the fight. He will win, Santiago says to himself,
"because human beings are not meant for defeat."America’s writers of fiction look to Ernest Hemingway as the standard for excellence in their profession. His works are required reading in English departments throughout the country, and authors openly emulate his style above that of anyone else.
He had been a vulnerable man, and it is impossible to talk about him without mentioning his weaknesses.The lesson Hemingway gives us derives from his contradictions. He was a genius and a jester, a victim and a villain, a savior and a sinner. He was a man who saw with eyes that knew privilege and yet suffered, and who wrote with a heart that knew the promise of victory because it also knew the sorrow of defeat.
He was no different from the rest of us in having contradictions. We all know love and hate and humility and arrogance and victory and defeat. And we know these things because life is lived not in simplicities, but in paradoxes. And part of the wonder of us all is that conflicting though our humors may seem, in the final analysis they not only resemble each other, but even spring from a common source. That source, it has been suggested, is the need to love and be loved. People of every race and ethnicity have expressed this wisdom, and it also rings true in every time and every clime. Although it has been said in many different ways, it was John Lennon, perhaps, who put it best: "All you need," he said, "is love."
The Old Man and the Sea would win the Pulitzer Prize and lead to Hemingway receiving, in 1954, the Nobel Prize in literature. "I have had to read it over two hundred times," Hemingway would say, "and every time it does something to me."