The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
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The old man never catches a fish: the old man never gives up. Such permanent heroism in defeat is actually far harder than the heroism of ‘winning the contest,’ of being ‘Santiago El Campeón .’
This heroism of defeat is at the root of Hemingway’s constant comparisons of Santiago with Christ as He undergoes the Passion. Christ’s heroism on the Cross, is essentially feminine, yielding: the word Passion itself derives from the same root as the word passive . Christ allows things to be done to him; He accepts the wounds; He is pierced. Santiago’s heroism is similar. He can no longer beat this marlin through his own strength (if he ever could have mastered such a great fish), but must endure hour after hour of agony while the fish pulls him and the boat and eventually tires itself out. Almost all of his fisherman’s skill is in yielding , responding to the fish’s actions, sensing what it will do and reacting accordingly. All of these skills and traits that the reader sees in Santiago are more Yin than Yang, more female than male.
Finally, Santiago learns a new humility. He accepts on the boat what he had long denied to himself: that Manolin, ‘the boy,’ has been keeping him alive for months. When he awakes in his hut, he accepts this, and he hears that he will not have to go out fishing alone again, for Manolin will accompany him. Hemingway, as the reader has come to expect, makes nothing of this, but, as always, it is what he omits that is important, and we know that Santiago’s ‘fishless desert’ will soon be over.
THE NOVEL
Page 5. (Page references are to the Heinemann editions)
‘He was an old man who fished alone’ – The first sentence establishes two key details about Santiago: his old age and his solitude.
‘forty days without a fish’ – Hemingway splits up Santiago’s eighty-four days without a fish into two groups of forty (the first forty with Manolin in the boat). This number forty has Biblical echoes to do with suffering and endurance. The Israelites were forty years in the wilderness; the Flood was forty days long; Jesus’ fast in the desert was forty days.
This heroism of defeat is at the root of Hemingway’s constant comparisons of Santiago with Christ as He undergoes the Passion. Christ’s heroism on the Cross, is essentially feminine, yielding: the word Passion itself derives from the same root as the word passive . Christ allows things to be done to him; He accepts the wounds; He is pierced. Santiago’s heroism is similar. He can no longer beat this marlin through his own strength (if he ever could have mastered such a great fish), but must endure hour after hour of agony while the fish pulls him and the boat and eventually tires itself out. Almost all of his fisherman’s skill is in yielding , responding to the fish’s actions, sensing what it will do and reacting accordingly. All of these skills and traits that the reader sees in Santiago are more Yin than Yang, more female than male.
Finally, Santiago learns a new humility. He accepts on the boat what he had long denied to himself: that Manolin, ‘the boy,’ has been keeping him alive for months. When he awakes in his hut, he accepts this, and he hears that he will not have to go out fishing alone again, for Manolin will accompany him. Hemingway, as the reader has come to expect, makes nothing of this, but, as always, it is what he omits that is important, and we know that Santiago’s ‘fishless desert’ will soon be over.
THE NOVEL
Page 5. (Page references are to the Heinemann editions)
‘He was an old man who fished alone’ – The first sentence establishes two key details about Santiago: his old age and his solitude.
‘forty days without a fish’ – Hemingway splits up Santiago’s eighty-four days without a fish into two groups of forty (the first forty with Manolin in the boat). This number forty has Biblical echoes to do with suffering and endurance. The Israelites were forty years in the wilderness; the Flood was forty days long; Jesus’ fast in the desert was forty days.
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