The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea

By Ernest Hemingway

The story of an old Cuban fisherman and his supreme ordeal: after a long period of bad luck, a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream.

Very little did I think I would ever be in the position of reading Ernest Hemingway. Nothing I've heard of him or his stories has quickened my appetite or tempted me to cracking a work of his.  I suppose I cannot argue with his talent, which manages to turn a story about a man fishing into deep drama that is never (well, rarely) boring.  I will say though, that I have no compliments for the format I read it on, an e-book which not only made every short page feel like an eternity, but also, at some point towards the end, began excising sections between pages, so that I would end on a question and pick up the next page halfway through a harpoon attack. I was so close though, I just kept going. 

I'm certainly not capable of saying anything about Hemingway that hasn't been said before: his prose is short but compelling, this story full of masculine energy and pride and nature's agony (this could have easily qualified for the prompt in which nature is the antagonist). Surprisingly, I did find myself rooting for Santiago. I didn't expect to care or like him much, fishing is not my interest, and I've perhaps been predisposed to dislike anything of Hemingway's, but Santiago was so matter of fact and had so little pity for himself that I felt none for him as well, and without pity, you can begin to admire, at least a bit, his determination to see it through, even in the face of overwhelming odds. There is a poignancy in finishing a game in which you have been roundly defeated, for your own pride. Interestingly, the only other game in which Santiago participates in the course of the novel is arm wrestling, which he wins so soundly that he loses interest in it.  Hemingway lightly connects the dots between that man and the present Santiago, who is barely phased by eighty-five days without a catch, by alluding to Santiago's unnatural doggedness, both in arm-wrestling and fishing. 

The appeal of the book is easy to understand: the setting of a challenge between man and beast, where there is literally nothing else to impinge or impede on the battle, just your will against its will.  A clean and pure contest, of which the man is the victor even after his prize is taken away, a loss without defeat.

The Old Man and the Sea reads like a fable or a fairy tale, and it is simple enough that a three year old can understand it. I know this for a fact, because I had just finished reading it and my three year old asked for a story and, fresh out of ideas, I told the story of the fisherman who didn't get a fish for 84 days and then hooked the biggest fish of all, but before he could get it back to shore sharks ate it.  Being as it lacked any kind of magic, happy ending, or princesses, I don't think my three year-old was at all impressed, but who should you believe: a small doubting child or the Pulitzer Prize committee?

44: A Book You Have Always Avoided Reading