Summary and Critical Analysis of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Summary of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Old Man and the Sea is a novella that tells the story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Santiago has gone 84 days without catching a fish, earning him the reputation of being "salao" or extremely unlucky. Despite his bad luck, Santiago is determined to change his fortune and sets out alone on his skiff in search of a big catch.

On the 85th day, Santiago hooks a giant marlin, which becomes his most significant challenge yet. Over the course of three days and nights, Santiago battles the marlin, enduring immense physical and mental strain. The fish is strong and refuses to give up easily, towing Santiago’s skiff far from shore. Despite his age and weakened condition, Santiago admires the marlin’s strength and beauty, considering it a worthy opponent. He respects the fish, calling it his "brother," but is resolved to kill it to prove his worth as a fisherman.

After an exhausting struggle, Santiago finally manages to kill the marlin by driving a harpoon into its heart. He lashes the marlin to the side of his skiff and begins the journey back to shore, feeling victorious. However, his triumph is short-lived as sharks begin to attack the marlin, drawn by its blood. Despite Santiago’s best efforts to fend them off, the sharks devour the marlin, leaving behind only its skeleton.

Santiago returns to his village, physically broken but mentally undefeated. The marlin's skeleton, strapped to the side of his boat, is a testament to his struggle. While he returns without the meat of the fish, he has proven his skill, endurance, and spirit. The novella ends with Santiago falling into a deep sleep, dreaming of lions he once saw on the beaches of Africa, a recurring symbol of his youth and strength.

Critical Analysis of The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea is often hailed as Ernest Hemingway’s masterpiece, representing his minimalist style and his exploration of themes such as human endurance, isolation, and the relationship between man and nature.

At the heart of the novella is Santiago’s battle with the marlin, which serves as an allegory for the broader human condition. Santiago’s struggle is not merely against the fish but against the forces of nature, age, and his own limitations. Hemingway portrays Santiago as a man of unwavering determination, resilience, and dignity. Even though he fails to bring the marlin's meat back to shore, his struggle is portrayed as a noble effort that transcends the material reward. This reflects Hemingway's famous philosophy of grace under pressure, where success is defined not by outcomes but by the honor and courage shown in the face of adversity.

The novella is also steeped in Christian symbolism. Santiago’s three-day struggle can be seen as a parallel to Christ's suffering, with the marlin symbolizing a kind of salvation. The crucifixion-like imagery is reinforced when Santiago carries his mast on his shoulders, reminiscent of Christ carrying the cross. Santiago's wounds, his suffering, and ultimate return to his village echo themes of sacrifice and redemption.

Hemingway’s portrayal of the sea and the marlin emphasizes the natural world's grandeur and indifference. Santiago reveres the marlin as a noble creature, seeing it as his equal, even as he is forced to kill it. This respect for nature runs throughout the novella, with the sea acting as both a giver and a taker—providing Santiago with the marlin but also with the sharks that rob him of his prize. This duality speaks to the broader existential theme of man’s fight against an indifferent universe.

Moreover, The Old Man and the Sea delves into the loneliness of the human experience. Santiago is an old man, isolated from society, with only a young boy, Manolin, as his friend and disciple. His time at sea amplifies this solitude, and much of the novella takes place in Santiago's internal dialogue. His conversations with the fish and his memories of past glories reflect his need for connection, even in isolation.

In terms of style, Hemingway’s prose is spare and direct, yet deeply evocative. His "iceberg theory" of writing is on full display here, with much of the novella’s emotional weight lying beneath the surface. The straightforward language allows readers to focus on the underlying themes and symbolism without being distracted by ornate descriptions. This simplicity mirrors Santiago’s own way of life—humble, honest, and stripped of unnecessary embellishments.

In conclusion, The Old Man and the Sea is a profound meditation on the human spirit, resilience, and the eternal struggle between man and nature. Through Santiago’s epic battle, Hemingway explores the notions of heroism, pride, and existential perseverance, delivering a timeless story of grace in the face of overwhelming odds. While the novella may seem simple in its plot, its depth lies in its exploration of universal themes that resonate far beyond the story of one man and his fish.

1. The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway
   
   • Plot Overview
   • Themes
   • Character sketch of Santiago

Plot Overview of the novel Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway

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.

1. The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway
   
   • Plot Overview
   • Themes
   • Character sketch of Santiago

Themes in the novel Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway

THEMES

THE HONOR IN STRUGGLE, DEFEAT & DEATH

From the very first paragraph, Santiago is characterized as someone struggling against defeat. He has gone eighty-four days without catching a fish—he will soon pass his own record of eighty-seven days. Almost as a reminder of Santiago’s struggle, the sail of his skiff resembles “the flag of permanent defeat.” But the old man refuses defeat at every turn: he resolves to sail out beyond the other fishermen to where the biggest fish promise to be. He lands the marlin, tying his record of eighty-seven days after a brutal three-day fight, and he continues to ward off sharks from stealing his prey, even though he knows the battle is useless.

Because Santiago is pitted against the creatures of the sea, some readers choose to view the tale as a chronicle of man’s battle against the natural world, but the novella is, more accurately, the story of man’s place within nature. Both Santiago and the marlin display qualities of pride, honour, and bravery, and both are subject to the same eternal law: they must kill or be killed. As Santiago reflects when he watches the weary warbler fly toward shore, where it will inevitably meet the hawk, the world is filled with predators, and no living thing can escape the inevitable struggle that will lead to its death. Santiago lives according to his own observation: “man is not made for defeat . . . [a] man can be destroyed but not defeated.” In Hemingway’s portrait of the world, death is inevitable, but the best men (and animals) will nonetheless refuse to give in to its power. Accordingly, man and fish will struggle to the death, just as hungry sharks will lay waste to an old man’s trophy catch.

The novel suggests that it is possible to transcend this natural law. In fact, the very inevitability of destruction creates the terms that allow a worthy man or beast to transcend it. It is precisely through the effort to battle the inevitable that a man can prove himself. Indeed, a man can prove this determination over and over through the worthiness of the opponents he chooses to face. Santiago finds the marlin worthy of a fight, just as he once found “the great negro of Cienfuegos” worthy. His admiration for these opponents brings love and respect into an equation with death, as their destruction becomes a point of honour and bravery that confirms Santiago’s heroic qualities. One might characterize the equation as the working out of the statement, “Because I love you, I have to kill you.” Alternately, one might draw a parallel to the poet John Keats and his insistence that beauty can only be comprehended in the moment before death, as beauty bows to destruction. Santiago, though destroyed at the end of the novella, is never defeated. Instead, he emerges as a hero. Santiago’s struggle does not enable him to change man’s place in the world. Rather, it enables him to meet his most dignified destiny.

PRIDE AS THE SOURCE OF GREATNESS & DETERMINATION

Many parallels exist between Santiago and the classic heroes of the ancient world. In addition to exhibiting terrific strength, bravery, and moral certainty, those heroes usually possess a tragic flaw—a quality that, though admirable, leads to their eventual downfall. If pride is Santiago’s fatal flaw, he is keenly aware of it. After the sharks have destroyed the marlin, the old man apologizes again and again to his worthy opponent. He has ruined them both, he concedes, by sailing beyond the usual boundaries of fishermen. Indeed, his last word on the subject comes when he asks himself the reason for his undoing and decides, “Nothing . . . I went out too far.”

While it is certainly true that Santiago’s eighty-four-day run of bad luck is an affront to his pride as a masterful fisherman and that his attempt to bear out his skills by sailing far into the gulf waters leads to disaster, Hemingway does not condemn his protagonist for being full of pride. On the contrary, Santiago stands as proof that pride motivates men to greatness. Because the old man acknowledges that he killed the mighty marlin largely out of pride, and because his capture of the marlin leads in turn to his heroic transcendence of defeat, pride becomes the source of Santiago’s greatest strength. Without a ferocious sense of pride, that battle would never have been fought, or more likely, it would have been abandoned before the end.

Santiago’s pride also motivates his desire to transcend the destructive forces of nature. Throughout the novel, no matter how baleful his circumstances become, the old man exhibits an unflagging determination to catch the marlin and bring it to shore. When the first shark arrives, Santiago’s resolve is mentioned twice in the space of just a few paragraphs. First we are told that the old man “was full of resolution but he had little hope.” Then, sentences later, the narrator says, “He hit [the shark] without hope but with resolution.” The old man meets every challenge with the same unwavering determination: he is willing to die in order to bring in the marlin, and he is willing to die in order to battle the feeding sharks. It is this conscious decision to act, to fight, to never give up that enables Santiago to avoid defeat. Although he returns to Havana without the trophy of his long battle, he returns with the knowledge that he has acquitted himself proudly and manfully. Hemingway seems to suggest that victory is not a prerequisite for the honour. Instead, glory depends upon one having the pride to see a struggle through to its end, regardless of the outcome. Even if the old man had returned with the marlin intact, his moment of glory, like the marlin’s meat, would have been short-lived. The glory and honour Santiago accrues come not from his battle itself but from his pride and determination to fight.

• The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway: Critical Analysis and Summary
• Plot Overview
• Themes
• Character sketch of Santiago