Summary of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Description

The old man, his boat, the admiring boy, the sea, a few clouds, two or three fish, a few birds, the great marlin and finally the sharks – those are the ingredients of this famous novella. Stripping out the complications of modern life, Hemingway presents a story of one man’s timeless struggle both with and against the elements. Survival isn’t simply a Darwinian struggle to determine the fittest, but a need to persevere despite challenges and setbacks: to rise to the occasion but also accept that events can turn a success into a failure. It’s the need to go to sleep at the end of a harrowing ordeal with the simple idea that tomorrow you’ll get up and try again. The work of an aging author, The Old Man and the Sea focuses on the realities of growing old and the desire to remain vital and relevant. Much like the old man in the book, Hemingway found himself looking back on his early successes while finding it ever harder to repeat them. As such, his last completed work of fiction was a triumph over his critics, who had basically declared him finished as a novelist. In the middle of a confusing 20th century and with his characteristically economical style, Hemingway makes the battle of this lone fisherman off the coast of Cuba into a poignant story of humanity’s struggle to find meaning.

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Sujets

• Classics
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: GetAbstract AG
• Date de parution: 27 décembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798887270890
• Langue: English

Extrait

Novella Modernism

The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway • First edition: New York 1952

Take-Aways

WithThe Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway triumphed over his critics after a prolonged creative crisis. The old fisherman, Santiago, hasn’t caught anything for 84 days, and so he ventures into deeper waters. Finally, a great marlin bites the line. After an epic battle, the fisherman kills his opponent and lashes it to the boat. But its blood attracts sharks, which eat away at the marlin. Even tually, he must give up. He returns to his village with nothing but the fish’s skeleton. The novella is a parable of human existence: No matter how much the world conspires against you, you’ll always win – as long as you keep on trying. Its artful symbolism is an example of the author’s “iceberg principle”: Underlying themes shine through implicitly, just like the tip of an iceberg hints at its massive bottom underwater. Published in 1952, the book played an important rol e in winning Hemingway the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. This stark story struck a chord with readers, who, after two decades of economic turmoil and war, were starting to enjoy the fruits of 1950s affluence. At the time of publication, Hemingway had been livi ng in Cuba for over a decade, after having spent many years since learning the art of fishing marlin in the Caribbean. Despite his claim that characters in the book were fictional, the first mate of his boat, a fisherman in Cuba, grew into the role of Sa ntiago. He charged tourists a hefty fee for playing the part. Hemingway committed suicide in 1961. But his distin ctive style survived in the multitude of writers it inspired. “How many people will [the marlin] feed, he thought. But are they worthy to eat him? No, of course not. There is no one worthy of e ating him from the manner of his behavior and his great dignity.”

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