Ernest Hemingway was born at Oak Park, Michigan in 1899 to educated parents. His working musician mother taught him music while his doctor father introduced him to the world of the “great outdoors.” Hemingway’s father was instrumental instilling a passion for hunting and fishing. Since childhood Hemingway pursued essentially manly pursuits like boxing and hunting. He was enthralled by bullfighting which to him was a mixture of sport and hunting. Hemingway disliked anything effeminate therefore he hated his name Ernest which reminded Hemingway of the effeminate hero of Oscar Wilde’s play “The Importance of Being Ernest.” In the words of Gertrude Stein, Hemingway belonged to “a lost generation” of the American expatriate writers who sojourned all over the European continent and lived in Paris, away from their North American home and roots. Hemingway was a globe trotter all his life. His life was a continuous journey. He travelled extensively in Europe, never resided at one particular place in his native United States, lived in Cuba and twice visited the African continent for big game hunting. Early on he opted for a journalistic career but was only content writing fiction which was his ultimate vocation. Hemingway took active part in the First World and the Second World War. During the First World War he was an ambulance driver and later a soldier. Only after sustaining life threatening injury that he returned to the United States. Besides the two World Wars, during which he was awarded medals of valor Hemingway also covered the Spanish Civil War as a war correspondent. In 1952 Hemingway received the prestigious Pulitzer Prize and in 1954 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. By this time owing to heavy drinking and the various, some life threatening injuries that Hemingway sustained through-out his life, his writing output suffered drastically. In addition, like his father he suffered painful bouts of hypertension and depression which inevitably resulted in his suicide on April 21, 1961 (Donaldson 4-367).
Clinton S. Burhans believes that Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea as a parable in which he gives the protagonist, Santiago, mythological stature. Burhans posits that the novel The Old Man and the Sea provides an insight into the mystical philosophy of Hemingway. Burhans comments that “solidarity and interdependence” is the main theme of the novel. He argues that it is a sin on part of Santiago to leave civilization behind and to venture far into the sea to hunt the elusive marlin. It is because of his sin that Santiago after an epic hunt including the chase, returns empty handed to the shore. His prize fish is eaten-up by the scavenging sharks and he is left with nothing but a skeleton of a once powerful and beautiful fish. He ventured too far away from the civilization and is befittingly punished by nature, as he has nothing to show by the end of his journey, though, it is a fact that he almost lost his life trying to bait and kill the great fish. Burhans’ thesis is that Santiago learns the qualities love and humility after he is defeated by nature. His experience, craft, passion and strength amount to very little when pitted against the forces of nature, His tragedy, like the rest of humanity, is that he exists in an indifferent universe. Burhans’ is convinced that Hemingway in The Old Man and the Sea stresses the triviality of the human endeavor in the ultimate natural scheme of things. He buttresses his position by pointing out the symbols employed by Hemingway in the novel, especially the reference to baseball and DiMaggio, the ultimate team sport and perhaps the ultimate team player. The Conradian indifference of nature to the plight of man is the essential tragic vision of Hemingway according to Burhans (Burhans 446-455).
According to Bickford Sylvester, Burhans estimate of The Old Man and the Sea is fundamentally wrong. Sylvester that in the novel Hemingway is stressing the complete opposite of what Burhans writes. To Sylvester, Hemingway in his extended vision stresses the importance of the man that ventures far at his own expanse. Hemingway in the novel The Old Man and the Sea emphasizes the importance of individualism. According to Sylvester the individual with the inherent and natural strength of will and conviction is the model for the rest of the humanity. Hemingway does not condone individualism as Burhans wrongly asserts but he is all praise or the natural champions of all species, may they be the human Santiago or the fish represented by the marlin. Both are champions of their respective species and both have the courage to go against the current of nature. According to Sylvester Santiago does not earn his reward coming back to civilization but on the high seas where in complete isolation he struggles with the fish. Hemingway is all for the isolated individual who has the will and the strength to combat nature and to win. For Hemingway the lonely individual with the natural talent, a rarity in many respects is the true redeemer. This according to Sylvester is the mature, extended vision of Hemingway (Sylvester 130-138).
According to William E. Cain, The Old Man and the Sea, “for all its intrepid dignity, it is deeply disquieting in its themes.” And perhaps, for this reason is the most misunderstood of Hemingway’s writings. Further, Cain suggests that it is a mock-serious fable. It is still at the periphery of Hemingway studies because it lacks the essential Hemingway’s motif of sex, love, gender and war. Cain emphasizes the need to reread the novel in order to come to terms with its “strange brilliance.” Though the novel lacks the range and the scale of the novels Hemingway wrote in 1920s, according to Cain, The Old Man and the Sea is Hemingway’s masterpiece. Besides many other lessons one of the prime lesson the novel teaches the readers is that the reality of an experience or the real essence of an individual cannot be judged from the surface. In the novel The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway makes the tragic and the comic come together, as he had never before been able to accomplish in his writings. The novel, according to Cain, is a mixture of the heroic and the laughable. Santiago like all of Hemingway heroes shows great grace under pressure but he is better than all his other protagonists as he embodies the majesty, on the one hand and the meaninglessness, on the other hand, of the human existence. In addition to all the qualities the simple prose of the novel has a breathtaking musical quality and tenor making The Old Man and the Sea a great work of art (Cain 112-125).
In conclusion, The Old Man and the Sea is Hemingway’s master-piece. The novel possesses a timeless quality. While the protagonist Santiago is a redeemer and the pain of the chase and the carrying of the mast like a cross, at the end of the novel, makes Santiago achieve the transcendental and the divine. No matter what the critics of Hemingway say about The Old Man and the Sea, to me it is the one of the best novels, ever written in English. The Old Man and the Sea is the culminating and the highest point of Hemingway as an artist and Hemingway as the philosopher. The prose of the novel is exquisite and has musical modulation and cadence like the best of jazz musicians. Further, as a philosophy of life, The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway it seems has reached the zenith of his philosophic thought. No wonder there was nothing much of substance for him to write once Hemingway had written The Old Man and the Sea.
Works Cited
Burhans, Clinton S. "The Old Man and the Sea: Hemingway's Tragic Vision of Man." American Literature 31.4 (1960): 447-455. Print.
Cain, William E. "Death Sentences: Rereading The Old Man and the Sea." The Sewanee Review 114.1 (2006): 112-125. Print.
Donaldson, Scott. By Force of Will: The Life and Art of Ernest Hemingway. New York: Viking Press, 1977. Print.
Sylvester, Bickford. "Hemingway's Extended Vision: The Old Man and the Sea." PMLA 81.1 (1966): 130-138. Print.
