Actors - The Old Man and the Sea

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	Actors - The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea is a novella by Ernest Hemingway written in Cuba in 1951 and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction to be produced by Hemingway and published in his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it centers upon an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Though it has been the subject of disparate criticism, it is noteworthy in twentieth century fiction and in Hemingway's canon, reaffirming his worldwide literary prominence and significant in his selection for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

Background and publication

Most biographers maintain that the years following Hemingway's publication of For Whom the Bell Tolls
in 1940 until 1952 were the bleakest in his literary career. The novel Across the River and Into the Trees (1950) was almost unanimously disparaged by critics as self-parody. Evidently his participation as an Allied correspondent in World War II did not yield fruits equivalent to those wrought of his experiences in World War I (A Farewell to Arms
, 1929) or the Spanish Civil War (For Whom the Bell Tolls).

Hemingway had initially planned to use Santiago's story, which became The Old Man and the Sea, as part of a larger work, which he referred to as "The Sea Book." Some aspects of it did appear in the posthumously published Islands in the Stream. Positive feedback he received on Santiago's story led him to write it as an independent work.

The novella first appeared, in its 26,500-word entirety, as part of the September 1 1952 edition of Life magazine. 5.3 million copies of that issue were sold within two days. The majority of concurrent criticism was extravagantly positive, while a streak of dissenting criticism has since emerged.

Bizarrely, the title was misprinted on the cover of an early edition as The Old Men and the Sea.

Inspiration for character

While Hemingway was living in Cuba beginning in 1940 with his third wife Martha Gellhorn, one of his favorite pastimes was to sail and fish in his boat, named the Pilar. General biographical consensus holds that the model for Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea was, at least in part, the Cuban fisherman Gregorio Fuentes.

Fuentes, born in 1897 on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, migrated to Cuba when he was six years old and met Hemingway there in 1928. In the 1930s, Hemingway hired him to look after his boat. During Hemingway's Cuban years a strong friendship formed between Hemingway and Fuentes. For almost thirty years, Fuentes served as the captain of the Pilar; this included time during which Hemingway did not live in Cuba.

Fuentes, suffering from cancer, died in 2002; he was 104 years old. Just prior, he had donated Hemingway's Pilar to the Cuban government. He had never read The Old Man and the Sea.

Summary

The Old Man and the Sea recounts an epic battle between an old, experienced fisherman and a giant marlin said to be the largest catch of his life.

It opens by explaining that the fisherman, who is named Santiago (but only directly referred to outside of dialogue as "the old man"), has gone 84 days without catching a fish. He is apparently so unlucky that his young apprentice, Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to sail with the old man and been ordered to fish with more successful fishermen. Still dedicated to the old man, however, the boy visits Santiago's shack each night, hauling back his fishing gear, feeding him, and discussing American baseball—most notably Santiago's idol, Joe DiMaggio. Santiago tells Manolin that on the next day, he will venture far out into the Gulf to fish, confident that his unlucky streak is near its end.

Thus on the eighty-fifth day, Santiago sets out alone, taking his skiff far into the Gulf. He sets his lines and, by noon of the first day, a big fish that he is sure is a marlin takes his bait. Unable to pull in the great marlin, Santiago instead finds the fish pulling his skiff. Two days and two nights pass in this manner, during which the old man bears the tension of the line with his body. Though he is wounded by the struggle and in pain, Santiago expresses a compassionate appreciation for his adversary, often referring to him as a brother.

On the third day of the ordeal, the fish begins to circle the skiff, indicating his tiredness to the old man. Santiago, now completely worn out and almost in delirium, finds the strength to stab the marlin with a harpoon and kill him during one of his great lunges out of the water.

Santiago straps the marlin to his skiff and heads home, thinking about the high price the fish will bring him at the market and how many people he will feed. The old man determines that because of the fish's great dignity, no one will be worthy of eating the marlin.

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Actors - The Old Man and the Sea

Background and publication

Inspiration for character

Summary

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