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.

Reaction and critical analyses

The Old Man and the Sea served to reinvigorate Hemingway's literary reputation and prompted a reexamination of his entire body of work. The novella was initially received with much popularity; it restored many readers' confidence in Hemingway's capability as an author. Its publisher, Scribner's, on an early dust jacket, called the novella a "new classic," and many critics favorably compared it with such works as William Faulkner's "The Bear" and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.

Related Topics:
Scribner's - William Faulkner - Herman Melville - Moby-Dick

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Following such extravagant acclaim, however, a school of critics emerged that interpreted the novella as a disappointing minor work. Notable in this shift from unqualified support is the critic Philip Young. In 1952, just following the novella's publication, Young provided an admiring review, suggesting that it was the book "in which said the finest single thing he ever had to say as well as he could ever hope to say it." Then, in 1966, he jeeringly noted that the "failed novel" too often "went way out." These self-contradictory views show that critical reaction ranged from adoration of the book's mythical, pseudo-religious intonations to flippant dismissal as pure fakery. The latter is founded in the notion that Hemingway, once a devoted student of realism, failed in his depiction of Santiago as a supernatural, clairvoyant impossibility.

Related Topics:
Philip Young - 1966 - Realism

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Critical views

One of the most celebrated favorable critical readings of the novella—and one which has defined analytical considerations since—came in 1957 with Joseph Waldmeir's essay entitled "Confiteor Hominem: Ernest Hemingway's Religion of Man." Perhaps the most memorable claim therein is his answer to the rhetorical question,

Related Topics:
1957 - Joseph Waldmeir - Essay - Rhetorical question

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:Just what is the book's message?

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:The answer assumes a third level on which The Old Man and the Sea must be read—as a sort of allegorical commentary on all his previous work, by means of which it may be established that the religious overtones of The Old Man and the Sea are not peculiar to that book among Hemingway's works, and that Hemingway has finally taken the decisive step in elevating what might be called his philosophy of Manhood to the level of a religion. (351)

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Waldmeir was one of the most prominent critics to wholly consider the function of the novella's Christian imagery, made most evident through Santiago's blatant reference to the crucifixion following his sighting of the sharks that reads:

Related Topics:
Christian - Crucifixion

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:Ay, he said aloud. There is no translation for this word and perhaps it is just a noise such as a man might make, involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood. (Hemingway 107)

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Waldmeir analyzes this line, supplemented with other instances of similar symbolism, in such a way that allows him to claim that The Old Man and the Sea was a seminal work in raising what he calls Hemingway's "philosophy of Manhood" to a religious level. Regardless of whether one agrees with this logic, his hallmark criticism, curiously sycophantic in tone, stands as one of the most durable, positive treatments of the novella.

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On the other hand, one of the most outspoken critics who has emerged in the camp of dissenting opinion of the work is Robert P. Weeks. His notorious 1962 piece, "Fakery in The Old Man and the Sea," presents a series of points that he claims show how the novella is a weak and unexpected divergence from the typical, realistic Hemingway. In juxtaposing this novella against Hemingway's previous works, he explains that

Related Topics:
Robert P. Weeks - 1962

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:The difference, however, in the effectiveness with which Hemingway employs this characteristic device in his best work and in The Old Man and the Sea is illuminating. The work of fiction in which Hemingway devoted the most attention to natural objects, The Old Man and the Sea, is pieced out with an extraordinary quantity of fakery, extraordinary because one would expect to find no inexactness, no romanticizing of natural objects in a writer who loathed W.H. Hudson, could not read Thoreau, deplored Melville's rhetoric in Moby Dick, and who was himself criticized by other writers, notably Faulkner, for his devotion to the facts and his unwillingness to "invent." (188)

Related Topics:
W.H. Hudson - Thoreau

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While his dismissal is mostly limited to the story at hand (he refers to previous Hemingway works as "earlier glories"), the evident range of critical interpretations is a curiosity for a work so widely renowned as a masterpiece.

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Awards

The accolades that Hemingway received directly for, and largely as a result of, The Old Man and the Sea were many. On May 4, 1953, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He also earned the Award of Merit Medal for the Novel from the American Academy of Letters that same year. Most prestigiously, the Nobel Prize in Literature came in 1954, "for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style."

Related Topics:
May 4 - 1953 - Pulitzer Prize for Fiction - Award of Merit Medal for the Novel - American Academy of Letters - Nobel Prize in Literature - 1954

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