In 1952, Ernest Hemingway published a novella titled The Old Man and the Sea. This novella won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and helped Hemingway win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. What is it about this simple eighty-page narrative that makes it so compelling?
The novella tells the story of a fisherman named Santiago, most often referred to as the old man, who had not caught a fish for eighty-four days. Consequently, the people of the small Cuban village decidedly define him as unlucky. That is, except for a young boy named Manolin, the old man’s most loyal friend.
The boy had learned how to fish from the old man and they used to do it frequently together–sadly, Manolin’s parents told him to stop fishing with the old man because of his lack of luck. Now the boy brings the old man coffee in the morning and helps him carry his fishing gear to the boat. One day, the old man leaves to fish as he had always done, and after three days of much pain and hardship, he catches a huge marlin. At the end of the three days, sharks ravage and eat the marlin. The old man arrives at his village exhausted, with only marlin bones to show for his work.
Ernest Hemingway’s writing style is packed with declarative sentences, dialogue, and little to no commentary about the meaning of the story’s events. Never does Hemingway say, “the old man was lonely.” Instead he shows it by mentioning the old man’s dead wife, his new habit of talking to himself, and his repeated “I wish the boy was here.” Never does Hemingway say, “the boy loved the old man.” Instead, he writes that the boy was not afraid to cry for the old man in front of all the other fishermen. Themes are not specifically stated in the story; they are embedded into the narrative.
In “Ernest Hemingway: the Art of Fiction No. 21,” an article and interview from the Paris Review, Hemingway said: “Though there is one part of writing that is solid and you do it no harm by talking about it, the other is fragile, and if you talk about it, the structure cracks and you have nothing.”
And when asked whether there is symbolism in his stories, he responds: “I suppose there are symbols since critics keep finding them. If you do not mind I dislike talking about them and being questioned about them…Read anything I write for the pleasure of reading it. Whatever else you find will be the measure of what you brought to the reading.”
Perhaps because we are used to an antithetical kind of writing—a stream of consciousness writing filled with symbols waiting to be dug out in literature classes—some find Hemingway unappealing. In my own writing, I often feel the need to find the meaning in a narrative myself and spell it out for the reader. But Hemingway attests to the sheer value of a good story. Whether one believes that there is a deeper meaning to every story and whether we can know what that meaning is, a good story well told cuts deep.
Now is no time to think of what you do not have.
Ernest Hemingway
Think of what you can do with that there is
To add to Hemingway’s point that “whatever else you find will be the measure of what you brought to the reading,” writers should not underestimate their readers. As we study hospitable and charitable writing in Wheaton, I note that it is charitable to trust that readers can connect to your story and find their own place within it. Telling readers straight-on your meaning and point has its place in writing, but there is a special hospitality in Hemingway’s method.
Therefore, in thinking about this story, there are many things each of us can learn from it. Each reader will connect to it in their own way and bring out a theme that another might not have recognized. One of the most overt themes in the story, which Hemingway was probably aware of as he wrote it and connected with the narrative, is that of hardship in the midst of loneliness.
Santiago says, “I wish the boy was here” about ten times throughout his three-day struggle with the marlin. Some may argue that there was a lesson for Santiago to learn by struggling alone, or a greater plan which he was not aware of; some may say that it teaches us that struggling is never good when a person is alone. Nonetheless, one thing is certain: the old man wishes that the boy had been there. The boy could help him, or talk to him, or just be there–he simply wishes that the boy was there.
Hemingway often said that writing is a solitary activity. In his Nobel Prize Banquet Speech, he said: “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.” And the author of the Paris Review interview says that Hemingway believed that “writing is a private, lonely occupation with no need for witnesses until the final work is done.”
This seems entirely contradictory to what we learn about writing at Wheaton and what the old man seems to believe about his occupation. Of course, fishing and writing are not exactly the same, yet I believe–and perhaps Hemingway believed, too–that they can mirror one another.
Hemingway, in that same Paris Review interview, says: “You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or rather you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love. If it is all the same to you I would rather not expound on that.”
With the utmost respect to one of my greatest heroes of literature, I will expound: writing, at its very essence, can never be truly solitary. Ernest Hemingway himself has spoken about the various literary influences in his works. Nothing we write is fully original; it is built upon various previous works, authors, stories, and people we connect with.
“Fish,” he said softly, aloud, “I’ll stay with you until I am dead.”
Ernest Hemingway
I understand why Hemingway would wake up at 5:00 a.m., hours before anyone in the house did, just to write undisturbed. I also prefer to write in silence and solitude. But the thoughts and words I write are never good when I don’t think of and draw upon other people. Are we lonely when we write alone? Was the old man alone in that skiff? Could the old man have felt lonely, yet the boy, the marlin, the sea, and the skiff were his inconspicuous companions? Writing, at times, feels like we are starving alone in the sea, but we have friends with us as long as we read and love. We need those friends to take us safely to shore and bring us coffee after the victory fish is reduced to bones. This is the measure of what I have brought to the reading. Just like the voices of millions of books and loved ones, the voice of the simple story, The Old Man and the Sea, whispers truth to solitary, so-called lonely, writers at 5 a.m.