The Old Man and the Sea

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Ernest Hemingway

Literature

Aug 13, 2018

Published in 1952, this novella was greeted with wide popular acclaim; it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and was the catalyst for the Swedish Academy’s bestowal of the Nobel Prize on Hemingway a year later. For all its knowing description of the tools and techniques of fishing, The Old Man and the Sea is a tall tale of sorts, chronicling an elderly Cuban fisherman’s epic contest—“communion” might be a more accurate word—with an enormous marlin. Across several days and nights, the weary but determined Santiago tracks the hooked creature, until he at last claims his catch, which is so big that it must be strapped to the side of his skiff, where it is inexorably attacked and eaten by sharks before the old man can get back to port. The book’s sturdy, stalwart, almost ancient eloquence is haunted with echoes of the sure but ineffable truths of tragedy: We sense some profound meaning, but we can’t quite put words to it.

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