First published, 1st October 2018
Hemingway’s swan song, The Old Man and the Sea, was more perfectly written than it has been read. I mean, it seems to me that those who have buzzed about it, like flies around some Faberjé egg, may have given the fable less thought than it deserves. The work is true to Hemingway’s so-called ‘iceberg’ theory in its construction, but the metaphor persists beyond what is presented to the scanning, skimming critic: public responses remain steadfastly content to glance at what little appears above the surface, perhaps simply and, frankly, uncaringly unaware that there is far more that remains hidden below. How could such a great work of art, an American national cultural treasure, the prompt for a Nobel prize be, at the same time, so reluctantly understood, its meaning and potential so dismissively despatched, its symbols and myths left so aimlessly disconnected like ‘the empty beer cans and dead barracudas’ in the polluted tide at the Terrace? To truly understand The Old Man and the Sea, we need to appreciate the importance of Hemingway’s ‘icebergs’. We need to (re)connect the peaks and join the dots.
Hemingway wrote into the end of his fable exactly how he knew his great tale would be misunderstood. The party of tourists, Hemingway’s perceived public, looks down from the restaurant. A woman sees the sad remains of Santiago’s Marlin ‘lifted and swung with the tide’. She asks a waiter what it is she sees, ‘the great fish that was now just garbage’. She is told, by one with equal ignorance, that it was perhaps a tiburon, a shark. It is as though the marlin is misconceived and dismissed by the characters in the narrative just as Hemingway knew his final masterpiece would be and has been so misunderstood by critics and readers. The author, qua old man of the sea, sleeps on and dreams of his lions…
To a certain extent, Americans have read into The Old Man and The Sea their own cultural myths and, in so doing, have imposed meanings that are perhaps more convenient than true. It is in this way that texts often become vehicles for others’ career, cultural and ideological agendas. But Hemingway gently and knowingly shows us how a work of art is constructed and how it might be better read and understood. This is, in some ways, not just Hemingway’s final word but his art poétique. Interestingly, unlike Joyce, perhaps, Hemingway chose to expose the nature of his craft at the end of his working life rather than at the outset: a reflection of a master rather than the manifesto of a precocious young artist setting out to challenge the literary world. As such, it is to be all the more valued and considered. Having said this, it would be wrong to draw a simple parallel between Santiago’s marlin and the writer’s work.
What can the old man teach Manolin, the boy? What can the boy teach Santiago? What is learnt? One of the key understandings in the fable is to locate the true source of wisdom and to see that it lies not in passing on knowledge from master to apprentice (or vice versa) but lies in how nature, the natural world, has lessons for mankind. Taking this tack (to coin a nautical phrase) the reader should begin to feel a sense of the importance of the lion symbolism and how the lions of Santiago’s dreams, and, significantly the final image of the work, have central meaning and relevance. Perhaps it might be worth considering the symbolism of the lions first. There are a number of ways into the meaning of the fable, but this motif is the simplest and, like a magic key, it unlocks many doors.
The first thing to note is that the lions are not there to symbolise male potency. It is not the lions in themselves that captivated the young Santiago and have entranced him on into old age but where they are located. What, in nature, is the lesson upon which Santiago dreams? “He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy.” The final sentence of the fable is: “The old man was dreaming about the lions.” To dismiss the true meaning and obvious importance of the symbolism is as much an interpretative ‘crime’ as to dismiss the identity and importance of: “the long backbone of the great fish…”.
The meaning of the lions on the beach is best approached by first considering the importance of limitationas a sort of theme. The idea of boundaries is what connects the marlin to the lions, the lions to the old fisherman and Santiago to us all. It is up to the reader to make these connections.
This is not a fable about hope, American dreams, man pitting himself against nature in some macho act of muscular Christian wilfulness. (If anything, Hemingway owes more here to Coleridge than to Melville or Nietzsche). Hemingway is not presenting a journey that extols value in mankind’s subduction of the natural world. How could the disastrous return journey possibly convey any sense of success or hope? The reader is robbed of the thrill of triumph as much as is the old man. Each shark attack that takes chunks out of the marlin takes a bite out of our own hubris. But within the pathos of what is, in effect, a tragic return, lies the central cathartic message: “No, he said. You violated your luck when you went too far outside.” Earlier, like a mantra, Santiago iterates the same lesson, a lesson the marlin has taught him: “‘I shouldn’t have gone out so far, fish,’ he said. ‘Neither for you nor for me. I’m sorry, fish.’”
There is no need for some great stretch of inferential imagination to see that the lions on the beach captivate the ancient mariner because they have reached the edge of their domain. They can’t hunt beyond the beach. Instead, they play. True to his ‘iceberg’ theory, Hemingway might hope that we would fill the narrative gap, or, rather, make the symbolic connection, that exists between marlin and lion. As for himself, like a sort of knackered big game hunting Prospero, Hemingway is content to sleep, while we, the tourists at the Terrace, must muddle on as best we can…
No fable is completely understood without a moral. What is the moral? The moral message follows neatly and logically from the natural imagery, symbolism and the interaction between man and nature that comprise the narrative chain of events between Santiago’s setting out on his fateful eighty-fifth ‘lucky’ day to his humiliating but enlightening return with nothing more than a chomped up carcass. There is no futility, if lessons, the morals, have been learned. But before considering the real message, it is important to dismiss three interlopers: (1) age and youth need each other to succeed, (2) fortune is fickle and not to be trusted, (3) God as some universal, pantheistic power doesn’t give a damn about our wants and needs. Save your prayers.
It is a sound narrative device to present a moral lesson to the central character within the narrative and, thereby, convey the message beyond the work and on into the minds of the intelligent and sensitive reader. What Santiago learns, we learn (or not, as the case might be). It is worth considering the second and third fake morals first, because, in this respect, they are most easily dismissed. On his last night, Santiago considers both prayers and luck and concludes: “I have all those prayers I promised if I caught the fish, he thought. But I am too tired to say them now.” And also: “I must not think nonsense, he thought. Luck is a thing that comes in many forms and who can recognise her?” Interestingly, the old man understands that fortune is as false a god as God. Success or failure lie not in the laps of gods or in fortune, but in ourselves: “Could I buy it [luck] with a lost harpoon and a broken knife and two bad hands?” Later, Manolin reiterates Santiago’s own sentiments: “‘The hell with luck,’ the boy said, ‘I’ll bring the luck with me.’”
Joseph Waldmeir’s all too influential interpretation, written five years after publication, has served little more than to misdirect:
‘Hemingway has finally taken the decisive step in elevating what might be called his philosophy of Manhood to the level of a religion.’
We might usefully dismiss this reading of the allegory as readily as Santiago. But what of the first false moral? Doesn’t the old man reflect on the value of youth, as he struggles in his dual with the great fish? Knowledge and experience are one thing, but wisdom and youthful energy can be effective and powerful when combined. Certainly, Santiago repeats his regret at not having the help of his apprentice: “‘I wish the boy were here,’ he said aloud and settled himself against the rounded planks of the bow.” “‘I wish the boy were here and that I had some salt,’ he said aloud.” And so on. When master and apprentice reunite on Santiago’s return, there is certainly a sense of optimism and new resolve, as if the two have learnt the importance and value of facing new challenges as a team: “‘Now we fish together.’”
This might be the boy’s conclusion, his confirmation, but it is not the moral of the fable. There is a strong sense of departure, of leave-taking in the final moments of the story. The old man is defeated: “‘In the night I […] felt something in my chest was broken.’” The boy departs with foreboding: “As the boy went out the door and down the worn coral rock road he was crying again.” Sure, he knows. That’s closure. The first of the three moral possibilities is also, to coin a phrase, a red herring. Time to return to the lions…
The central relevance of the lions on the beach has already been noted. Their importance to the old man should be equally important to us. Mankind is Nature’s unnatural species. The natural predator cannot hunt beyond its natural limits: the lion cannot go fishing, but our own land-based species can. Homo sapiens, the final Homo habilis, is the only technologically ‘gifted’ species in nature and it is this ability to extend ourselves beyond natural limits, through the making and use of tools, that sets us totally apart if not also totally adrift. At a time when the Cold War was just kicking off on the back of the Second World War, authors might well have been justifiably awarded Nobel prizes for pointing out to us all the dangers of sailing too far out or for being such a pernicious race of little odious vermin (William Golding’s Lord of the Flies springs swiftly to mind).
I think the detailed descriptions of Santiago’s primitive tools and of how clubs, lines, hooks, gaffs and harpoons, knives, and all the other paraphernalia needed for deep sea fishing by the impoverished, aim at something beyond Hemingway’s own fetishes. Technology is what allows mankind to overreach himself, to go beyond natural limits. As much as the sharks have devoured the great fish bite by bite to bare bones, so have they confiscated the old man’s tools one by one. By the time Santiago limps or scurries pathetically back to shore, he has been stripped clean of his technology, humbled and reduced to being not much more than the poor forked thing that he is. Truly has he been taught a lesson. But at least the poor humbled Santiago is well enough connected to the sea to understand. One senses that others are less aware, less sensitive. It is as though Santiago is not unlucky so much as behind the times, industrial times. The plane that flies over him towards Miami and the planes that Manolin says went to search for him are ‘icebergs’ the reader might spot but Santiago fails to make the connection, one feels. But, like ‘the great DiMagio’ (who retired from baseball the same year The Old Man and the Sea was written), Santiago also knows that: “They have other men on the team”. The other, successful, fishermen haul their big catches over to the factories. On the Terrace, the younger men mock the old. But the ultimate message is that they do so at their peril.
Above the immediate moral of the fable lie two more important lessons: firstly, that just as much as we need to be willing to ‘read’ our natural environment, so too might we give more time and thought to those who write stuff. As a journalist, Hemingway must have been fully aware of the accelerating and damaging effects of technology on the reading of the writer’s craft. In the heedless technological age, the likes of DiMagio, Santiago and Hemingway should have been glad to get the hell out when they did. Secondly, if you really want to know how to ‘read’ the fish, go find out for yourself and don’t ask the waiter.