30 Books in 30 Beach Days Day 4: "The Old Man and the Sea"
- bostonbookworm22
- Jul 21, 2017
- 3 min read
Lately, I’ve been watching a lot of nature shows on Netflix.
I got pulled in by David Attenborough’s chirpy narration on Animal Planet, and since I’ve added countless shows—on predators and prey, on life in extreme climates, on the flora and fauna of the South Pacific—to my queue. There is something beautiful about how life finds a way and adapts—even when watching a lion stalk and shred a wildebeest.
It was these nature shows that I thought of when I recently revisited The Old Man and the Sea, which I hadn’t read since high school. This is my pick for today, and fittingly—today would have been Ernest Hemingway’s 118th birthday. As a birthday tribute to Mr. Hemingway, let’s launch into perhaps the ultimate beach read (super-quick, detail-laden, and set 100% on or directly adjacent to the ocean).
When I read The Old Man and the Sea in high school, I remember mostly being caught up in the adventure aspect of the tale, and I rooted for Santiago, the titular old man, just as he rooted for his beloved Yankees, who played his beloved “the baseball.” The novel opens on the 84th day of Santiago’s dry streak; as a fisherman, he’s been labeled salao, “the worst form of unlucky.” His protégé, a young boy named Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to accompany the old man on fishing expeditions, lest that bad luck be transferred to him.
Most of the novel then launches into Santiago’s 85th day, in which he hooks a massive marlin and spends days at sea, surviving in a skiff as he attempts to bring down the massive beast—which would provide him a winter’s worth of fortune.
The beautiful part of this book, which I had forgotten, is how balanced, how calming it is, even when things look dire for Santiago. The marlin is not his enemy; he constantly refers to it as his brother and his friend. He regrets the need to kill the fish, but it is a need—as in any hierarchical relationship within the food chain—that must exist. The first few pages of the novel situate the reader firmly in the depth of Santiago’s plight; he is incredibly poor, relying on Manolin, who loves him, to bring him food. He is truly desperate to catch this fish. The open water is where he and the fish struggle respectfully against one another to survive. There, everything is reduced to the most basic needs: Santiago rations water so he does not become dehydrated, he kills and filets dolphins, which he eats raw, in order to keep up his strength, he pleads with his hands to stay strong and not to cramp. Gone is the beer, the money, the baseball on the radio from the shore. This is nature—including intelligent man—at its most raw.
There is thrill in these pages, and I won’t spoil what happens. But more than thrill, there is beauty, and there is calm. Even when things are at their worst, Santiago does not panic, and this tone is reflected in Hemingway’s deliberate, measured prose. Any terror or joy we feel as readers comes from Hemingway’s mastery of language; his sensual descriptions situate us firmly under the beating sun, on the salt-washed skiff, within Santiago’s weather-worn and wizened body.
The structure of the novel, too, is beautifully cyclical; it being on shore, with Santiago and Manolin together, and that’s where it ends, too. Whether or not the old man can break his unlucky streak and prove that he is not, in fact, salao, we see that this respectful battle between man and fish will continue—must continue—for generations to come.
Rating: 5/5
