Review

Notes

• p50 - That was the saddest thing I ever saw with them, the old man thought. The boy was sad too and we begged her pardon and butchered her promptly.
• p55 - “Take a good rest, small bird,” he said. “Then go in and take your chance like any man or bird or fish.”
• p60-61 - The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.
• p64
  • There are three things that are brothers: the fish and my two hands. It must uncramp. It is unworthy of it to be cramped.
  • I wish I could show him what sort of man I am. But then he would see the cramped hand. Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so. I wish I was the fish, he thought, with everything he has against only my will and my intelligence.
  • He was comfortable but suffering, although he did not admit the suffering at all.
• p66 - “I told the boy I was a strange old man,” he said. “Now is when I must prove it.” ¶ The thousand times he had proved it meant nothing. Now he was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it.
  • The page made me think of Hamlet. “…to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing, end them…” Hamlet holds a special place in my heart and I suppose I see it in many things.
• p88 - I must hold his pain where it is, he thought. Mine does not matter. I can control mine. But his pain could drive him mad. (TB: were it so easy.)
• p103 - “But man is not made for defeat,” he said. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
• p104-105 - It is silly not to hope, he thought. Besides I believe it is a sin. Do not think about sin, he thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it. ¶ I have no understanding of it and I am not sure that I believe in it. Perhaps it was a sin to kill the fish. I suppose it was even though I did it to keep me alive and feed many people. But then everything is a sin. Do not think about sin. It is much too late for that and there are people who are paid to do it.
• p110
  • “I wish it were a dream and that I had never hooked him. I’m sorry about it, fish. It makes everything wrong.” (TB: feeling like you’ve ruined something in the seeking of it or the attainment of it, or of its vision, anyway.)
  • Now is not the time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.
• p115 - What will you do now if they come in the night? What can you do? ¶ “Fight them,” he said. “I’ll fight them until I die.”
• p117 - I hope I do not have to fight again, he thought. I hope so much I do not have to fight again.
• Last. TB: Even knowing that Hem did not enjoy ideas of theme in story, it is hard for me to read this as anything but an analogy for the struggle of self against. Against nature, self, etc. Ideas of persistence, despair, hope, skill, and will. Also the idea of corrupting or destroying a thing in the seeking or achievement of it.
• Published 1952. Hem died by suicide in 1961.

— # Review

I have a vague memory that a high school teacher assigned this out of one of those big Literature textbooks. Maybe the one with the teal spine and black cover. I remember loathing it and finding it dreadfully boring. I think a lot of the texts assigned in high school literature classes are stupid things to assign people with very little life experience. And I say that as someone who adored The Great Gatsby and would only find in later years just how deeply parts of it spoke to me. The Old Man and the Sea did not speak to me in high school, because the parts of my spirit that it could speak to were still under construction and had yet to grow ears.

I know that Hem did not love ideas of theme or symbolism in his stories and routinely mocked critics for thinking about them. In a letter to Bernard Berenson he wrote:

Then there is the other secret. There isn’t any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.

I also know that Hem believed in writing a true sentence. That in the writing of truth the reader should feel that they lived the story. I am not an old man and I have not been on the sea and I have not harpooned a fish be it 18" or 18 feet.

But in this book I see an analogy for struggle. Struggle against nature, against self, situation, etc. I see ideas of persistence, will, hope, regret and despair. Ideas that the searching of a thing noble does not mean that the thing when found will not be corrupted or destroyed in the finding of it. Yet, the searching is the point so what are you going to do? This is that for which you were born.

“Take a rest, small bird” he said. “Then go in and take your chance like any man or bird or fish.”

Small reprieves. The man talks himself through the voyage and his work. He is careful to himself, mindful of his thoughts and talks himself through anxieties and fears. He is old enough to know himself, to know when he is thinking too much or when his mind is unclear. I like this. Of course, it is one thing to recognize and another to intervene.

Hem of course talks a lot about “man” throughout. “But man is not made for defeat,” he said, “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” (p103). I am choosing to read basically all instances of this word as a reference to humanity rather than any particular gender. Part of this is that last week I wrote sort of a pissed-off scree on masculinity and “man” in general (publishing tomorrow, will update with link) and so it feels hypocritical to love Hemingway in the same breath. But, c’est la vie. Another part is that I feel the intention is not gendered. Yeah, the same guy wrote “Men without Women” but he’s dead and I’m going to interpret it as I please. I don’t think he’d care about my interpretation, anyway. I’m interpreting it for myself.

It is a hard world. Without hope, how can you do anything? How could you survive? I don’t think you could. To be hopeless is a terrible thing. I think the Old Man agrees:

It is silly not to hope, he thought. Besides, I believe it is a sin. Do not think about sin, he thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it. > > I have no understanding of it and I am not sure that I believe in it. Perhaps it was a sin to kill the fish. I suppose it was even though I did it to keep me alive and feed many people. But then everything is a sin. Do not think about sin. It is much too late for that and there are people who are paid to do it.

(p104-105)

Endurance and persistence are related things. I have a slight envy towards people that seem to have easy lives, though I am not fooled into thinking anyone’s life is without struggle. “What will you do now if they come in the night? What can you do? ¶ ‘Fight them,’ he said. ‘I’ll fight them until I die.’” (p115.) There are times when we have high energy and our grit is with us and we feel that we are spoiling for the fight. We feel that we know what is right and how to do things. Skilled, and determined. Ready. But life is hungry, and we cannot get through it alone. It is not possible. If you are not ready to be with people or to trust them or to rely on others, I do not know what to tell you. Two pages after the Old Man says the preceding, he is worn out. “I hope I do not have to fight them again, he thought. I hope so much I do not have to fight again.” It’s hard not to think of the little bird and the small rest.

It is not lost on me that Hemingway completed suicide not quite ten years after the publication of this book. Hemingway’s melancholy and eventual death are sad but interesting things to read about. Mental health treatment in the 1960’s was not exactly the cutting edge of human-centered care. Many rounds of electroshock therapy. “What is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure, but we lost the patient,” Hemingway apparently tells A.E. Hotchner. It’s also worth considering the hereditary angle, the medical angle. Hemochromatosis, the same abettor to his father’s suicide. Ripples in time, and all of that.

Anyway, hope is a requirement of life on this planet and probably all others where beings slither or walk or breath or love and dream.

Unlike my high school counterpart, I saw much in this book, beyond the words, that I connect to and love.