The Old Man and the Sea
Day 1
-1952; won Nobel prize for literature.
- We know Santiago had been unlucky for 84 days;
What do the boy’s parents think about the old man? – the boy loves the Old
Man.
- What kind of relationship do Santiago and the boy have? Santiago is the father
figure in the relationship – the caregiver, feeds him, covers him, worries about
him.
(A beautiful harmony develops between them. What one lacks, the other
provides. Manolin, for example, has energy and enthusiasm. He finds food and clothing for
Santiago, and encourages him despite his bad luck. Santiago, in turn, has wisdom and experience.
He tells the boy stories about baseball and teaches him to fish. Wants to show the boy what a
real man can do. )
Santiago is even too lonely to bear the picture of his wife – he only has Manolin.
- “They went thorough this fiction everyday” (13). Same routine.
-Male bonding and the masculine Hemingway through talk of baseball.
DiMaggio as the symbol of masculine strength and excellence. The perfect
ballplayer, the perfect model of a Hemingway hero.
Hemingway hero code: “Anyone can fish in May” (15). Stoic.
Old Man wakes up from “a long way away” (15). Does that description sound
familiar (Catherine).
- Santiago then reminisces about his time as a youth on a ship that sailed to Africa, and about the
lions he saw on the beaches there.
(p. 21) Old Man dreams of lions. What might the lions represent?
Keep them in mind towards the end (The powerful lions symbolize
Santiago’s youth, vigor). Even though the apartment is spartan, the
“inner lion” remains inside the old man.
DAY 2
“The Great Well’s” vivid description.
- Santiago thinks of the sea as “la mar,” as a woman who can give or withhold
great favors and changes with the moon. He doesn’t understand the younger
fishermen. They use motorboats instead of skiffs and call the sea “el mar,” using
the masculine noun as if the sea is their enemy.
When Santiago is gone, his generation’s reverence for the sea may also be gone.
-Santiago’s eyes are still good, and he’s able to read the signs of nature even after a
terrible streak of bad fishing.
-One of the first signs of “good” nature vs. “bad” nature: the
loggerheads eating the men of war. Marlin good, porpoises good,
stars good. Sharks bad.
-What’s the sign of the Old Man’s luck beginning to turn? (the tuna).
“He knew exactly what it was.” The Marlin arrives (39).
- Pulled out so far that he can’t even see the land, Santiago faces a fish far stronger
than he is. As an old man with no available help, Santiago faces a serious and
potentially dangerous challenge.
What won’t allow him to accept defeat? (His pride), knowing he was born for this
job
DAY 3
Santiago “tried not to think, but only to endure” (when fighting the fish, [43]).
What’s this trait a reminder of again?
When the old man reminds himself to eat the tuna, who immediately comes next
to mind? Why? (Reminder of caretaking via Manolin). (48)
-Like the war that Frederic Henry fought in, the Old Man is in this till the end.
- Talks to his hand, which cramps and betrays him “a treachery of one’s own body
(60).
-Why does Hemingway describe the marlin in shades of purple? (Regal).
“But, thank God, they are not as intelligent as we who kill them; although
they are more noble and more able (61).
What “three things are brothers”? (62).
On page 64 what reason does Santiago give for wanting to catch and kill the marlin?
(To show “what a man can do and what a man endures” and to prove to Manolin that he
is indeed a “strange old man.” Stoicism and Hero code again.)
Foreshadowing: what “evil” force of nature is hinted at (p.67)
-What’s the purpose of Santiago recalling his arm wrestling championship?
(Santiago purposely recalls
this memory in order to try to regain the youthful
strength he needs to defeat the marlin. He uses them to fuel his determination.)
-Does the Old Man think eating the marlin would be a fitting end to the fish?
Explain? (No, too important. Only defeating the fish is what counts).
-Unpack the dream on p. 80, porpoises – then the lions. (The beneficent part of
the sea; land/sea. Reminder of his youth, don’t give up).
DAY 4
Marline leaps. Hand reinjured. Christ figure? (Neither Santiago nor Christ sought to
escape their suffering, instead, each chose to endure it, and in the process, transcend it.)
Stoicism again as well. “Pain does not matter to a man” (84).
Critics have claimed that Santiago is at least at times in the novel. Critic
Kathleen Verduin even called the text, “a culmination of Hemingway’s lifelong
involvement with Christ,” although it is “neither allegory of complete confession of
faith.”
Does Santiago find the Marlin to be a friend or an enemy? Explain.
(Both. He feels ambivalence: “Fish,” he said, “I love you and respect you
very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends” (52). If not
ambivalence, then the compulsion brought on by his quest.
“I do not care who kills who” (92) loves and respects the fish, his “brother.”
What is the significance of Santiago stabbing the marlin in the heart? (Santiago’s
love for the marlin).
Santiago lashes the marlin alongside the boat. In death as in life, the marlin is Santiago’s
companion, literally traveling by Santiago’s side.
“He is my fortune. But that is not why I wish to feel him. I think I felt his heart, he
thought. When I pushed on the harpoon shaft the second time” (95).
-What relationship between Santiago’s hands & DiMaggio’s bone spur? (Success through
adversity).
-Water as Sanitago’s “healer” both physical and spiritual healing.
Shark 1:
“It was too good to last, he thought. He took one look at the great fish as he watched the
shark close in. It might as well have been a dream, he thought” (101).
Cruelty of the inevitable.
-Where does Santiago stab the mako shark? How is this significant? (Santiago’s
stabbing of the shark in the head, rather than the heart, suggests that he does
not feel the
same emotional & spiritual connection or affinity with the shark as he did with the marlin.)
“He did not like to look at the fish since it had been mutilated. When the fish had
been hit it was as though he himself were hit” (102-103).
Hope had kept Santiago going as he battled the marlin, now he knows there is no
hope of getting the marlin home in tact, so what’s he fighting against now?
“But man is not made for defeat, he said. A man can be destroyed but not
defeated” (103).
Santiago begins to question whether killing the marlin was a sin. The marlin that he
battled and now considers a friend and brother with soon be not much more than shark
food. At this moment, when despair might over- take him, Santiago’s thoughts of Manolin
keep him going.
(106) Santiago leans over, strips off a piece of the marlin from where the
shark bit it, and eats it. He sails on, eating pieces of the marlin in order to
remain strong. What’s Hemingway showing us here, what symbolism?
(When Santiago eats the marlin, he and the fish become one, and the marlin lives on through Santiago.
This recalls the Eucharist, in which Christ asks his followers to symbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood.)
Christian metaphor again:
See’s two new sharks coming.
“ ‘Ay’ he said aloud. There is no translation for this word and perhaps it is just a noise
such as a man might make, involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hands and into
the wood” (107).
What’s the symbolism?
(Nails were driven through Christ’s hands when he was crucified. Here the sound marks both
the death of Santiago’s hope and his continued insistence on enduring pain.)
What do these sharks represent in contrast to the marlin?
Bad nature = shovel nose sharks.
“They were hateful sharks, bad smelling, scavengers as well as killers, and when they
were hungry they would bite at an oar or the rudder of a boat. It was these sharks that
would cut the turtle’s legs and flippers off when the turtles were asleep on the surface,
they would even hit a man in the water, if they were hungry, even if the man had no smell
of fish blood or fish slime on him” (107-108).
(Unlike the marlin, the sharks are not worthy opponents. The shovel-nosed sharks can be seen as
symbolizing the destructive forces of nature. Some have even argued that the sharks symbolize
literary critics, whom Hemingway saw as “feasting” on the creations of true artists without
actually creating anything themselves.)
-Fish becomes mutilated and torn apart, Santigo appoligizes to him, but says that they killed
several fish off together, wishes he had removed the marlin’s sword off and fought the sharks off
with that (116).
“He knew the fight was useless (against the pack of sharks) (118). Nothing more for the sharks to
eat.
Makes his way in to Havana.
“The wind is our friend, anyway, he thought. Then he added, sometimes. And the great sea
with our friends and our enemies” (120).
Christ metaphor:
“Then he shouldered the mast and started to climb. It was then he knew the depth of his
tiredness….He started to climb again and at the top he fell and lay for some time with the mass
across his shoulder. He tried to get up. But it was too difficult and he sat there with the mast on
his shoulder and looked at the road” (121).
This mirrors the position in which Jesus Christ was forced to drag his cross on the way to
his crucifixion. So you could make an argument that the mast symbolizes the cross.
Slept with the “his arms strait out and palms of his hands up” (122).
Where might Santiago’s “resurrection” so to speak lie?
-(Santiago’s “resurrection” may lie in that which he has passed down to Manolin. He’ll live on
through him.)
What does the marlin’s death give to Santiago?
(The marlin’s skeleton is proof of Santiago’s triumph and defiance of defeat.
In death, the marlin gives Santiago a new life in which he is respected by his fellow
fisherman, he’s also able to repay some of the kindnesses that others showed him during
tough times [putting the head meat in others’ traps]).
Dreams of lions: good nature conquers? Reinvigorated, the lion in Santiago cannot be
defeated…