“A man can be destroyed but not defeated” is the theme of the novel and by the time you switch to the last page of the book, you can’t help looking back at your life and regretting the moments when you succumbed before the toxics and traumas of the world. Hemingway uses nature as the force which signifies the epitome of the challenges we face in our journey of life. He has spun a web linking supernatural, mysterious nature and the materialistic earthly human which charms the reader. I would like to go for a character and relationship analysis first before I relate them all with the magic of the novel.
The point that the old man talks aloud to himself when alone on his skiff, talks to the fish, sea, bird and about the boy goes on to show how lonely the old man actually is and to what extent of emotional suffering he’s been subjected to.
His endurance potentiality gets reflected when Hemingway tells us that the old man ‘tries not to think but endure’, ‘never admits his suffering’ and when he (old man) says to himself –‘One must know how to suffer like a man.’
Even when the position actually is only somewhat less intolerable the old man thinks of it as comfortable. So much he’s endured on his trip that when he comes back and his best friend, the boy (Manolin) asks him how much he suffered he can’t avoid saying-‘Plenty.’
The most evident personality trait of the old man is his perseverance and Hemingway brings it alive when the old man says to himself-‘But I am used to punishment’ and ‘pain does not matter to a man.’
When the left hand of the old man gets cramped and he feels pain in using it he tells himself-‘If I have to have it I’ll open it (left hand), cost whatever it costs.’
The best lines describing the old man’s perseverance are-‘The thousand times he had proved it (ability and might) 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.’
And what better example of the old man’s perseverance and endurance could there be for the fact that in his young days he defeated the great Negro from Cienfuegos, who happened to be the strongest man on the docks, in the hand game. They(Negro friends) fed the Negro rum and lighted cigarettes for him after which he made tremendous effort and nearly took the old man off but even against all odds(the people who betted against the old man in the game) the old man finally managed to defeat the Negro after the game continued for one day and one night.
The old man’s optimism and belief is reflected in the context that even when having a dry run for so long, the old man has faith in his abilities and he tells the boy that he is a strange old man. ‘Who knows? Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky ’the old man tells himself. When the sharks take away the meat of his prize catch he justifies it to himself by saying-‘you sail lighter for the loss of forty pounds’.
The Old Man and Fish (his prize catch) Relationship
The old man is passionate about his fish. Though he knows that he has to kill him and that he is on a fight with him he respects the fish and wishes so much for it. He pities the great fish he has hooked. He doesn’t know the sex of the fish but he always refers to it as male and uses ‘he’ for the fish and not ‘it’. These emotions are better reflected in his words itself:
‘He is wonderful and strange and who knows how old he is. Never have I had such a strong fish nor one who acted so strangely. Perhaps he is too wise to jump. He could ruin me by jumping or by a wild rush. But perhaps he’s been hooked many times before and he knows that this is how he should make his fight. He cannot know that it is only one man against him, nor that it is an old man. But what a great fish he is and what he will bring in the market if the flesh is good. He took the bait like a male and he pulls like a male and his fight has no panic in it. I wonder if he has any plans or if he is just as desperate as I am?’
We can see by the last sentence that the old man idealizes the fish with himself.
‘Thank God, they are not intelligent as we who kill them, although they are more noble and more able.’ the old man says about the fish.
The old man says that there are three things that are his brothers- his two hands and the fish. He also refers to the fish as brother in one of his earlier statements. This puts me in confusion whether the old man loves the fish even more than the boy.
‘I love you and respect you very much’ and ‘I’ll stay with you until I am dead’ these are lines that go on to show his love for the fish.
As Hemingway puts in through the old man’s words-‘Though it is wonderful and it is unjust, I’ll kill him in all his greatness and glory and show him what a man can do and what a man endures.’ The above lines not only throw light upon the old man and his relationship with the fish but also go to add a feather about his strong character and qualities which I have already discussed before.
‘There is no one worthy of eating him from the manner of his behaviour and great dignity.’ says the old man.
At one point of time the old man starts caring for the fish so much that even though he knows he has to kill the fish and the sooner he kills it the better for him that he says-‘I must hold his pain where it is. Mine does not matter. I can control mine, but his pain could drive him mad.’
When the patient, persevered fight between the old man and the fish gets very intense, there are moments when we can feel the eagerness of the old man. He says-‘Fish! Fish you are going to have to die anyway. Do you have to kill me too?’ and ‘You’re killing me fish. But you have a right to. Never have I seen a greater or more beautiful or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother. Come on and kill me. I donot care who kills who.’
As the writer puts in when the fish is been hit by the sharks, it was as though the old man himself were hit and he says-‘I am sorry about it fish.’ He liked to think of the fish and what he could do to the sharks if he were swimming free. The old man wishes that they (he and the fish) could fight the sharks together.
The Old Man and the Boy Relationship
The old man dreams a lot. He dreams of the African lions and the baseball (his crush). And yet Hemingway emphasizes that the old man never dreamt of the boy. It just goes on to show how special and apart from everyone and everything else the boy is to the old man. Its unfortunate that we haven’t had the chemistry of the old man and the boy much as the boy had to leave the old man following his parents orders (as they thought of the old man as unlucky), but for the short periods at the beginning and at the end of the novel when the two of them are together, there’s absolute magic that the two of them create together. It seems that they are parts of one soul, so fondly they blend with each other and beautifully understand the other.
The author tells us that the old man started talking aloud, when alone on his skiff at sea, only when the boy left him(or rather forced to leave him by his parents).Even on this trip we can see the old man saying aloud several times ‘I wish I had the boy’.
He feels the need of the boy five times in a span of just nine pages of the novel and all of these times he calls aloud that he wished he had the boy.
When his left hand gets cramped he says-‘I wish I had the boy with me. He could rub it for me and loosen it from the forearm.’
The boy too reciprocates in the ideal way to the man just everytime. When the old man returns back from the sea he always goes down to bring his lines and he’s always there with the old man when he leaves for sea. He always tries to make the old man believe that he’s capable of everything and that he is the best fisherman.
The one liner which speaks everything about the chemistry of the two is when the boy says the old man-‘I remember everything from when we first went together’ and the old man looks at him with his sunburned, confident loving eyes in response.
When the old man returns back after his big trip of the sea undergoing much suffering and losing the biggest fish he ever caught, the boy is unable to keep his emotions and starts crying. He doesn’t care that other fishermen saw him crying for the old man and could make fun of him.
And of course we have the best line (according to me) of the entire novel when the boy says that they would fish together again and the old man denies saying he is not lucky anymore and the boy says-‘The hell with luck. I’ll bring the luck with me’.
Old Man Defeated????
Though the old man stands as the pillar of hope and optimism throughout the book, there are a few occasions when the author has made us feet his disgust and disappointment which just go on to show that he is a human after all.
‘Eat that galanos. And make a dream that you have killed a man.’ he says this after the final attack of the sharks and after he’s lost almost all his fish. He’s lost all his weapons (whatever he had) and tried as much as he could by this time.
‘Bed is my friend. Bed will be a great thing. It is easy when you are beaten.’ the old man says this to himself when he is returning back to the shore after losing his fish. Further we know that the old man sleeps with his face down on newspapers with arms straight and the palms of his hands up, a posture which shows that he avoided looking at the world (and facing it).
‘They beat me Manolin. They truly beat
In spite of all this we can say that the author ends the novel with the old man dreaming about the lions and with the belief that the old man and the boy would be fishing together again, and retains the courage to try and try again. Through this the author reaffirms to us the concept of the novel-‘Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.’
