Ernest Hemingway’s The old man and the sea

Abstract

My introduction rather sadly judges The Old Man and the Sea a period piece, an involuntary self-parody, and an unfortunate allegory in which Santiago is Christ is Hemingway. Almost all the essayists gathered here seem to me to have read some book other than the one they purportedly discuss. P.G. Rama Rao praises The Old Man’s skill in narration, while Wirt Williams finds nothing grotesque in Hemingway’s other tepid allegory, in which the sharks are unfriendly critics. James H. Justus does see the psychological strain reflected by Hemingway’s later fictions, after which Gregory S. Sojka praises The Old Man’s heroic pathos. Faulkner’s “The Bear,” far superior aesthetically to Hemingway’s The Old Man, is juxtaposed with it by David Timms, while Peter L. Hays sees that the story is thin and weak yet commends its prose. Gerry Brenner improbably terms The Old Man “a masterpiece,” after which Eric Waggoner invokes the Tao as appropriate to Hemingway’s allegory. Camus is contrasted to The Old Man by Dwight Eddins, while Susan F. Beegel refreshingly offers an enlightened feminist reading. Thomas Strychacz finds a dialectic of masculine and feminine strains in the narrative, after which Edward O. Ako traces a possible influence of The Old Man upon Derek Walcott.