the old man and the sea by ernest hemingway

a few months have passed since i have attempted my blog. every time i sit down to write something, my mind gets diverted to other priorities. the stuff is jumbled all over my thoughts and i think i have forgotten most of what i wanted to write but then, `writing' has always held special joy for me so like a magnet, i am pulled back to this, recalling what i would like to remember in years to come.

our september book read was hemingway's pulitzer prize winning novella, the old man and the sea. it also won him the nobel prize for literature in 1954. it was his last major work of fiction to be published.

a simple story of an old cuban fisherman called santiago, who spends several days alone in his skiff, catching a marlin who is finally devoured by a school of sharks before he manages to bring the remains to shore. immediately before this voyage he goes 84 days without a catch.

the simple and humble lives of santiago and his devoted young friend, manolin made it an inspiring read.

kim, penny, jade, brian, johny, anne and dr roy were there for the discussion. gertrude came in a little later.

dr roy finds it a simple story, beautifully told. she and i have read it before of course, a long time ago during our childhood days. there are certain books and poems or phrases of which, when i read in my life they always gives me a new meaning or a new interpretation every time i do a repeat reading. this book did just that.

hardly 125 pages, an easy flip, the old man at sea, the young boy and the marlin is perhaps one of the most positive books i have read about life.
i own easily around a hundred of positive, self help, motivational books, yet this simple novella gave me more motivation than i would have hoped to achieve from those 100 sitting on my shelf.

i see this novella as a wise parable that teaches several lessons, a different kind of holy book on its own. as i said, it pieces together different puzzles every time i read it. and just as i finished reading the last line of the book, i told dr roy that i wanted to read it again. and i think in years to come, i would read it many more times.

i would like to think that, in that simplicity of plain and easy narration, the book contains a wealth of psychological and interpersonal complexities. i see it as courage and strength, as hope and desire, as small achievements in life and as life itself. i see it as a simple browse for children and a marvel for adults.

with this book, hemingway did to me what martel did with the life of pi. he made me santiago. i was in the middle of the sea taking on the once-in-a-lifetime catch of a prize marlin. i faced physical and emotional challenges that only the sea and i could understand. i also experienced physical, emotional and spiritual pain. i was alone with the elements and i was not sure if i was a part of them anymore. yet, i saw hope where there was none and i saw myself hanging on to it with a strength of will i myself was not sure i had.

this story featured santiago, the old man, manolin, the young boy and the ferocity of the human spirit. this short novel is fierce, full of vibrant energy and humanity, all the while being a slave to the realities of finite power, of the inability to struggle against something greater than yourself. crafted excellently, i was incredibly fascinated, impressed and touched. it helped me understand a part of myself, of life and a part of the challenges we are always facing out there.

in short, it touched my soul.

however, my passion and love for this novella was not shared by penny. penny found it very pathos. she also found it stupid that the old man was preserving his dignity by pretending he has food, and was playing nonsensical games with the boy. jade at this point, commented that there is absolute honesty in the relationship between the old man and the boy. to them, the game seemed almost joyful.

it is interesting to know that there are views which exist beyond our comprehension, and i don't mean that negatively. i have always been attracted to perceptions totally different from mine. thank you penny.

penny also brings up the fact that santiago doesn't seem to go beyond dimaggio. at this point brian asks us the question, what is really so great about this guy dimaggio?

a baseball legend, and the best or should i say the greatest baseball player during his time, joe dimaggio, who played for the new york yankees made an impression on every single american. he was loved, admired and worshipped by those who watched him play. he made records and he broke them. his most famous was a 56-game-hitting-streak, which meant that he hit at least one ball in every game for 56 games. everyone had confidence and faith in him and many were devastated by his death caused by lung cancer in 1999.

dimaggio's father, an italian immigrant was a fisherman. when dimaggio was young, he followed his father and learnt the art of fishing but he loved baseball more and worked his way up to become a professional player in san francisco first, and then later, with the yankees in new york.

i think the old man made a connection there. kim says maybe there are very few strong figures he could connect with. kim, the artist also loves and indulges in fishing. she says the book is a real work of art. just like art, where you have to deal with one layer after another, pain too is a layer beneath another in life.

brian talks about travelling alone referring to the old man alone at sea. i can relate to that. he says when you travel alone, you discover priceless things about yourself, about your experiences and the observances you make but then at some point in time, you actually wonder how nice it would be to share with someone what you are experiencing, so that its not wasted, something like leaving some kind of legacy or lineage or a even a kind of witnessing. i thought that was an interesting point. when i travel alone and however much i love it, i still want to come back and share it with my family and friends. jade says, yes of course, any wonderful moment or achievement that you have in your life, you will definitely want to share with people you love.

but then santiago also claims that you are never alone at sea, the elements are with him, there is a lot of teeming life, birds, fish, sharks etc etc. and then, there is the thing about the journey being more important than the destination, where even though santiago lost his fish, and came back defeated, he was not defeated at all. some think maybe he waited for this final catch, final victory, final return with his catch, flesh or bones, to finally lay himself to sleep.

brian also brings up something else which made me think deeper about books and what they have done to my thoughts, my perceptions and my life on the whole. he says that he always thought of hemingway as this macho dude, and he had this mindset about him which was not really great, so this book came as a surprise and really moved him with the compassion and sensitivity that hemingway so successfully induces in the characters.

i say it made me think deeper because every book that had a title i scorned at or an author i did not think much of, proved to be the best contributions to my life.

penny also asks about the dream the old man has of the lions in africa. what could the significance be? brian is quick to answer that the symbol of the lion is of pride, power and strength. maybe the old man was holding on to all that. maybe he felt good thinking of that knowing in actuality he was just a frail old man.

jade talks of the natural order of things. i call it the `is' ness of things. animals kill enough to eat. but humans kill for greed and power. men go fishing and hunting for the thrill of it. animals do it as a form of survival. so is santiago wrong in killing the marlin?

in the book, santiago respects the marlin, there is a part where he says it doesn't matter who kills whom. at times he regrets hooking the marlin. there is a part where he says, i wish it was a dream, i wish i did not hook it.

but the isness of things is also shown in the metaphorical value of this fable. there is an obvious man versus nature story here, where man needing nature for food is juxtaposed with the fact that nature is usually stronger than man and therefore can lead man to destruction.

gertrude says it is a very dry book but hemingway describes the fish like it can be seen in national geographic. he possessed an excellent art and skill of writing that made him deserve all the critical acclaims received.

hemingway is said to have based this book on his friend, confidant and boat companion, gregorio fuentes. he admired fuentes' courage and wisdom. fuentes swam through shark-infested waters to rescue a drowning man, survived few hurricanes at sea, and always knew through whatever hunches, where the biggest fishes would be running.

he met fuentes in the gulf of mexico where they took shelter from storm, and after their first conversation, hemingway immediately hired fuentes as his boatman. he said this of fuentes, `that man would rather fish than eat or sleep', which really showed his admiration of him. he loved and adored fuentes' simple and honourable life.

he spent many afternoons with fuentes fishing and at one such moment, one of the boatmen commented, they were out all day and did not catch a fish except a barracuda which cut somebody's hand and made a big mess with blood all over the hold. i would assume, he used that incident for his book too.

it also is a wonder how such a talented writer took his life in july 1961 at his home with a shotgun. maybe having four wives is a major cause of depression. hmm. but he was said to be suffering from increasing mental problems and depression. he was even admitted into some mental institution where his depression was seemingly treated, however, he committed the act of suicide soon after he was released.

ernest miller hemmingway's works maybe criticised to an extent of saying his novels are nonsense but today they belong to american literature and even though there will always be people who think his novels are rubbish, he will always have readers who will admire his work, me being one of them. when i finished his book, i wondered, how many authors in america could pack such a punch in a novella, a little over a hundred and twenty pages.