Autumn, 1952. The Old Man and the Sea is first published in an issue of Life magazine. Within 48 hours, 5,318,650 copies are sold. The American book edition sells 50,000 copies in advance, the British edition 20,000. Critics go wild.
The public practically worships this rugged bearded author who combines the images of “grandfather” and “sea captain.”
1953. Ernest Hemingway receives the Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and the Sea.
1954. Hemingway receives the Nobel Prize for literature, the greatest formal international award a writer can receive. The award specifically mentions The Old Man and the Sea.
July 2, 1961. Sunday morning. Hemingway awakens early at his home in secluded Ketchum, Idaho. He loads a double-barreled shotgun, places the butt against the floor and the barrels against his forehead, and pulls the trigger.
There’s a sizable list of famous people who have ended their own lives. Occasionally someone who commits suicide will leave a brief note, but often we’re left guessing at the reasons.
Ernest Hemingway didn’t leave a suicide note, yet he did leave behind many statements about life- by means of the characters he created in his stories. His “old man” is certainly one of them, perhaps the main one. You may or may not see a connection between Hemingway’s old man and Hemingway’s decision to end it all on July 2, 1961. But the possibility is certainly there.
Hemingway’s nearly sixty-two years make an interesting story by themselves.
But they’re even more interesting in the light of this “little” story of an old Cuban fisherman and his three-day battle with a huge fish. The old man, Santiago, experiences battle, rejection, failure, loss, glory, and triumph. In his life, Hemingway did too.
Does this mean the old man of the story is Hemingway? Was he saying, “Here is a shortened, symbolic representation of my life”? Although some critics would agree, Hemingway himself did not encourage this view. You can enjoy speculating on this issue. But there’s an old saying, “Every piece of writing is at least a little bit autobiographical.” In this case it's probably true.
Keep those ideas in mind: battle, rejection, failure, loss, glory, and triumph.
Look for them in major events or periods of Hemingway’s life. And then look for them in The Old Man and the Sea.
For someone who lived his adult life in bold, often brawny fashion across three continents in full public view, his early years were rather serene ones in a quiet town. Hemingway was born on July 21,1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. As a boy he became a very good fisherman and hunter at the family’s summer cottage in Michigan. These adventures were his fondest boyhood memories.
His mother was very inclined toward the arts, especially music. Young Ernest received voice and cello lessons, which he was supposed to practice in the actual “music room” of their large home. When she was out, he would push the musical paraphernalia to the side of the room and use it as a boxing arena with his friends.
A relatively minor rebellion. But it suggests the individualism which Hemingway’s later life was to demonstrate on a larger scale.
The individualism blossomed when he graduated from high school and showed no interest in college, even though he had been a good student. In fact, he stubbornly refused college.
This individualism is another idea to keep in mind when you relate Hemingway’s life to The Old Man and the Sea. The old man Santiago isn’t exactly a groupie either. In fact, early in the story, the boy Manolin tells Santiago, “But there is only you.” Most people would agree there was only one Hemingway and perhaps add that there will never be another remotely like him.
Hemingway was interested not in college but in war. World War I had been raging for three years when Hemingway carried his high school diploma back down the aisle, and he was determined to participate before the action stopped.
But he met rejection. First, his father refused to let him enlist. Later, when his father gave permission, the armed forces rejected him because of poor sight in one eye. Still he did get some experience of violence, if not of actual war. He got a job as a cub reporter with the Kansas City Star covering the police and hospital stories. Finally he managed to get his taste of war. More than a taste. Enlisting with the Italian Red Cross as an ambulance driver, he made his way to the front lines.
During a furious Austrian shelling of the Italian troops, he carried a wounded soldier to safety. And while he carried the soldier in his arms, he was struck by two hundred pieces of shrapnel from a mortar shell and received multiple wounds from machine gun bullets.
Though it was an extraordinary act, why did he put himself in such danger? One explanation would be that he simply acted from instinct, hardly thinking. Another is that he deliberately did it because it was “what a man must do.” This is another good incident to keep in mind when you analyze the old man out on the sea, facing his great challenge. Does Santiago act as he does simply from instinct, because he doesn’t know any better? Or does he consciously embrace the challenge and its pain- aware that he might not survive? There was a moment of glory for Hemingway’s act of military heroism: a decoration from the Italian government and some glowing stories in his hometown papers. And a moment of rejection: the American nurse he fell in love with while recovering turned down his proposal of marriage.
The glory of his hero’s welcome back in the States didn’t last either. He was now determined to be a writer, but his articles and stories were rejected by one magazine after another.
His “doing nothing” brought the disapproval of his parents, who felt their son was loafing instead of working. Hemingway’s “birthday present” at age twenty-one was a Get-Out-Of-The-House-Until-You-Grow-Up-And-Get-A-Real-Job letter which his mother personally handed to him.
He did get out and find a real job, married a girl named Hadley Richardson, and moved to Paris as correspondent for the Toronto Star. His newspaper work succeeded. His other literary attempts, the ones that really mattered to him, didn’t. He kept submitting manuscripts. They kept getting rejected.
He had hopes for the manuscripts, though. Every writer has hopes for unsold manuscripts which he or she intends to revise, resubmit, and finally sell. But in December of 1923, a suitcase containing almost everything he had written, originals and carbons, was stolen and never recovered. All the material from which he hoped to build literary and financial success- wiped out.
Could there be a connection between Hemingway’s suitcase and Santiago’s marlin? The marlin was “a fish to keep a man all winter.” It’s another interesting speculation based on the premise that all writing is at least partially autobiographical.
Yet success came shortly afterward. In 1925 a book of short stories entitled In Our Time was published; in 1926, a novel, The Sun Also Rises; in 1928 another story collection, Men Without Women. All of these books were well received by the critics and by the public.
There were exceptions. Hemingway’s parents found their son’s writing distasteful, even shocking. Hemingway’s characters were not always genteel people with polite speech habits. Dr. and Mrs. Hemingway found this offensive and even returned their copies of In Our Time to the publisher. And 1927 saw Hemingway’s divorce from Hadley, an action which further outraged his parents.
His life became, for a while, a rather bumpy ride between positive and negative, fortune and reversal. There was a happy wedding to Pauline Pfeiffer later in 1927 and in 1928 a warm reconciliation with his family. But in December of 1928, Hemingway’s father gave in to a period of growing depression and shot himself with a revolver.
“Just when you have it, you lose it.” “Life is a mixed bag.” You’ve probably heard statements like these. It’s certainly not difficult to see these themes in The Old Man and the Sea. Santiago’s mixed bag of triumph and tragedy certainly has a precedent in the life of Hemingway, his creator.
Hemingway moved to Key West, Florida, poured himself into writing, and a year later produced A Farewell to Arms, a novel which raised him to the very peak of literary and financial success at the age of thirty- gratifying to a writer who began his career collecting rejection slips.
Hemingway filled the next several years satisfying his desire for broader and deeper experiences. He reveled in deep-sea fishing off the Florida Keys, he hunted big game in Wyoming. In the summer of 1933 he undertook an African safari but contracted amoebic dysentery on the way.
So, like Santiago, he played out his great adventure weak and hurting. Others told him to go back, postpone the hunt, wait until he recovered. Hemingway said no. In terms of game, the safari was successful. In spite of his condition, he shot and dropped a charging Cape buffalo a few feet before the enraged animal would have killed him.
A few feet closer, a few seconds later, and there would have been no old man, Santiago. But Hemingway’s whole life and outlook suggest that, if he had known in advance of this deadly possibility, he would have embraced it even more enthusiastically, just as Santiago certainly knew there was great danger in going far out beyond the normal fishing waters.
Hemingway’s fascination with war occupied him again from 1936 to 1938 in Spain. This is a strange side of his life. He absolutely loved being in a war; the closer to the most heated action, the better. Then, when it was over, he would write about the futility and horror of war.
He covered the Spanish Civil War as a correspondent, following the Loyalist infantry into the fiercest battles. He was thoroughly depressed when they were finally defeated by the Franco forces.
From this experience came For Whom the Bell Tolls, in 1940. Paramount Pictures bought the film rights for $150,000- an astronomical figure in the early 40s.
Hemingway was now in a position to call his own shots; he sold the film rights only after Paramount agreed to his insistence that Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman play the lead roles.
The second marriage had ended in divorce in 1938. In 1941 he married Martha Gellhorn. They lived on an estate outside Havana, Cuba, surrounded by luxuries. Nearby was a small fishing village.
World War II, as other wars before it, captivated Hemingway. Again deciding to be a correspondent, he became chief of Collier’s European bureau. He accompanied the Royal Air Force on several bombing raids over occupied France; he crossed the English Channel with American troops on June 6, 1944. Again he was in the thick of fighting in Belgium and Germany, sending back stirring accounts of the battlefield.
In 1945 his third marriage broke up; in 1946 his fourth, and lasting, marriage to Mary Welsh began. They resettled at the estate outside Havana, where Hemingway was now an international celebrity.
But again, “Just when you have it...” 1950 brought professional disaster, at least in terms of critical opinion. His book Across the River and Into the Trees received biting, almost vicious reviews. Ernest Hemingway appeared to be washed up as a writer.
Then in 1952 came The Old Man and the Sea. And the Pulitzer. And the Nobel. It was his last major work published while he was still alive. (Two books, A Moveable Feast and Islands in the Stream, have been published since his death.) And in 1961 came the end of it all- by his own hand. His health had been deteriorating. Nothing, including visits to the famous Mayo Clinic, seemed able to return him to the masculine vigor he so enjoyed. Did he decide that if he could not “do it all” he would prefer to do nothing? In any case, his great adventure with life and literature was ended, by his own choosing. And here we have a definite difference between the conclusion of The Old Man and the Sea and the conclusion of Hemingway’s own life.
Santiago is weak and hurting. He is perhaps sicker than he knows. But he and Manolin make plans to fish together again, to undertake perhaps another attempt to bring back the big one.
Hemingway himself chose not to.