The emphatically realistic basis of the story requires an assessment of each small internal episode with indispensable consideration of the real psychological and physical state of the hero. Moreover, a separate episode and even a separate artistic detail must be considered in conjunction with other thematically related details and certainly in the overall context of the story. This is the only way to find out, for example, whether the notes of defeat really sound in the story. Props and the realities of everyday life are also very important not only in terms of artistic authenticity and persuasiveness, but also in philosophical terms.
However, their philosophical significance is subordinate in relation to the corresponding role of living nature and images characters. The desire to absolutize the characteristics of one or another reality of everyday life, for example, sails, and to substitute a person in its place is not always justified. The philosophical significance of the scarcity of things and their characteristics in the story is, first of all, to emphasize: we are talking about the very foundations human existence, data in the most naked form. The matter is complicated by the fact that in many individual details, not one theme is often reflected, but several, and all of them, in essence, are interconnected.
In “The Old Man and the Sea” we really find not symbols, but a realistic story about the life of one person. But the way this person lives, how he thinks and feels, how he acts, makes you think about the principles of human existence, about your attitude to life. The small number of foreground characters and the paucity of material design do not lead to the destruction of social and other connections and do not create the impression of uniqueness. It’s just that these connections find a special form of identification and reflection in the story, giving the content a general character. You can't demand from a small philosophical work demon - "strations of social connections, social structure, which is excluded by its very form. That is why it seems to us that the mechanical comparison of “The Old Man” with Hemingway’s great novels is inappropriate, and the position of critics who regret the narrowness of the story is very vulnerable. Hemingway during his long creative life wrote about a lot. Of course, not all of his themes and not all, even the most important, problems of the century were reflected in The Old Man. But some essential aspects of human existence were philosophically generalized in this little story and illuminated from the standpoint of triumphant humanism.
At the center of the story is the figure of the old fisherman Santiago. This is no ordinary old man. This is how he talks about himself, and in the process of getting acquainted with the action, the reader manages to become convinced of the validity of this self-characterization. From the first lines, the image of the old man takes on the features of elation and heroism. This real man, living by his own work ethic code, but seemingly doomed to failure. The problem of victory and defeat, perhaps the first, naturally arises in the story: “The old man was fishing alone on his boat in the Gulf Stream. For eighty-four days now he has been out to sea and has not caught a single fish.” These are the first words of the work. On the eighty-fifth day, the old man caught a huge marlin, but could not bring the catch home... The fish was eaten by sharks. It seems the old man has been defeated again. This impression is aggravated by the fact that the hero, having lost his prey, also had to endure suffering that would have broken a weaker person. Considering the philosophical nature of the story, the theme of victory and defeat takes on special importance.
Subsequently, the notes of despair, fatigue, and defeat are invariably clearly contrasted with a victorious motive. What is established is not the balance of victory and defeat, but the triumph of a victorious, optimistic principle. Exhausted from the fight with the marlin, Santiago mentally addresses him: “You are ruining me, fish,” thought the old man. “This, of course, is your right. Never in my life have I seen a creature more enormous, beautiful, calm and noble than you. Well then, kill me. I don’t care anymore who kills who.” But there is a difference between what a person at the limit of his strength thinks and what he does. But the old man does not allow himself to despair even in his thoughts. He, like Robert Jordan once, controls the work of his consciousness all the time. “Your head is confused again, old man,” the quote just given continues directly, and on the same page it is said how Santiago, feeling that “life is freezing in him,” acts and wins, and not only the fish, but also his own weakness, fatigue and old age: “He gathered all his pain, and all the rest of his strength, and all his long-lost pride, and threw them into a duel with the torment” that the fish endured, and then it turned over on its side and quietly swam to side, almost reaching with the sword to the skin of the boat; it almost floated past, long, wide, silver, intertwined with purple stripes, and it seemed that there would be no end to it.”
Notes of despair sound again when the fish are attacked by sharks. It even seems that all the old man’s torment, all his perseverance and perseverance were in vain: “My affairs were going too well. This couldn't go on any longer.
What appears to be a defeat in a concrete event plan, in a moral plan, in a philosophical generalization plan turns out to be a victory. The whole story turns into a demonstration of man's invincibility even when external conditions are against him, when incredible difficulties and suffering befall him! Critics often compare The Old Man to The Undefeated. There, the person also does not give up until the end. But there is a fundamental difference between these two works. Manuel, for all his wonderful qualities, is the embodiment of that “code” that gives a loner the opportunity to withstand a hostile world. The courage of the matador is, as it were, turned towards himself. With an old man the situation is different. Here comes the time to turn to the question of what everything in the world is for, to the question of the meaning of life, that is, to one of central problems Hemingway's philosophical story.
This point is especially important, since in the post-war foreign literature The problem of victory and defeat was repeatedly raised. Sartre, Camus and other writers representing different directions existentialist philosophy, condemn their heroes to defeat, and emphasize the futility of human efforts. In American criticism there are attempts to declare Hemingway an existentialist.
In the last quoted paragraph, it is no coincidence that the old man’s thoughts merge with the author’s thoughts. The meaning of what is happening is to affirm the concept: life is a struggle. Only in such a continuous struggle, which requires extreme exertion of physical and moral strength, does a person fully feel like a human being and find happiness. A person's self-affirmation is in itself optimistic.
The story "The Old Man and the Sea" was completed by Hemingway in 1951. In it, the writer tried to convey to readers his entire life and literary experience. Hemingway created the story for a long time, painstakingly writing out every episode, every reflection and observation of his largely lyrical hero. Then he shared what he had written with his wife Mary, and only from the goosebumps on her skin did he understand how good the passage he had written was. According to the writer himself, the story “The Old Man and the Sea” could well become a big novel, with many characters (mainly fishermen) and storylines. However, all this was already in literature before him. Hemingway wanted to create something different: a story-parable, a story-symbol, a story-life.
At the level artistic idea“The Old Man and the Sea” is closely related to Psalm 103 of David, which glorifies God as the Creator of heaven and earth, and all creatures that inhabit our planet. Biblical reminiscences can be traced in the story and in the images of the main characters (the boy is named Manolin - a diminutive abbreviation of Emmanuel, one of the names of Jesus Christ; the old man's name is Santiago - just like Saint James, and the Old Testament Jacob, who challenged God himself ), and in the old man’s reasoning about life, man, sins, and in his reading of the main christian prayers- “Our Father” and “Virgin Mary”.
The artistic problem of the story lies in showing inner strength a person and his ability not only to realize the beauty and grandeur of the world around him, but also his place in it. The huge ocean into which the old man goes is symbolic image both our material space and the spiritual life of man. The huge fish with which the fisherman fights has a double symbolic character: on the one hand, it collective image all the fish that Santiago once caught, an image of the work destined for him by God, on the other hand, this is the image of the Creator himself, who dwells in each of his creations, died for the sake of people, rose again and lives in the souls of believers.
The old man believes that he is far from religion, but at a difficult moment of fishing he reads prayers and promises to read more if Holy Virgin will make the fish die. Santiago's thoughts about life are simple and artless. He himself looks like this: old, emaciated, content with little - simple food, a poor hut, a bed covered with newspapers.
Day after day, exhausting in the ocean big fish, the old man does not think about how painful or difficult it is for him cutting hands and the back of the twine. No. He is trying to save his strength for the decisive battle. He catches tuna and flying fish in the sea and eats them raw, even though he does not feel hungry. He forces himself to sleep to gain strength. He uses all available means to fight the sharks that are encroaching on his fish. And he also talks, evaluates, remembers. Constantly. Including fish – both living and dead.
When a mutilated carcass remains of the sea beauty, the old man becomes uneasy. He doesn't know how to deal with fish. Having killed one of the most beautiful creatures of this world, Santiago justifies his act by saying that the fish will satisfy him and other people. Prey torn to pieces by sharks is deprived of this simple, everyday meaning. The old man apologizes to the fish for the fact that everything turned out so badly.
Unlike many classic literary works in The Old Man and the Sea there is no criticism of anything. Hemingway does not consider himself to have the right to judge others. The main goal of the writer is to show how our world works, in which a fisherman is born a fisherman, and a fish is born a fish. They are not enemies to each other, they are friends, but the meaning of a fisherman’s life is to kill fish, and, alas, there is no other way.
Every time an old man comes across marine life, he shows himself to be a man who loves, pities and respects every creature of God. He worries about the birds, which have a hard time getting food for themselves, and enjoys love games guinea pigs, feels sympathy for the marlin, who lost his girlfriend due to his fault. The old man treats the big fish with deep respect. He recognizes her as a worthy opponent who can win the decisive battle.
The old man meets his failures with truly Christian humility. He does not complain, does not grumble, he silently does his work, and when a little talkativeness attacks him, he orders himself in time to return to reality and get down to business. Having lost his catch in an unequal battle with sharks, the old man feels defeated, but this feeling fills his soul with incredible lightness.
“Who defeated you, old man?” he asks himself and immediately gives the answer. - Nobody. I'm just too far out to sea. This simple reasoning reveals the unbending will and real worldly wisdom of a person who has learned the vastness of the world around him and his place in it, a place, although small, but honorable.
The emphatically realistic basis of the story requires an assessment of each small internal episode with indispensable consideration of the real psychological and physical state of the hero. Moreover, a separate episode and even a separate artistic detail must be considered in conjunction with other thematically related details and certainly in the general context of the narrative. This is the only way to find out, for example, whether the notes of defeat really sound in the story. Props and the realities of everyday life are also very important not only in terms of artistic authenticity and persuasiveness, but also in philosophical terms. However, their philosophical significance is subordinate in relation to the corresponding role of living nature and the images of the characters. The desire to absolutize the characteristics of one or another reality of everyday life, for example, sails, and to substitute a person in its place is not always justified. The philosophical significance of the scarcity of things and their characteristics in the story is, first of all, to emphasize: we are talking about the very foundations of human existence, given in the most naked form. The matter is complicated by the fact that in many individual details, not one theme is often reflected, but several, and all of them, in essence, are interconnected. In “The Old Man and the Sea” we really find not symbols, but a realistic story about the life of one person. But the way this person lives, how he thinks and feels, how he acts, makes you think about the principles of human existence, about your attitude to life. The small number of foreground characters and the paucity of material design do not lead to the destruction of social and other connections and do not create the impression of uniqueness. It’s just that these connections find a special form of identification and reflection in the story, giving the content a general character. One cannot demand from a small philosophical work a demonstration of social connections, a social structure that is excluded by its very form. That is why the mechanical comparison of “The Old Man” with Hemingway’s great novels seems to us illegitimate, and the position of critics who regret the narrowness of the story is very vulnerable Hemingway wrote about a lot during his long creative life. Of course, not all of his themes and not all, even the most important, problems of the century were reflected in “The Old Man,” but some essential aspects of human existence were philosophically generalized and illuminated from a perspective. triumphant humanism. At the center of the story is the figure of the old fisherman Santiago. This is no ordinary old man. This is how he talks about himself, and in the process of getting acquainted with the action, the reader manages to become convinced of the validity of this self-characterization. From the first lines, the image of the old man takes on the features of elation and heroism. This is a real person, living in accordance with his own work ethic code, but seemingly doomed to failure. The problem of victory and defeat, perhaps the first, naturally arises in the story: “The old man was fishing alone on his boat in the Gulf Stream. For eighty-four days now he has been out to sea and has not caught a single fish.” These are the first words of the work. On the eighty-fifth day, the old man caught a huge marlin, but could not bring the catch home... The fish was eaten by sharks. It seems the old man has been defeated again. This impression is aggravated by the fact that the hero, having lost his prey, also had to endure suffering that would have broken a weaker person. Considering the philosophical nature of the story, the theme of victory and defeat takes on special importance. Subsequently, the notes of despair, fatigue, and defeat are invariably clearly contrasted with a victorious motive. What is established is not the balance of victory and defeat, but the triumph of a victorious, optimistic principle. Exhausted from the fight with the marlin, Santiago mentally addresses him: “You are ruining me, fish,” thought the old man. “This, of course, is your right. Never in my life have I seen a creature more enormous, beautiful, calm and noble than you. Well then, kill me. I don’t care anymore who kills who.” But there is a difference between what a person at the limit of his strength thinks and what he does. But the old man does not allow himself to despair even in his thoughts. He, like Robert Jordan once, controls the work of his consciousness all the time. “Your head is confused again, old man,” the quote just given continues directly, and on the same page it is said how Santiago, feeling that “life is freezing in him,” acts and wins, and not only the fish, but also his own weakness, fatigue and old age: “He gathered all his pain, and all the rest of his strength, and all his long-lost pride, and threw them into a duel with the torment” that the fish endured, and then it turned over on its side and quietly swam to side, almost reaching the skin of the boat with the sword; it almost swam past, long, wide, silver, intertwined with purple stripes, and it seemed that there would be no end to it.” Notes of despair sounded again when the fish were attacked by sharks. that all the old man’s torment, all his perseverance and perseverance were in vain: “My affairs were going too well. This couldn't go on any longer. What appears to be a defeat in a concrete event plan, in a moral plan, in a philosophical generalization plan turns out to be a victory. The whole story turns into a demonstration of man's invincibility even when external conditions are against him, when incredible difficulties and suffering befall him! Critics often compare The Old Man to The Undefeated. There, the person also does not give up until the end. But there is a fundamental difference between these two works. Manuel, for all his wonderful qualities, is the embodiment of that “code” that gives a loner the opportunity to withstand a hostile world. The courage of the matador is, as it were, turned towards himself. With an old man the situation is different. Here comes the time to turn to the question of what everything in the world is for, to the question of the meaning of life, that is, to one of the central problems of Hemingway’s philosophical story. This point is especially important, since in post-war foreign literature the problem of victory and defeat was repeatedly raised. Sartre, Camus and other writers representing different directions of existentialist philosophy doom their heroes to defeat and emphasize the futility of human efforts. In American criticism there are attempts to declare Hemingway an existentialist. In the last quoted paragraph, it is no coincidence that the old man’s thoughts merge with the author’s thoughts. The meaning of what is happening is to affirm the concept: life is a struggle. Only in such a continuous struggle, which requires extreme exertion of physical and moral strength, does a person fully feel like a human being and find happiness. A person's self-affirmation is in itself optimistic.
Hemingway Ernest Miller: journalist, writer 1899, July 21. Born in Oak Park (a suburb of Chicago). Graduated high school. Reporter for the Kansas City Star newspaper 1923-1929. The books “In Our Time”, “Spring Waters”, “The Sun Also Rises”, “Men Without Women”, “A Farewell to Arms!” have been published. 1939 Work on the novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
1947 Awarded the Bronze Star in Havana for courage and excellent work in collecting military information. 1958-1959 Working on a book of memories about Paris in the 1920s. (published posthumously under the title “A holiday that is always with you”). Completion of many years of work on the story “Sea Chase”. He died at his home in Cuba. Winner of the highest literary award in the United States - the Pulitzer Prize (1952) - and the Nobel Prize (1954) for the story “The Old Man and the Sea”.
Ernest Hemingway lived to be 62 years old, and his life was filled with adventure and struggle, defeat and victory, great love and exhausting work. He was an avid hunter and fisherman, participating in the most adventurous adventures and daring explorations. His heroes were like him: brave, energetic, ready to fight. In September 1952
Wise life experience the artist publishes the story “The Old Man and the Sea”. The work was published in the pages of Life magazine (circulation: 5 million copies) and brought him worldwide fame. For this story, which is more like a short novel in depth and power, Ernest Hemingway received the Pulitzer Prize - the most prestigious symbol of literary recognition in the United States. The same work influenced the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to the writer in 1954. The story “The Old Man and the Sea” is one of the last completed works of the legend of American literature Ernest Hemingway, a kind of result of the author’s creative search. Literary scholars define the genre of the work as a story-parable, that is, a work that tells about the fate of the hero, but has an allegorical character, deep moral and philosophical meaning. The story is closely connected with everyone previous works writer and is the pinnacle of his thinking about the meaning of life.
Why do you think the hero of the parable... an old man, after all, old age is weakness, decline, failure? Why does the old man turn to nature and talk to it? How does the old man relate to the sea, sky, stars, birds? Why in his monologues does he refer to the fish as a thinking creature?
What did Santiago understand when he “saw the herd wild ducks, which flew over the water, clearly distinguished against the sky"? Old man Santiago, when he first saw the fish that caught his hook, thinks like this: “I wonder why it came up? As if just to show me how huge she is. Of course, now I know it.
It would be nice to show her what kind of person I am. Oh, if only I were her and had everything she has against my only weapon.” What “weapon” are we talking about? How does old Santiago understand the world of nature, society and the universe? What are his thoughts on happiness?
Which artistic principle uses Ernest Hemingway when writing his works, explaining it this way: “If a writer knows well what he writes about, he can omit much of what he knows, and if he writes truthfully, the reader will feel everything omitted as keenly as if did the writer say this? Hemingway's "Iceberg Principle" According to this principle, one tenth of the meaning should be expressed in the text, nine tenths in the subtext. The “iceberg principle” according to the writer’s own definition: artistic text the work is similar to that part of the iceberg that is visible above the surface of the water. The writer makes extensive use of hints and subtext, relying on the reader's conjecture.
In the short story “The Old Man and the Sea,” the master managed to retell and comprehend the eternal tragedy of human existence in a laconic form. The hero of this creation, brilliant in its simplicity, Hemingway chooses the fisherman Santiago - an old man, withered by the sun and eaten by the sea. Santiago has dreamed of fabulous luck all his life - and it suddenly comes to him in the guise of an unheard-of, huge fish that has taken the bait. The main part of the novella is a description of a many-hour duel between an old man and a fish in the open ocean, a duel that is fought honestly, on equal terms. In symbolic terms, this fight is read as the eternal struggle of man with the natural elements, with existence itself.
At the moment when the old man defeated the fish, his boat is surrounded by sharks and eats its skeleton. The title of the work evokes certain associations and hints at the main problems: man and nature, mortal and eternal, ugly and beautiful, etc. The conjunction “and” unites and at the same time contrasts these concepts.
The characters and events of the story concretize these associations, deepen and sharpen the problems stated in the title. The old man symbolizes human experience and at the same time its limitations. next to the old fisherman the author depicts little boy, who studies, learns from Santiago. The bleak moral of the story-parable is in its very text: a person in a duel with existence is condemned to defeat. But he must fight to the end. only one person could understand Santiago - a boy, his student.
Someday luck will smile on the boy too. This is the hope and consolation of the old fisherman. “A person can be destroyed,” he thinks, “but he cannot be defeated.” When the old man falls asleep, he dreams of lions - a symbol of fortitude and youth.
Such judgments about life, about the cruel world and man’s place in it earned E. Hemingway the reputation of a philosopher preaching a new stoicism.
E. Hemingway said about the parable story “The Old Man and the Sea”: “I tried to give a real old man and a real boy, a real sea and real fish, real sharks. And if I managed to do this well enough and truthfully, they, of course, can be interpreted in different ways.” How do you “interpret” the images in this story?
Hemingway's story “The Old Man and the Sea” is one of the pinnacles of American and world literature of the 20th century. The book is two-dimensional. On the one hand, this is a completely realistic and reliable story about how the old fisherman Santiago caught a huge fish, how a school of sharks attacked this fish, and the old man failed to recapture his prey, and he brought only a fish skeleton to the shore.
But behind the realistic fabric of the narrative, a different, generalized, epic-fairy-tale beginning clearly emerges. It is palpable in the deliberate exaggeration of the situation and details: the fish is too huge, there are too many sharks, there is nothing left of the fish - the skeleton has been gnawed clean, the old man is fighting alone with a school of sharks. This book, with its universal problems, would seem to have nothing to do with the topic of the day at that time. What is described here could have happened in any country and at any time.
Nevertheless, its appearance in this era is quite natural. She fits in amazingly American literature 1950s only young rebels operate with flashy facts, and Hemingway with philosophical categories. His short story- this is not a protest against the existing world order, but its philosophical negation.
old man sea philosophical principle Hemingway
Bibliography
- 1. “The Old Man and the Sea”, E. Hemingway.
- 2. http://www.verlibr.com
- 3. Wikipedia
“The Old Man and the Sea” - a book about a man who does not give up
There are many photographic portraits of the famous American writer Ernest Hemingway. In one of them, the camera captured the writer on the deck of his yacht Pilar. A tall man, naked to the waist, looks directly at the sun. His light smile and narrowed eyes shine with the joy of life and faith in his lucky star. His face and his entire powerful figure are a living personification male power, courage and unbending will. This is how Hemingway was in life, this is how his heroes were best works. It’s rare for people of the middle and older generation who didn’t “get sick” of Hemingway in their youth. I was attracted not only by his laconic and expressive prose, but also amazing fate, which tested the great American with war, love, violent passions and adventures.
In 1946 in Cuba, which became for the American writer
Ernest Hemingway’s second home, he wrote the famous story-parable “The Old Man and the Sea” - a lyrical story about an old fisherman who caught and then lost the biggest fish of his life. Hemingway’s compatriot, humanist writer William Faulkner, said of the story: “His best thing. Perhaps time will show that this is the best of everything written by us - his and my contemporaries. This time they created themselves, molded themselves from their own clay; defeated each other, suffered each other's defeats to prove to themselves how resilient they were. This time the writer wrote about pity - about something that created everyone: the old man who had to catch a fish and then lose it; the fish that was supposed to become his prey and then disappear; the sharks who were supposed to take her away from the old man - created them all, loved and pitied them. Everything is correct. And, thank God, that which created, that loves and pities Hemingway and me, did not order him to talk about it further.”
The story was a huge success not only among compatriots, it caused a worldwide resonance. Hemingway received the Pulitzer Prize for it in 1953. And in 1954 he was awarded Nobel Prize in literature "for narrative mastery, in Once again demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for its influence on modern prose."
Old man's fight with a huge fish, which carried his boat along the Gulf Stream for a long time, became an occasion for the author to talk about the dignity of man, about the bitterness and happiness of the winner, who was left with the skeleton of a fish gnawed by sharks. The fisherman Santiago confirmed the truth often repeated in Hemingway’s books - “The winner gets nothing,” however, the image of the main character of the story, the old Cuban Santiago, captivates from the very first pages.
Old man Santiago “was thin and emaciated, the back of his head was cut by deep wrinkles, and his cheeks were covered with brown spots of harmless skin cancer, which is caused by the sun’s rays reflected by the surface of the tropical sea.” His hands were covered with old scars, “like cracks in a desert that has long been waterless,” cut by the string when he pulled out a large fish. But there were no fresh scars. Everything about this old man was old except his eyes. These were “the cheerful eyes of a man who does not give up.” Meanwhile, he had something to be despondent about. For eighty-four days he had been fishing all alone on his boat in the Gulf Stream, but had not caught a single fish. For the first forty days, the boy Manolin was with him. But day after day he did not bring a catch, and the parents sent the boy away from the “most unlucky” old man-loser to another boat, “which actually brought three good fish in the first week." It was hard for Manolin to watch how the old man returned every day without a catch, and he went ashore to help him carry the tackle or the hook, the harpoon and the sail wrapped around the mast. On the eighty-fifth day, early in the morning, the old man goes on another fishing trip. And this time he “believes in luck.” Swimming and fishing still bring joy to the old man. He loves the sea, thinks of it with tenderness, as of a woman who “gives great mercies.” He loves both birds and fish that live in the bottomless green mass. Having put bait on the hooks, he slowly floats with the flow, mentally communicating with birds and fish. Accustomed to loneliness, he talks out loud to himself. Nature and the ocean are perceived by him as a living being.
But then serious fishing begins, and all of Santiago’s attention is focused on the fishing line, its condition: he sensitively captures what is happening in the depths, how the fish reacts to the bait pinned on the hook. Finally, one of the green rods trembled: this means that at a depth of one hundred fathoms the marlin began to devour sardines. The line begins to go down, sliding between his fingers, and he feels a huge weight that carries it along with him. A dramatic multi-hour duel unfolds between Santiago and a huge fish.
The old man tries to pull the fishing line, but he doesn’t succeed. On the contrary, the fish pulls the boat along with it, as if in tow, slowly moving to the northwest. About four hours pass. It's approaching noon. This cannot go on forever, the old man thinks, soon the fish will die and then it will be possible to pull it up. But the fish turns out to be too tenacious. “I would like to look at her,” the old man thinks. “I would like to look at her at least with one eye, then I would know who I’m dealing with.” The old man talks to the fish as if it were a creature endowed with reason, although he does not see it yet, but only feels its weight: “Are you in trouble, fish? - he asks. “God knows, it’s not easier for me myself.” “Fish,” says the old man, “I love and respect you very much.” But I will kill you...” Santiago fights the fish, patiently waiting for it to become exhausted.
Night passes. The fish pulls the boat further and further from the shore. Old man. tired, he tightly clutches the rope thrown over his shoulder. He can't be distracted. He is very sorry that Manolin is not around to help him. “It is impossible for a person to remain alone in old age,” he inspires himself... “But this is inevitable.” The thought of fish does not leave him for a second. Sometimes he feels sorry for her. “Isn’t this fish a miracle, God only knows how many years it lived in the world. Never before have I come across such a strong fish. And just think how strange she behaves. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t jump because she’s very smart.” Again and again he regrets that his young assistant is not next to him. Having refreshed himself with caught raw tuna, he continues to mentally talk with the fish. “I won’t part with you until I die,” the old man tells her.
This is the first time he has to fight such a huge fish alone. Not believing in God, he reads the “Our Father” prayer ten times. He feels better, but the pain in his arm does not decrease. He understands that the fish is huge and that he needs to conserve his strength. “Even though this is unfair,” he convinces himself, “I will prove to her what a person is capable of and what he can endure.” Santiago calls himself an “extraordinary old man” and has to prove it.
Another day passes. To distract himself, he thinks about playing in baseball leagues. He remembers how he once measured strength in a Casablanca tavern with a powerful black man, the most strong man in the port, how they sat at the table for a whole day, without giving up, and how he, in the end, gained the upper hand. He took part in similar fights more than once, won, but then gave up this business, deciding that right hand he needs it for fishing.
Coming last act Santiago's fight with a huge fish. The old man feels that this fish is a worthy opponent, and understands that he must kill it in order to survive himself. And his only weapons in this fight are will and reason.
Both the fish and the old man were exhausted. Both suffer unbearably. “You are killing me, fish... But you have the right to do so,” the old man admits. But still Santiago defeats the fish. He “gathered all his pain, and all the rest of his strength, and all his long-lost pride and threw it all against the torment that the fish endured, and then it turned over and swam quietly on its side, almost reaching the side of the boat with its sword; it almost floated past, long, wide, silver, intertwined with purple stripes, and it seemed that there would be no end to it.” Raising the harpoon, the old man, with all the strength left in him, plunges it into the fish’s side. He feels the iron entering her flesh and pushes it deeper and deeper...
Now the old man ties the fish to the boat and begins to move towards the shore. Mentally, he estimates: the fish weighs at least fifteen hundred pounds, which can be sold for thirty cents a pound. Referring to the famous baseball player, he says to himself: “I think the great DiMaggio would be proud of me today.” And even though his hands are still bleeding, he is tired, exhausted, but he defeated the fish. The direction of the wind tells him which way to sail to get home. But here a new danger awaits him. Smelling the smell of blood, the first shark appears and rushes after the boat and the fish tied to it. She is in a hurry because the prey is close. She approached the stern, her mouth dug into the skin and meat of the fish, and began to tear it apart. In rage and anger, gathering all his strength, the old man hit her with a harpoon. Soon she sinks to the bottom, taking with her the harpoon, part of the rope, and a huge piece of fish.
“Man was not created to suffer defeat,” the old man utters words that have become textbook. “A person can be destroyed, but he cannot be defeated.”
It is supported by a piece of meat from the caught fish in the part where the shark’s teeth have been. And at that moment he notices the fins of a whole flock of spotted predators. They are approaching with great speed. The old man meets them, raising an oar with a knife tied to it... And at midnight “he fought the sharks again and this time he knew that the fight was useless. They attacked him in a whole flock, and he saw only the stripes on the water that were drawn by their fins, and the glow when they rushed to tear the fish. He hit the heads with a club and heard the jaws clanging and the boat shaking as they grabbed the fish from below. He was desperately beating the baton at something invisible that he could only hear and touch, and suddenly he felt something grab the baton, and the baton was gone.” Finally the sharks left behind. They had nothing left to eat.
When the old man entered the bay, everyone was already asleep. Having removed the mast and tied the sail, he felt the full extent of his fatigue. A huge tail of a fish rose behind the stern of his boat. All that was left of her was a gnawed white skeleton. He entered the hut, lay down on the bed and fell asleep. The fisherman was still sleeping when Manolin came to him. He assures the old man that from now on they will fish together, because he still has a lot to learn from him. He believes that he will bring Santiago good luck. “They overpowered me, Manolin,” Santiago complains. “They defeated me.” But the boy calms the old man, objecting: “But she herself couldn’t defeat you! The fish didn’t beat you!” Yes, the fish could not defeat Santiago. It was he who defeated the fish, and with it, old age and heartache. He won because he thought not about his luck and not about himself, but about this fish, which he was hurting; about the stars and lions that he saw when he was still sailing as a cabin boy on a sailboat to the shores of Africa; about your difficult life. He won because he saw the meaning of life in struggle, knew how to endure suffering and never lose hope.
Hemingway's story is written in the form of reasoning, memories of old man Santiago, his conversation with himself. In the remarks of this wise man there are many aphorisms that emphasize the credo of Hemingway - a writer and a strong, courageous man: “Never regret anything. Never count losses,” “...man was not created to suffer defeat. Man can be destroyed, but he cannot be defeated.” Stoically following his idea of honor and dignity, old man Santiago, even in his defeat, managed to win an unconditional victory. He was a real person who doesn't give up.