“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure it will kill you too – but there will be no special hurry.” From Ernest Hemingway’s, A Farewell to Arms (1929).
In 1952, Ernest Hemingway was considering his impending mortality and his declining literary reputation. During this same time, he was writing what would arguably become his most treasured work—The Old Man and the Sea. Before then, his last book that was both critically and popularly acclaimed was back in 1940. Hemingway likely channeled his twelve-year writing drought angst through his novella’s character Santiago and his determination to haul in the world’s largest fish.
In this reflection on The Old Man and the Sea, I introduce Hemingway’s lifestyle, activities, setbacks, and aspirations as he was contemplating and slowly writing what would become his final masterpiece. Much of the documentation about Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea experiences was hauled in during my collaboration with the literary researcher, John Schofield, as we first co-taught this book at the Osher Institute Lifelong Learning Center of the University of Richmond (VA) in the fall of 2020.
Ernest Hemingway was one of the most famous and successful American writers. During his almost 60-year career, he was a novelist, a short story writer, an essayist, and a war-correspondent. As he was born in 1899, his writing became a link between the late Victorian writers, whose works often emphasized allegories and symbolism, to that of the early postmodern authors, who attempted to convey more realistic yet ambiguous themes. In the first half of the 20th Century, Hemingway’s most acclaimed novels were The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms ((1929), and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940).
Though he was dedicated to crafting concise prose and dialogue, interpreting his writing frequently requires understanding the workings and interplay between the conscious and subconscious mind. Using basic Freudian psychological thinking, which was most recognized in his lifetime, Hemingway coined the term, “The Iceberg Theory of Writing.” This concept expostulated that only about 1/8th of the essential literary meaning is revealed on the written page’s surface. In contrast, its fullest impact (or 7/8th) can only be revealed under the visible surface. This writing style often made, and still makes, understanding Hemingway’s life and his works both more interesting and more challenging. One of the most challenging questions about this book is whether it is just a realistic sea story or an allegory based on the author’s visions of glory.
In 1928, Hemingway first settled in Key West with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer. By 1932, he had gone on his first deep-sea expedition and soon became hooked on the sport. In 1934, he moved his home and his new fishing boat, Pilar, from Havana to Cojimar, Cuba. Throughout the 30s, he wrote articles on his new lifestyle for Esquire and other notable magazines, and soon became one of the most noted world authorities on deep-sea fishing. He wrote an early version of the Old Man and the Sea, called “On Blue Water” for Esquire in 1936. In the 1940s, he was planning on publishing a trilogy of deep-sea fishing books. One of these books, Islands of the Stream, was not published until almost a decade after his death. However, this work needed extensive editing help from his fourth wife, Mary Walsh Hemingway, and his sons before its publication in 1970.
Throughout the 1940s, Hemingway was developing close relationships with the villagers and fisherman of Cojimar, and these experiences became fodder for his novella. Several of the anecdotes experienced by the Old Man were told to him by his colleagues or garnered from local news stories. For example, one Cuban news article reported on the gallant struggles of a single fisherman who snagged a giant marlin and then became frustrated when sharks attacked and ate up much of his prize-winning catch before he returned to shore. Even though Hemingway had prepared for and planned to write The Old Man and the Sea for fifteen years, once he became determined to write it, it only took him about six weeks in 1951. It was first published in an inset of Life Magazine in 1952, where it sold over 5 million copies in 48 hours.
As Hemingway had had many negative experiences with critics about his writing, he decided not to be interviewed by them initially about his work, letting the critics read it for themselves. He said that “If they wanted to read The Old Man and The Sea as allegory or myth, then they could make what they wanted of it.” Ironically, it would be the reviewers who first found a semblance between the shark attack on Santiago’s marlin and the critics’ attack on Ernest Hemingway.
But the results of Hemingway’s extraordinary catch spoke for themselves. Scribner’s released 57,700 copies of the book the following week after the Life magazine, and these were sold out in advance of publication. After this point, Scribner’s was steadily selling 3,000 copies per week. The Book-of-the-Month Club printed 153,000 copies. It was on the Best Seller list for 26 weeks and translated into 9 languages. Hemingway received $137,000 from Life and $35,000 from Scribner’s. The movie rights brought in an additional $150,000. It won the Pulitzer Prize on May 4, 1953. Hemingway subsequently won the Nobel prize for Literature in 1954, and the panel noted that much of this award was based on “his mastery of the narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea.”
A future Litchatte article will focus on whether The Old Man and the Sea was a Heroic Journey, and if Santiago successfully completed his Quest. Submit questions or comments to Murray through the dialogue panel under this article, and you can expect to receive a speedy response from him.
Cover Photo from www.HemingwayCuba.com
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