The Old Man and the Sea is a 1952 novella by the American author Ernest Hemingway. Written between December 1950 and February 1951, it was the last major fictional work Hemingway published during his lifetime. It tells the story of Santiago, an aging fisherman, and his long struggle to catch a giant marlin. The novella was highly anticipated and was released to record sales; the initial critical reception was equally positive, but attitudes have varied significantly since then.

Hemingway began writing The Old Man and the Sea in Cuba during a tumultuous period in his life. His previous novel Across the River and Into the Trees had met with negative reviews and, amid a breakdown in relations with his wife Mary, he had fallen in love with his muse Adriana Ivancich. Having completed one book of a planned «sea trilogy», Hemingway began to write as an addendum a story about an old man and a marlin that had originally been told to him fifteen years earlier. He wrote up to a thousand words a day, completing the 26,531-word manuscript in six weeks.

Over the following year, Hemingway became increasingly convinced that the manuscript would stand on its own as a novella. Life magazine published the full novella in its September 1, 1952 issue. Hemingway’s publisher, Scribner’s, released their first edition a week later on the 8th. Thanks to favorable early reviews and word-of-mouth, popular anticipation was so high that both releases were heavily bootlegged. The magazine sold a record 5.3 million copies in two days, while Scribner’s sold tens of thousands of copies. Translated into nine languages by the end of 1952, The Old Man and the Sea remained on the New York Times bestseller list for six months. In 1953, it received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it was the only work explicitly mentioned when Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

Early reviews were positive, with many hailing what they saw as a return to form for Hemingway after Across the River’s negative reception. The acclaim lessened over time, as literary critics began to think the initial reception overblown and over-enthusiastic. Whether The Old Man and the Sea is inferior or equal to Hemingway’s other works has since been the subject of scholarly debate. Thematic analysis has focused on Christian imagery and symbolism, on the similarity of the novella’s themes to its predecessors in the Hemingway canon, and on the character of the fisherman Santiago.

Plot

Santiago is an elderly fisherman who has not caught a fish in eighty-four days and is considered salao (very unlucky). Manolin, who had been trained by Santiago, has been forced by his parents to work on a different, luckier boat; Manolin still helps Santiago prepare his gear every morning and evening and brings him food. They talk about baseball and Joe DiMaggio, before the boy leaves and Santiago sleeps. He dreams of the sights and experiences of his youth.

On the eighty-fifth day of his streak, Santiago takes his skiff out early, intending to row far into the Gulf Stream. He catches nothing except a small albacore in the morning before hooking a huge marlin. The fish is too heavy to haul in and begins to tow the skiff farther out to sea. Santiago holds on through the night, eating the albacore after sunrise. He sees the marlin for the first time—it is longer than the boat. Santiago increasingly appreciates the fish, showing respect and compassion towards his adversary. Sunset arrives for a second time and the fisherman manages some sleep; he is awoken by the fish panicking but manages to recover his equilibrium. On the third morning the marlin begins to circle. Almost delirious, Santiago draws the marlin in and harpoons it. He lashes the fish to his boat.

A mako shark smells blood in the water and takes a forty-pound bite of the marlin. Killing the shark but losing his harpoon, Santiago lashes his knife to an oar as a makeshift spear and kills three more sharks before the knife blade snaps. Cursing himself for going out too far, he apologises to the mutilated carcass of the marlin. He clubs two more sharks at sunset, but the marlin is now half-eaten. In the third night, the sharks come as a pack and leave only bones behind them. Santiago reaches shore and sleeps in his shack, leaving the skeleton tied to his skiff.

In the morning, Manolin cries when he sees Santiago’s state. He brings coffee and sits with Santiago until he wakes. He insists on accompanying Santiago in the future. A fisherman measures the marlin at eighteen feet long, and a pair of tourists mistake its skeleton for that of a shark. Santiago goes back to sleep and dreams of lions on an African beach.

Background and publication

The Old Man and the Sea was Ernest Hemingway’s sixth major novel, following The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), To Have and Have Not (1937), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and Across the River and Into the Trees (1950). Although the latter, published on September 7, sold 75,000 copies in its first month and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for twenty-one weeks, critical reception was largely negative. Amid a breakdown in marital relations with his wife Mary, Hemingway fell deeper into love with his muse, the young Italian Adriana Ivancich, who spent the winter of 1950–51 in the Hemingways’ company in Cuba. Suddenly finding himself able to write in early December, he completed one book (published in 1970 as Islands in the Stream) of a planned «sea trilogy», and, as his passion for Ivancich cooled, set about writing another story.

In the mid-1930s, the Cuban guide Carlos Gutiérrez had related a story involving an old man and a giant marlin to Hemingway, who retold it in Esquire magazine in an essay titled «On the Blue Water: A Gulf Stream Letter». According to Mary Cruz, this tale was likely first told by the Cuban author Ramón Meza y Suárez Inclán in 1891 and was consistently retold by fishermen over the next forty years. Significant influence came from Hemingway’s own experience with the Gulf Stream, where he sailed for thousands of hours in the decades before writing The Old Man and the Sea. He greatly enjoyed the sport of big-game fishing, participating in and winning several tournaments, and he also became an avid amateur naturalist, inviting luminaries such as Henry Weed Fowler and Charles Cadwalader to record and describe catches on his boat, the Pilar. During a single month on board, aided by Hemingway’s skill in fishing and sailing, the ichthyologist Fowler learnt enough to «revise the classification of marlin for the whole North Atlantic.»

Having put off a novelisation for sixteen years, but aided by his love and knowledge of fishing and the sea, Hemingway suddenly found himself writing a thousand words a day—twice as fast as usual. Although Ivancich’s departure on February 7, 1951, caused Hemingway some disquiet, the novella was essentially finished by February 17; Mary, who read each day’s production in the evenings, commented that she was «prepared to pardon Hemingway for all the disagreeable things he had done.» Hemingway was himself struck by the quality of this seemingly simple story, which he had written in little more than six weeks. Over the next few months, he sent copies to trusted friends and associates including his publisher Charles Scribner and his friend A. E. Hotchner, who all responded very positively.

The 26,531-word manuscript was held in temporary abeyance for over a year, during which time Hemingway became increasingly certain he wished to publish it on its own merits, rather than as an addendum to the «sea trilogy». Conversations with Leland Hayward and Wallace Meyer encouraged him in this direction—Hemingway was delighted when Hayward secured the publication of the entire novella in one issue of Life magazine in May 1952. As he wrote to Meyer, Hemingway wished to rebuff the idea he should only write War and Peace or Crime and Punishment-like novels. He rejected the initial cover designs from his publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons, and asked Ivancich to draw a set of sketches which he found much more suitable. He had intended to dedicate the book to Mary and to his boat, the Pilar, but changed his mind on Memorial Day when thinking about friends he had lost; Mary generously accepted the new dedication, to Scribner and Max Perkins. Events moved slowly yet positively during the summer. Hemingway’s old adversary William Faulkner released a highly positive review, and word-of-mouth reached such proportions that both the Life and Scribner’s editions were heavily bootlegged.

Life released their Labor Day printing, containing the first publication of The Old Man and the Sea, on September 1, 1952; they sold a record 5.3 million copies in two days. Advanced sales of Scribner’s edition in America and Jonathan Cape’s edition in Britain reached a total of 70,000, and afterwards combined weekly sales in the two countries averaged 5,000. It remained on the New York Times bestseller list for twenty-six weeks and had been translated into nine languages by the start of 1953.

Reception and legacy

The Old Man and the Sea met with popular acclaim. In the three weeks after publication, Hemingway received more than eighty letters a day from well-wishers, and Life received many more. Religious figures began to cite the book’s themes in their sermons. Critical reception was initially equally positive, placing the novella as superior in quality to Across the River and equal to Hemingway’s earliest works. With Time magazine labelling it a «masterpiece», Cyril Connolly praised «the best story Hemingway has ever written» and Mark Schorer