Media Adaptations

The Old Man and the Sea was adapted as a feature film starring Spencer Tracy as Santiago and Felipe Pazos as The Boy, Warner Brothers, 1958. This film has been praised for some of its visual effects, and the score won an Academy Award.

It was also the source of a made-for-TV production in 1990 starring Anthony Quinn, Gary Cole, Alexis Cruz, Patricia Clarkson, and Francesco Quinn.

The novel is also available on a two-cassette sound recording narrated by Charlton Heston.

Topics for Further Study

Throughout The Old Man and the Sea,Santiago expresses his feelings about nature. Today, the protection of our natural environment is often in the news. Do some research on environmental issues and write an essay comparing Santiago's attitude about nature to modern theories of environmentalism. Would Santiago be considered an environmentalist today?

Manolin undergoes a change between the beginning and the end of the novel. What do you think causes this change? Find specific examples from the story to support your opinion. Then write an essay comparing the "old" Manolin from the beginning of the story to the "new" Manolin who has emerged by the end.

Most of Ernest Hemingway's heroes are young men, but Santiago, as the title reveals, is an old man. Why do you think the author chose to tell this story from an older person's perspective? How might the story have been different if the hero had been a young man? Present your ideas in an essay and use examples from the text to support your conclusions.

What Do I Read Next?

Youth (1903) and Typhoon (1902), both by Joseph Conrad, are sea stories with intriguing parallels to Hemingway's work. It is believed that Hemingway, who read all of Conrad in Paris and Toronto during the twenties, may have consciously or unconsciously used the "central strategy" of Youth when writing The Old Man and the Sea.

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) was Hemingway's last successfully received novel before The Old Man and the Sea, and the only previous Hemingway novel in which a Hispanic background plays a major part. It depicts the struggle of Robert Jordan, an American fighting against the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War, to live up to his political and personal ideals without becoming narrowly partisan.

Islands in the Stream, published posthumously in 1970, is the book, as edited, of which The Old Man and the Sea was originally envisaged by Hemingway as the fourth part. The first three sections were originally called "The Sea When Young," The Sea When Absent," and "The Sea in Being."

The Nick Adams Stories (1972) are all Hemingway's short stories, plus a few story fragments, about this recurring fictional character, from the time he first appeared in the early 1920s as a young boy, to his last appearance as an adult and father in 1933. Although written and published at different times in Hemingway's life, they are arranged here by Hemingway scholar Philip Young to illustrate Nick's unfolding life.

Topics for Discussion

1.Discuss the baseball imagery in the book. What does the "great Dimaggio" symbolize? What does the "bone spur" symbolize?

2.When Santiago was a boy, he saw "lions on the beaches" in Africa. What do these lions symbolize? Why does he dream about Africa and the lions every night?

3.What is the difference, according to Santiago, between those who think of the sea as "la mar" and those who speak of it as "el mar"?

4.Discuss some of the things Santiago knows about nature, and the details he reads in the behavior of the birds and fish. How did he learn these things?

5.When Santiago catches the albacore, he "hit him on the head for kindness." Discuss this scene and Santiago's "kindness" in general.

6.Santiago says he is "not religious," but he says his prayers regularly and promises to make a pilgrimage if he catches the fish. Discuss Santiago's religious feeling, both his natural piety and his Catholic piety.

7.Why is "no one worthy of eating" the great marlin?

8.In one of the book's most important passages, Santiago thinks, "But it is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers." How do you interpret this statement?