Setting

The narrative takes place in the 1940s.

Although the opening and closing scenes take place on land in a small Cuban fishing village, the dominant setting is the Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba. Hemingway believes the sea to be the last great unexplored territory on earth, and this work travels deeply into the nature of this mysterious setting.

Social Concerns

The Old Man and the Sea is a profound exploration of humankind's relationship with nature, and the human place in nature. Santiago's role as a fisherman who must catch fish in order to live in no way diminishes his deep love of nature and his extraordinary sensitivity to his environment. In fact his natural piety is in large part a function of his identity as fisherman (outsiders, touristically concerned with the "beauty of nature," have no access to the depth of Santiago's hard-earned vision of nature.)

Another important social concern deals with the importance of exemplars for the young, and the role of an exemplar outside the family in a young man's maturation process, as seen in the Santiago-Manolin relationship.

Their relationship points to another social concern, the notion of respect and concern for the aged, and the loneliness of old age. More importantly, perhaps, a paramount social concern here is Hemingway's timeless portrayal of the ways in which the simplest and poorest of human beings may possess the greatest human dignity and richness of character.

Social Sensitivity

Few writers have been more sensitive to nature, to the depths and the strengths of human character, and to the tragedy and the glory of human experience than Hemingway. All of his work is grounded in basic timeless values: courage, precision, skill, honor, honesty, and dignity. Much of his writing is profoundly religious, deeply spiritual but never preachy. Hemingway always examines the truth of experience, however dark or violent it may be; he does not deny the reality of evil and suffering and death, but he is equally concerned with the human struggle to transcend difficulty through the values and conduct that provide redemption.

Many readers will approach Hemingway with reservations about the violent and "macho" reputation of his work. The Old Man and the Sea does depict the violence inherent in nature and also contains some passages that could be considered sexist. For example, in an extended metaphor comparing the sea to a woman, Hemingway writes: "...the old man always thought of [the sea] as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favors, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought." But overall Hemingway's vision and his values are positive and appropriate to all human beings.

Techniques

The Old Man and the Sea employs straightforward prose and conventional narrative form and technique. Technically speaking, it is perhaps Hemingway's most conventional fiction. None of the modernist techniques -- indirection, implication, allusion, omission, unexplained juxtaposition -- that Hemingway so elaborately deploys in In Our Time (1925; see separate entry) and other works are used in this parablelike tale, which helps to explain why it reaches the widest audience of any Hemingway work.

Consider, for example, his use of symbolism to suggest that Santiago is a Christ-figure or, at the very least, that Santiago's suffering is analogous to Christ's suffering. After the sharks attack his marlin, Santiago cries out "Ay"; then Hemingway writes that "there is no translation for this word and perhaps it is just a noise such as a man might make, involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood." The many Christological associations in the novel are obvious, and spelled out, in a way that they would never be in Hemingway's earlier modernist fiction.

Another technical aspect of the book worthy of attention is the manner in which the novel functions as one long sustained exploration of the old man's character and consciousness, somewhat in the fashion that a traditional soliloquy or an interior monologue serves to reveal character. Overall, the plot, action, and story line are remarkably simple and direct; technical elements of pacing and timing are likewise handled in conventional but highly effective fashion. For example, the great marlin is first seen, leaping high out of the sea, at the exact midway point of the book. In The Old Man and the Sea, then, Hemingway's technical mastery dazzles the reader, not through formal experimentation and elaborate technique, but through clear, stunning imagery, poetic evocations of the sea and its creatures, and vivid characterization of the old man; and all of this is immediately accessible to any reader.