Literary Qualities

Hemingway focuses on Santiago's consciousness in this quest story. Very much in the way that a traditional soliloquy or an interior monologue serves to reveal character, this novella functions as one long exploration of the old man's character.

Hemingway's symbolism suggests that Santiago is a Christ-figure. After the sharks attack his fish, for example, Santiago says, "Ay"; 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." At the end of the book, Santiago struggles up the hill with the mast on his shoulder, a symbolic echo of Christ carrying the cross. Many "religious" images contribute to this symbolic pattern, while other patterns of symbolism center on baseball and dreams of youth.

The book's simple plot contains some element of suspense, but above all, the book lives in its beautiful imagery, the poetic evocation of the sea, and the admirable character of the old man.

Thematic Overview

The novel's best-known and oft-quoted line sums up its most important themes: "A man can be destroyed but not defeated." At the beginning of the story, Santiago has gone eighty-four days without catching a fish, but his sea-colored eyes remain "cheerful and undefeated." Variations on the theme of being undefeated abound, and point beyond mere physical endurance to a quality of the human spirit which endures and prevails in spite of suffering and loss. Hemingway's theme has the broadest possible application to general experience, suggesting that although a person may be stripped of everything in the process of living, may lose every thing and everyone, nevertheless a quest conducted with skill, courage, endurance, honor, and compassion can guarantee the ultimate triumph of the human spirit. Hemingway avoids the sentimental happy ending which would have Santiago bring home the great fish intact and sell it at market for a large sum of money. Instead, we see the materially impoverished but spiritually rich old fisherman bring only the bare skeleton of the marlin into port, earning no money yet cherishing a far greater prize: Rather than a mere triumph over nature, he has, with great dignity and humility, achieved atonement (at-onement), oneness with nature.

Other themes center on the apprentice-master relationship of Manolin and Santiago. The old man has taught the boy many important lessons -- how to fish with skill and precision, how to live with wisdom and humility -- but the old man in his aloneness also needs the boy, especially when he is alone at sea and takes the great marlin. He reiterates: "I wish I had the boy. To help me and to see this." This theme is poignantly crystallized in the statement: "No one should be alone in their old age."

Another important theme involves the sense of kinship of all creatures, and the apparent paradox of Santiago's love and respect for the fish he must kill. The old man expresses with difficulty the love he feels for the marlin: "I do not understand these things . . . 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."