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Contents

Introduction: The Ripening of a Masterpiece

The Old Human and the Sea

Nigh the Author

to Charlie Scribner

and

to Max Perkins

INTRODUCTION:

THE RIPENING OF A MASTERPIECE

The April 1936 issue of Esquire independent an commodity entitled "On the Blue Water: A Gulf Stream Letter," written by the magazine'due south featured contributor Ernest Hemingway. It was a rambling niggling slice that began with a debate between the author and a friend on the relative thrills of deep-sea line-fishing and big-game hunting. Later on a page or then of badinage, Hemingway embarks on a passionate apologia for the joys and beauty of life on the Gulf Stream. That and the other nifty ocean currents are "the terminal wild country left." He goes on to draw his own fishing experiences, adding stories told to him by his Cuban mate Carlos. Ane of the latter was about a behemothic marlin:

. . . an old man line-fishing lone in a skiff out of Cabanas hooked a great marlin that, on the heavy sashcord hand-line, pulled the skiff out to the sea. Two days later on the former human was picked upwardly by fisherman lx miles to the east, the head and forward function of the marlin lashed aslope. What was left of the fish, less than one-half, weighed 8 hundred pounds. The old human being had stayed with him a day, a night, a twenty-four hours and another nighttime while the fish swam deep and pulled the boat. When he had come upwards the old man had pulled the boat up on him and harpooned him. Lashed aslope the sharks had hit him and the old man had fought them out lone in the Gulf Stream in a skiff, clubbing them, stabbing at them, lunging at them with an oar until he was exhausted and the sharks had eaten all that they could concord. He was crying in the boat when the fishermen picked him up, half crazy from his loss, and the sharks were yet circling the boat.

This is clearly an almost perfect short short-story. It is also an unforgettable one, not simply because of the strangeness of the event but also because it conveys an almost physical awareness to the reader.

I read it every bit a schoolboy of fifteen. In my boarding-school days, Esquire was frowned upon by our rector, Dr. Drury, on the grounds that it was "not manly." (I wonder how Hemingway might take responded to that criticism.) In any instance, the story stuck in my heed always after.

More than important, it stuck in Hemingway'due south heed. Clearly he appreciated its value as the germ of a work of literature. Three years later, in a letter of the alphabet to his editor Max Perkins well-nigh a new book of short fiction he was planning to write, he mentioned

one well-nigh the one-time commercial fisherman who fought the swordfish all alone in his skiff for 4 days and 4 nights and the sharks finally eating it after he had it alongside and could not get it to the boat. That'south a wonderful story of the Cuban coast. I'm going out with old Carlos in his skiff so equally to get it all right. Everything he does and everything he thinks in all that long fight with the gunkhole out of sight of all the other boats all lone on the sea. It's a great story if I tin become it right. One that would make the book.

But the collection that was to comprise that story never got written because one of the stories about the Spanish Civil War "took off," and before he knew it Hemingway had written fifteen thousand words and found himself well into the novel that was published the post-obit year nether the title For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Information technology was not until January 1951--fifteen years later on its first appearance in Esquire--that Hemingway returned to the "Santiago story," as he called it. He was living then in his dwelling in Republic of cuba and able to devote himself to the piece of work. The writing went unusually well, and Hemingway was overjoyed by this surging of creative powers.

As he had originally planned to do, Hemingway took the external details of the story and presented them from the point of view of the fisherman. He thus made it possible for the reader to participate imaginatively in the story. That issue was always Hemingway's main aim as a writer.

The story'due south spiritual themes enhance its meaning and impact. In the thoughts of Santiago, the reader shares the beliefs of a simple fisherman whose pride in his endurance is combined with the fatalistic sense that he has "gone out too far," and whose efforts to impale his prey are combined with a reverence for life. Information technology is impossible to read this story without believing that in many respects it represents Hemingway'due south own ideals of manhood.

For a fourth dimension, it was his plan to publish the tale equally part of a collection, just he accepted an unusual offer to accept information technology announced in a single installment in Life mag Its advent in book form followed shortly.

The Old Man and the Ocean was an firsthand success throughout the world. It was specifically cited when the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Hemingway in 1954. In fact, its success was so great that it atomic number 82 to a broad revival of interest in all of Hemingway's works which has connected to the nowadays 24-hour interval. It is a curious fact of literary history that a story which describes the loss of a gigantic prize provided the author with the greatest prize of his career.

--Charles Scribner Jr.

THE OLD Human being

AND THE Sea

He was an onetime man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-iv days now without taking a fish. In the showtime forty days a male child had been with him. But after xl days without a fish the male child'southward parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst course of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three practiced fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old human come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to assist him deport either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the canvas that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.

The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the chivalrous skin cancer the lord's day brings from its reflection on the tropic bounding main were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from treatment heavy fish on the cords. Only none of these scars were fresh. They were equally old every bit erosions in a fishless desert.

Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same colour equally the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.

"Santiago," the male child said to him as they climbed the bank from where the skiff was hauled up. "I could go with you once again. We've made some money."

The old man had taught the male child to fish and the boy loved him.

"No," the old homo said. "Y'all're with a lucky boat. Stay with them."

"Simply remember how yous went 80-7 days without fish and and so we caught big ones every day for three weeks."

"I remember," the quondam man said. "I know you did not leave me because you doubted."

"It was papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him."

"I know," the sometime homo said. "It is quite normal."

"He hasn't much organized religion."

"No," the quondam man said. "Just we have. Haven't nosotros?"

"Yes," the boy said. "Can I offering you a beer on the Terrace and so nosotros'll accept the stuff home."

"Why not?" the erstwhile man said. "Between fishermen."

They saturday on the Terrace and many of the fishermen made fun of the sometime human being and he was not aroused. Others, of the older fishermen, looked at him and were sad. But they did not evidence it and they spoke politely well-nigh the current and the depths they had drifted their lines at and the steady expert conditions and of what they had seen. The successful fisher

men of that mean solar day were already in and had butchered their marlin out and carried them laid full length across ii planks, with two men staggering at the end of each plank, to the fish house where they waited for the ice truck to acquit them to the market in Havana. Those who had caught sharks had taken them to the shark factory on the other side of the cove where they were hoisted on a cake and tackle, their livers removed, their fins cutting off and their hides skinned out and their flesh cut into strips for salting.

When the wind was in the east a smell came across the harbour from the shark manufactory; but today there was just the faint border of the odor because the wind had backed into the north and then dropped off and information technology was pleasant and sunny on the Terrace.

"Santiago," the boy said.

"Yes," the old man said. He was holding his glass and thinking of many years ago.

"Tin can I go out to get sardines for you lot for tomorrow?"

"No. Go and play baseball. I can still row and Rogelio will throw the net."

"I would like to go. If I cannot fish with you, I would like to serve in some way."

"You bought me a beer," the old man said. "You lot are already a man."

"How old was I when y'all first took me in a boat?"

"Five and you nearly were killed when I brought the fish in too green and he near tore the boat to pieces. Can y'all think?"

"I can remember the tail slapping and banging and the thwart breaking and the noise of the clubbing. I can remember yous throwing me into the bow where the moisture coiled lines were and feeling the whole boat shiver and the noise of you clubbing him like chopping a tree down and the sweet blood smell all over me."

"Can yous actually remember that or did I just tell it to yous?"

"I call back everything from when we first went together."

The one-time man looked at him with his sun-burned, confident loving eyes.

"If you lot were my male child I'd take you out and adventure," he said. "But you lot are your father's and your mother's and you lot are in a lucky gunkhole."

"May I get the sardines? I know where I tin can get four baits also."

"I have mine left from today. I put them in salt in the box."

"Let me go four fresh ones."

"One," the old man said. His hope and his confidence had never gone. But now they were freshening as when the cakewalk rises.

"Ii," the boy said.

"Two," the old homo agreed. "You didn't steal them?"

"I would," the boy said. "But I bought these."

"Thank you," the old man said. He was too unproblematic to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of truthful pride.

"Tomorrow is going to be a bye with this current," he said.

"Where are you going?" the male child asked.

"Far out to come up in when the wind shifts. I want to be out before it is light."

"I'll try to get him to piece of work far out," the boy said. "Then if y'all claw something truly big we can come up to your aid."

"He does non like to work too far out."

"No," the boy said. "Simply I will see something that he cannot see such as a bird working and get him to come out after dolphin."

"Are his eyes that bad?"

"He is almost blind."

"It is strange," the old homo said. "He never went turtle-ing. That is what kills the eyes."

"But you went turtle-ing for years off the Mosquito Coast and your optics are good."

"I am a strange old man."

"But are y'all stiff plenty at present for a truly big fish?"

"I think so. And at that place are many tricks."

"Let usa have the stuff abode," the boy said. "And so I tin become the cast net and go after the sardines."

They picked upward the gear from the boat. The old man carried the mast on his shoulder and the boy carried the wooden box with the coiled, difficult-braided brown lines, the gaff and the harpoon with its shaft. The box with the baits was under the stern of the skiff forth with the lodge that was used to subdue the big fish when they were brought alongside. No 1 would steal from the old human being just information technology was better to take the canvass and the heavy lines domicile as the dew was bad for them and, though he was quite sure no local people would steal from him, the old human being thought that a gaff and a harpoon were needless temptations to leave in a boat.

They walked up the road together to the onetime man's shack and went in through its open door. The old man leaned the mast with its wrapped sheet against the wall and the boy put the box and the other gear beside it. The mast was almost as long as the one room of the shack. The shack was made of the tough budshields of the imperial palm which are called guano and in it in that location was a bed, a table, one chair, and a place on the clay floor to melt with charcoal. On the brown walls of the flattened, overlapping leaves of the sturdy fibered guano there was a picture in colour of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and another of the Virgin of Cobre. These were relics of his wife. Once there had been a tinted photo of his wife on the wall but he had taken it downwardly because it fabricated him too lonely to see it and it was on the shelf in the corner under his clean shirt.

"What practise you have to consume?" the boy asked.

"A pot of yellow rice with fish. Do you want some?"

"No. I will eat at dwelling. Practise y'all desire me to make the fire?"

"No. I will make it subsequently. Or I may consume the rice cold."

"May I take the bandage cyberspace?"

"Of form."

There was no cast net and the boy remembered when they had sold it. But they went through this fiction every twenty-four hours. There was no pot of yellowish rice and fish and the boy knew this besides.

"Lxxx-five is a lucky number," the one-time man said. "How would you like to run into me bring one in that dressed out over a k pounds?"

"I'll get the cast net and become for sardines. Will you sit down in the sun in the doorway?"

"Yeah. I have yesterday's paper and I will read the baseball."

The boy did not know whether yesterday's paper was a fiction too. Only the old man brought it out from under the bed.

"Pedrico gave it to me at the bodega," he explained.

"I'll be back when I have the sardines. I'll go along yours and mine together on water ice and nosotros can share them in the forenoon. When I come back you can tell me about the baseball game."

"The Yankees cannot lose."

"Merely I fearfulness the Indians of Cleveland."

"Take faith in the Yankees my son. Think of the great DiMaggio."

"I fear both the Tigers of Detroit and the Indians of Cleveland."

"Be careful or you volition fear fifty-fifty the Reds of Cincinnati and the White Sox of Chicago."

"Yous study it and tell me when I come back."

"Do y'all think nosotros should buy a terminal of the lottery with an eighty-5? Tomorrow is the eighty-5th solar day."

"We can do that," the boy said. "Merely what about the eighty-vii of your great tape?"

"Information technology could non happen twice. Do you think you can notice an eighty-v?"

"I can order 1."

"One sheet. That'south two dollars and a half. Who tin we borrow that from?"

"That's easy. I can always borrow two dollars and a one-half."

"I think perhaps I can likewise. But I try non to infringe. First you infringe. Then yous beg."

"Keep warm quondam human being," the boy said. "Remember we are in September."

"The calendar month when the great fish come," the old human said. "Anyone can exist a fisherman in May."

"I go at present for the sardines," the boy said.

When the boy came back the old homo was asleep in the chair and the dominicus was down. The boy took the sometime army blanket off the bed and spread it over the dorsum of the chair and over the old man's shoulders. They were strange shoulders, nonetheless powerful although very old, and the cervix was withal strong too and the creases did not show so much when the old man was asleep and his head fallen forrard. His shirt had been patched so many times that it was like the canvas and the patches were faded to many dissimilar shades by the dominicus. The former man's caput was very old though and with his eyes airtight there was no life in his face. The newspaper lay across his kn

ees and the weight of his arm held information technology there in the evening breeze. He was barefooted.

The boy left him at that place and when he came back the old homo was still comatose.

"Wake up old homo," the boy said and put his hand on one of the old human being's knees.

The former man opened his optics and for a moment he was coming back from a long mode away. Then he smiled.

"What have you got?" he asked.

"Supper," said the boy. "We're going to have supper."

"I'grand not very hungry."

"Come on and eat. You can't fish and non eat."

"I take," the old man said getting up and taking the newspaper and folding it. So he started to fold the blanket.

"Proceed the blanket around you," the male child said. "Yous'll not fish without eating while I'm alive."

"Then live a long time and take care of yourself," the quondam man said. "What are we eating?"

"Black beans and rice, fried bananas, and some stew."

The boy had brought them in a 2-decker metallic container from the Terrace. The two sets of knives and forks and spoons were in his pocket with a paper napkin wrapped around each gear up.

"Who gave this to you?"

"Martin. The owner."

"I must thank him."

"I thanked him already," the boy said. "You don't need to thank him."

"I'll give him the belly meat of a large fish," the old man said. "Has he done this for usa more than than once?"

"I think so."

"I must requite him something more than than the belly meat then. He is very thoughtful for u.s.a.."

"He sent 2 beers."

"I similar the beer in cans best."

"I know. Only this is in bottles, Hatuey beer, and I accept back the bottles."

"That's very kind of you," the former man said. "Should we eat?"

"I've been request you to," the boy told him gently. "I have not wished to open the container until y'all were ready."

"I'm ready now," the former man said. "I but needed time to launder."

Where did you wash? the boy thought. The village water supply was ii streets down the route. I must have water here for him, the boy thought, and soap and a good towel. Why am I and so thoughtless? I must go him another shirt and a jacket for the wintertime and some sort of shoes and some other coating.

"Your stew is excellent," the old homo said.

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