"But man is not made for defeat..."

"Man can be destroyed but never defeated."

Ernest Hemingway won the Pulitzer for this work of fiction in 1953. The Old Man and the Sea was last novel to be published in his lifetime and the novel that brought him international acclaim. How disappointing...

Don't get me wrong. I loved the book, but I found it elementary in style and simple in plot. Not to mention there were no chapters (and we all know how I feel about that), and because of that fact, I finished it in the course of an afternoon. On the surface, there is nothing particularly special about the story line: an old fisherman (Santiago) goes out alone in a sailboat, struggles for over a day to catch a marlin, loses everything but the bones to a series of shark attacks, and ultimately has nothing to show for his struggles, except a broken boat and a broken body.

However, if I would look deeper, there would be more, right? ... Otherwise, high schools the world over would not still teach it to disinterested teenagers (at least it is only one hundred or so pages).

I am sure that Hemingway did not intend to make the old Cuban a pathetic character. I am sure he wanted the reader to focus on his tenacity, his cheerful and undefeated spirit. Nevertheless, he made me sad. Santiago is having a dry spell, hasn't caught a fish in over 84 days. His only friend and companion, a young boy, is no longer able to fish with him, his parents said Santiago was suffering from bad luck. And the other fishermen laugh at his foolishness when his back is turned. With only a hope and a prayer, he braves the deeper waters of the unforgiving sea to find larger fish for greater profits. Well, we all know how that worked out for him (sorry if I spoiled the ending for you).

He was tenacious, fighting for any part of his prize he could keep. But, his loneliness overshadowed his determination for me. Repeatedly, he would state "If only the boy were here... but he is not here." However, Santiago cowboys up and is not defeated, not by the fish anyway. The fish did not defeat him. Due to his large (however unfulfilling) catch, the fishermen once again respected the old Cuban, and the boy, the boy who never left him, was there to mend the broken bits. While the skeleton (the only thing to show for his backbreaking labor) may float along the shoreline like garbage, there is still hope in the end:

"You must get well fast for there is much that I can learn and you can teach

me everything. How much did you suffer?"

"Plenty," the old man said.

"I'll bring the food and the papers," the boy said. "Rest well, old man."

... Up the road, in his shack, the old man was sleeping again. He was still

sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him. The old

man was dreaming about lions.

Perhaps you could claim Santiago as a Christ-like character, ridiculed by his peers, suffering alone in a wilderness of blue vastness. Perhaps you could say that Santiago is simply a reflection of Hemingway, an old man struggling to fight the good fight only to be knocked down and hindered at every turn. Perhaps...

But for right now, all I see is an old man, a fish, and the sea. Perhaps, I am tired.

Up next, something slightly more recent: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields, winning the Pulitzer in 1995.

Until then, happy reading.