The Unwavering Will of a Man: A Review of The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis
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The September 1, 1952 issue of Life sold a record 5.3 million copies in two days, and the draw was a short work of fiction about an old man who could not catch a fish.

That story, The Old Man and the Sea, runs about 26,500 words. It made Ernest Hemingway an international celebrity, won the Pulitzer Prize, and was the only one of his books the Swedish Academy named when it awarded him the Nobel Prize in 1954. This review covers how the book was made, what it argues, where critics have split on it, and how it has fared on screen.

The Author and the Making of the Book

Hemingway was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, and died on July 2, 1961, in Idaho. He wrote The Old Man and the Sea in Cuba between December 1950 and February 1951, and it was essentially finished by February 17, 1951. The timing matters. His previous novel, Across the River and Into the Trees (1950), drew negative reviews in more than 150 publications, and accounts of his career link the new book to that reaction. Hemingway later called it “the best I can write ever for all of my life.”

The seed was an anecdote. A Cuban guide named Carlos Gutiérrez told Hemingway a story in the mid-1930s about an old man and a giant marlin, and Hemingway retold it in Esquire. The scholar Mary Cruz traced the tale back further, to an 1891 telling by Ramón Meza y Suárez Inclán, and argued that fishermen had been passing it along for roughly forty years afterward.

Life published the full novella in its September 1, 1952 issue. Scribner’s released the first book edition a week later, on September 8, as a 140-page hardcover; advance sales of the Scribner’s and Jonathan Cape editions reached 70,000 combined. The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction followed on May 4, 1953. The Nobel citation of 1954 credited Hemingway’s “mastery of the art of narrative” and named this book as its most recent demonstration. He did not travel to Stockholm. Two plane crashes in Africa that January had left him still recovering, so he sent a speech instead.

What Happens (Spoilers Ahead)

Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman, has gone eighty-four days without a catch. The boy he trained, Manolin, has been moved by his parents to a luckier boat, though he still brings the old man food and helps with his gear. On the eighty-fifth day Santiago rows far out into the Gulf Stream alone and hooks a huge marlin.

The struggle lasts for days. Santiago finally harpoons the fish and lashes it alongside the skiff. Then the sharks arrive. By the time he reaches shore, little remains of the marlin but its skeleton, and Manolin insists on fishing with him again.

Close-up of an old fisherman's calloused hands gripping a taut hemp fishing line

Iceberg Prose

Hemingway named his method the iceberg theory, also called the theory of omission: state the facts plainly and leave the structure beneath them unspoken. In Death in the Afternoon he compared it to an iceberg, which moves with dignity because only one-eighth of it shows above water. This novella is arguably the cleanest demonstration of the method in his work. The sentences are short, the vocabulary is plain, and almost nothing is explained.

Santiago’s patched sail does the explaining instead. The narration says it looked like “the flag of permanent defeat,” and the reader learns his luck has run out before anyone mentions it. The village has a word for him, salao, which the book glosses as the worst form of unlucky.

It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact.

Santiago’s thought on the second day of the fight, Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Destroyed but Not Defeated

The most quoted line in the book comes after Santiago has killed the marlin and lashed it to the skiff, and before the sharks appear. He says it aloud, to himself.

A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

Santiago, Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Then the novella tests the claim. Santiago loses the fish, and the narration says he knew he was beaten “finally and without remedy.” He tells Manolin the sharks truly beat him. Yet when his own mind asks what beat him, the answer is “Nothing,” followed by “I went out too far.” The book separates losing from being defeated. What Santiago concedes is a mistake of judgment, not a surrender, and the reading SparkNotes gives of the story follows the same line: honor comes from fighting well, and victory is not required for it.

Pride, Skill and Luck

Pride is Santiago’s flaw, in the way it is for heroes of classical tragedy. He rows too far out because he can, and he knows that choice cost him the fish. Hemingway does not condemn the pride, though. It is also what keeps Santiago fighting when hope is thin, and the novella treats seeing a struggle through as the thing that counts.

Against bad luck, Santiago’s answer is craft. His preference for being exact over being lucky is a small working philosophy: keep the tools right, keep the technique clean, and be ready when the chance comes. It is the same ethic that runs through any trade where the work is judged by whether it holds.

Furled patched sail drying beside a ramshackle fishing shack on a Cuban shoreline at dawn

The Marlin, the Boy and the Ballplayer

Santiago is alone at sea, but the book is full of connection. He regards the marlin as a partner rather than just prey, and the respect he feels for a worthy opponent turns the killing into something closer to honor. He draws comfort from Joe DiMaggio, a ballplayer he admires without ever having met, as a model of resilience. And his bond with Manolin, built through fishing, is one of mutual care.

The lions on the African beach tie these threads together. Santiago dreams of them, and in one passage he loves them as he loves the boy. SparkNotes reads the lions as an image of comfort and youth, linked explicitly to Manolin, who watches over Santiago as the book ends.

What the Sharks Mean

Whether the sharks stand for cruel critics or for destructive natural forces is an old argument. The critic reading is tempting, given how hard Across the River and Into the Trees was reviewed just before. But the novella does not need it. Read on its own terms, the sea is not an enemy. Predator and prey are bound by the same law, humanity sits inside nature rather than against it, and death is simply part of the arrangement.

Critics Then and Now

Early reviews were largely positive. William Faulkner, Hemingway’s old rival, wrote a highly favorable one. Time called the novella a masterpiece, and Cyril Connolly judged it “the best story Hemingway has ever written.” Bernard Berenson, whose review Hemingway liked best, argued it was superior to Moby-Dick.

Later critics were less sure. Delmore Schwartz argued that the first reviewers had overpraised it, and Seymour Krim called it only more of the same. Jeffrey Meyers went as far as naming it Hemingway’s most overrated work, and Robert Weeks called it an inferior Hemingway novel. The dispute is mostly over whether the book’s simplicity is depth or repetition, and seven decades on, readers are still choosing sides.

On Screen: 1958, 1990 and 1999

John Sturges directed the 1958 film, with Spencer Tracy as Santiago, and it premiered in New York on October 7, 1958. It runs 87 minutes. Dimitri Tiomkin won the Academy Award for Best Original Score, and Tracy and cinematographer James Wong Howe were nominated. The production was a struggle: the budget grew from $2 million to $5 million while the crew searched for usable fish footage, some of it taken from Alfred C. Glassell Jr.’s world-record catch at the Cabo Blanco Fishing Club in Peru. Sturges called it “technically the sloppiest picture I have ever made.” It was also one of the first films to use bluescreen compositing.

Accounts of Hemingway’s own verdict differ. According to producer Leland Hayward, he was pleased and praised Tracy’s performance, while another account says he disliked the finished film. In 1959 he said the only Hollywood adaptation of his stories he liked was The Killers.

Anthony Quinn starred in a 1990 television film. The most unusual adaptation is the 1999 animated short by Aleksandr Petrov, a 20-minute film painted with fingertips and brushes in pastel oils on sheets of glass. Petrov and his son Dmitri worked in Montreal for about two and a half years, painting more than 29,000 frames photographed with an IMAX camera. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film and has been released on DVD.

Bleached marlin skeleton lashed alongside a small wooden skiff in moonlit water

Frequently Asked Questions

How long is The Old Man and the Sea?
It is a novella. The manuscript runs 26,531 words, the 1952 first edition is 140 pages, and the Scribner paperback linked below is listed at 128 pages. At an average reading pace it takes roughly two hours; that last figure is an estimate, not a published number.

Did The Old Man and the Sea win the Nobel Prize?
Not by itself. The Nobel Prize in Literature honors a body of work. The Swedish Academy’s 1954 citation named this novella as the latest demonstration of Hemingway’s narrative mastery. The book itself won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Is it a true story?
It is fiction built on a tale told among fishermen. Carlos Gutiérrez told Hemingway a version in the mid-1930s, and Mary Cruz traced the story back to 1891. Hemingway wrote in a 1954 letter that Santiago’s name “is no accident.”

What adaptations exist?
Three are well documented: the 1958 feature film with Spencer Tracy, the 1990 television film with Anthony Quinn, and Aleksandr Petrov’s Oscar-winning animated short from 1999.

Where to Read It

The Old Man and the Sea (Scribner paperback) (affiliate link): at 128 pages, it fits comfortably into a single afternoon.

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Further Reading

Bernie Gourley, on his own blog in 2021, calls it “a masterpiece of American literature,” reads Santiago as a man at ease with himself, and sets the book beside Camus’s The Fall, which he was reading at the time.

Barbara Lee Harper, in a 2016 reread for the Back to the Classics Challenge, weighs the critics’ symbolism readings against Hemingway’s own remark and concludes the story shows the “dignity, endurance, and triumph of the spirit of the old man.”

Sources

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