The Old man and the sea review; An Indigenous perspective

-Ibin Nayakam

Even though I strongly disagree with certain of Ernest Hemingway\’s personal ideology in his book \”The Old Man and the Sea,\” there is a distinct indigenous smell in this fisherman\’s tale and the events that occurred in his elderly, lonely life in the ocean that I found to be quite appealing. While reviewing this well-known book, I am filled with excitement because I am a member of an indigenous fishing community and have gone inside the ocean to hook fish. It is very rare in mainstream literature as well as art forms find out fishing community stories and fishing community people’s problems highlighted stories. I can’t tell that ‘the old man and the sea’ is a complete fishing community problems describing story but the despair feelings of undocumented and unseen adventure of old man in this novel and fisher folks in every day inside the ocean is real. One side as a son of adventurous fisherman; the fisher folk who is going inside ocean for catch food since his childhood and after adulthood he goes alone. Another side as a mass communication student I observed the real stories that what happened inside the ocean said by my father which was not captured and only listened by few people or sometimes nobody. He tells these stories to us, the children when he was drinking alcohol.

First I can explain the plot of this novel that will add more clarity. After that we can deeply analyze it’s ideological inclination and what I have perceived from this whole novel.

The plot

Although The Old Man and the Sea is a very short book, Ernest Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for this work.

The elderly Cuban fisherman Santiago, who has a great deal of experience and expertise, serves as the book\’s primary character. Locals in his region referred to him as \”salao,\” which denoted that he was currently experiencing the worst kind of bad luck. Manolin, a little boy who learned how to fish from Santiago and who genuinely loves and cares about him, is the other prominent character. Manolin wished Santiago luck but was unable to accompany him on his next fishing trip due to family obligations. Santiago, however, had bad luck that followed him for 84 days while he fished off the coast of Cuba. On the 85th day, the plot took a turn that abruptly altered the course of events when Santiago hooked a marlin fish (a shark like big fish). The cunning huge marlin began by forcing him to struggle constantly after that. Santiago was physically weak due to lack of sleep, a hand injury, hunger, and a push, but his youthful attitude led him to challenge the fish and make the decision to kill the giant as quickly as possible. The fish had to be killed after 3 days. The narrative didn\’t finish there; this time, he had a bit of good fortune, but once more, it turned against him.

Sharks attacked the dead fish as he was in the ocean travelling to his home. This verse of the story then continued Santiago\’s struggle. What could be worse than an elderly man being attacked while holding a dead fish in the middle of the ocean by a pack of ferocious sharks? He was finally able to bring that giant home with him after a dangerous battle, but only its trace remained. The tale concluded with a collection of emptiness, proudness; which is very long away from the protagonist and loneliness.

Hope!

Most of the readers praising Santiago as dreamer from it’s first publication to till date. Dreamers, they never see the riptide coming. Never mind what lies beneath. But a world without dreamers would be a nightmare. So, Better to sail an ocean of hope than a sea of despair.

Santiago maintains his resolve throughout the entire book, striving to prove his effectiveness even in his later years when younger fishermen were making fun of him for his terrible luck. Santiago then attempted to kill the enormous marlin fish rather than fleeing from it even though it was far larger than he had anticipated. While battling this large sea fish, he was remembering an old tale of how he had defeated a powerful black man in hand game:

“The time in the tavern at Casablanca when he had played the hand game with the great Negro from Cienfuegos who was the strongest man on the docks. They had gone one day and one night with their elbows on a chalk line on the table and their forearms straight up and their hands gripped tight. Each one was trying to force the other’s hand down onto the table. There was much betting and people went in and out of the room under the kerosene lights and he had looked at the arm and hand of the Negro and at the Negro’s face. They changed the referees every four hours after the first eight so that the referees could sleep. Blood came out from under the fingernails of both his and the Negro’s hands and they looked each other in the eye and at their hands and forearms and the bettors went in and out of the room and sat on high chairs against the wall and watched. The walls were painted bright blue and were of wood and the lamps threw their shadows against them. The Negro’s shadow was huge and it moved on the wall as the breeze moved the lamps. 

The odds would change back and forth all night and they fed the Negro rum and lighted cigarettes for him. 

Then the Negro, after the rum, would try for a tremendous effort and once he had the old man, who was not an old man then but was Santiago El Campeon, nearly three inches off balance. But the old man had raised his hand up to dead even again. He was sure then that he had the Negro, who was a fine man and a great athlete, beaten. And at daylight when the bettors were asking that it be called a draw and the referee was shaking his head, he had unleashed his effort and forced the hand of the Negro down and down until it rested on the wood. The match had started on a Sunday morning and ended on a Monday morning. Many of the bettors had asked for a draw because they had to go to work on the docks loading sacks of sugar or at the Havana Coal Company. Otherwise everyone would have wanted it to go to a finish. But he had finished it anyway and before anyone had to go to work.”

The genuine outcome or appreciation for the experience of catching the enormous marlin fish was handed to the old man by someone, but he was unable to accept it since he was so far away from it, as we can see when reading the very last section of this book.

Those lines from the novel:

“That afternoon there was a party of tourists at the Terrace and looking down in the water among the empty beer cans and dead barracudas a woman saw a great long white spine with a huge tail at the end that lifted and swung with the tide while the east wind blew a heavy steady sea outside the entrance to the harbor. 

“What’s that?” she asked a waiter and pointed to the long backbone of the great fish that was now just garbage waiting to go out with the tide. 

“Tiburon,” the waiter said. “Shark.” He was meaning to explain what had happened. 

“I didn’t know sharks had such handsome, beautifully formed tails.” 

“I didn’t either,” her male companion said. 

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 the lions.”

So, novelist is exhibiting Santiago not as a symbol of lost but hope. Dreamers bringing hope. May be it would be my curious crossing over when I will try to connect Ernest Hemmingway’s old man Santiago with Paulo Coelho’s Alchemist Santiago; two characters of bringing hope to the readers.

recently one postmodern Malayalam writer said in an interview, that the characters should not think like the author. Instead the writer should let the character grow it’s own way, she or he should let the characters think and speak their own way.

Hemmingway was a modernist writer. Modernism emerged with its insistent breaks with the immediate past, its different inventions, \’making it new\’ with elements from cultures remote in time and space. The questions of impersonality and objectivity seem to be crucial to Modernist poetry. Modernism developed out of a tradition of lyrical expression, emphasizing the personal imagination, culture, emotions, and memories of the poet. For the modernists, it was essential to move away from the merely personal towards an intellectual statement that poetry could make about the world.

That’s why while Hemmingway’s old man not actually getting satisfaction in this story but the writer considering the reader’s mental health and giving them relief by additionally putting the last characters getting amaze by watching the remaining spine of the big marlin fish at the hotel.

Fisher folks’ reading of oppressor Hemmingway

But by not making interactions of rich people with fisher folks Hemmingway also did the historical betrayal to the indigenous community. Why because is, whenever a famous writer wants to describe the aesthetic beauty of a downtrodden geographical region for uniqueness they make picnic characters in it instead of making real characters from the community. If they will make oppressed community characters, the characters will not go and mingle with different social group people and discuss them with real social issues which they are facing in fishing community.

This Domination culture is coming from Hemmingway’s white and American background. That’s why the negro was villain in the hand game. Hemmingway detailed how poor the old fisherman man was with his keen observation on a poor Cuban fishing community. But how the fisherman thinking while fighting with the big sea fish exposing the oppressor inside Hemmingway.

Because of the violence, as a indigenous member I felt, the giant marlin fish become representation of indigenous people and the old man become an ego triggered oppressor.

Let’s check some of the monologues said by old man while battling with marlin fish,

1. “I am not religious,” he said. “But I will say ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys that I should catch this fish, and I promise to make a pilgrimage to the Virgin of Cobre if I catch him. That is a promise.”
2. “I’ll kill him though,” he said. “In all his greatness and his glory.” 

Although it is unjust, he thought. But I will show him what a man can do and what a man endures. 

“I told the boy I was a strange old man,” he said. 

“Now is when I must prove it.”

Indigenous fisher folks are daily food earning for survival basically. They are the people have been deprived of rights and essential government schemes, culturally marginalized , carrying less social capital according to the mainstream social units. Survive with fishes and food then make their children capable of fishing or educated is the ultimate goal of them. Loneliness and overthinking is not part of indigenous fishing people. They are more talking each other, helping each other, very normal social beings. It is an indigenous nature of people. But Hemmingway’s main character becoming a writer kind of person. The old man getting depression by being alone. He is not talking to his age people. He finding relief in the boy by talking and spending times with him like a scholar. The intimacy between them is not grandfather and grandson love but a thinker or artist and his admirer. The old man’s ego is getting triggered when fishing that is really unusual, in my community. May be some times male egos get triggered by words of other people then fisherman try to catch more or bigger or unique fishes but they will give first priority for their safety inside the ocean. Here Hemmingway want to kill the fish never mind the old man die or not, to satisfy his ego like capitalist want to capture the land of fisher folks for port construction or government want to imprison the dissent activists. Illiterate, indigenous people don’t have any logical reason for not believe in religion, I don’t understand why Hemmingway’s old man telling that he is not religious.

• It must be very strange in an airplane, he thought. I wonder what the sea looks like from that height? They should be able to see the fish well if they do not fly too high. I would like to fly very slowly at two hundred fathoms high and see the fish from above. In the turtle boats I was in the cross-trees of the mast-head and even at that height I saw much. The dolphin look greener from there and you can see their stripes and their purple spots and you can see all of the school as they swim. Why is it that all the fast-moving fish of the dark current have purple backs and usually purple stripes or spots? The dolphin looks green of course because he is really golden. But when he comes to feed, truly hungry, purple stripes show on his sides as on a marlin. Can it be anger, or the greater speed he makes that brings them out?

Here this visualization of author as a tourist in the ocean might be made the reader to feel more aesthetics of ocean. Readers praise the writer for these kind of imaginations but the real problem behind this glorification is bit serious for indigenous people.

The popular movie, ‘life of pi’ we can take as example – in that movie the main character coming inside the ocean as a tourist they can feel experience label these nature aesthetics and beauty on them without identify or face the discrimination, suppression and social problems coming from the society on indigenous fisher folks. Whenever art takes an indigenous land, geography and character , it will be the writers duty and responsibility to document it by analyzing more authentic data regarding indigenous people before making anything about them. By using indigenous symbols telling your own story and make the indigenous people think like you will make more problems to the down trodden people.

• How do you feel, fish?” he asked aloud. “I feel good and my left hand is better and I have food for a night and a day. Pull the boat, fish.”
• I’m clear enough in the head, he thought. Too clear. I am as clear as the stars that are my brothers. Still I must sleep. They sleep and the moon and the sun sleep and even the ocean sleeps sometimes on certain days when there is no current and a flat calm.

Fisherman going on their tiny boat will be alone inside the ocean most of the time, they will make attachments with sea that time not fishes. And this is true that the moon, stars and sun always partners of fisherman. They use them for geographical positioning and to find time. They can be siblings of fisher folks.

Conclusion

One of the experience in my academics is, when I was trying to find out ‘inside ocean moments’ of a fisher folks in Malayalam movies for my research, I couldn’t find out much. And I have to say, among in that few I got; Amaram (1991) movie, which have similar moments of the old man in this novel and his fighting with big marlin fish inside ocean. Malayalam movie chemmeen (1965) too tried some scenes with fisherman and shark but they couldn’t go inside ocean to shoot those scenes.

Whatever it is, Ernest Hemmingway’s The old man and the sea(1951) inspired more artists and writers to focus on ocean literature or ocean lives although he have his prejudices and natural bias of depressed, white, American in the book. This book and it\’s recognitions including pulitzer and nobel, helped the world to know how adventurous is fishermen life and how helpless they are to show their talents to the people sleeping in the land. I already mentioned on the first paragraph my father’s experience as indigenous fisherman. I wish more writings in this area should come. Writers should research and listen the untold adventurous stories of fishing folks all over the world and covert it as stories for upcoming generations. That would be help the developmental process of our indigenous fishing communities.