The Old Man and the Sea (1952) Ernest Hemingway

Everything is a sin

A very old fisherman goes searching from Cuba for fish after having not caught any for almost three months.  His friend, a boy, even stops working with him because his parents are angry the boy isn’t catching any fish with the old man, despite the latter’s having trained him.  In this short 80 page book, the Old Man battles the elements, catches an enormous fish (that turns out to be a Marlin), following his processes and his own values of to fish – his systems – in the face of 3 months of “failure.”  “It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when the luck comes you are ready.”  He talks to The Boy that isn’t there, and wishes he was there; when he gets back, he thinks, “He noticed how pleasant it was to have someone to talk to instead of speaking only to himself and to the sea.”  He talks to birds, even talks to the Marlin he’s caught, musing and calling him “Fish,” later calling him “half-fish” once he has been partially eaten by other sharks.  “Take a good rest, small bird… Then go in and take your chance like any man or bird or fish.”  The book is, in large part, about what it is to live.  The Old Man talks to the fish, and considers him his friend, but must kill him to survive; it takes him much of the journey to even kill the fish, it is so great.  The Old Man often finds himself wondering about what “The Great Dimaggio” would do, to pass the time, and who inspires him a hero.  He says he must fish because it is what he was born to do.  “But man is not made for defeat… A man can be destroyed but not defeated” he muses, as sharks try to eat his fish.  He perseveres in the face of a cramped up and cut up hand; he continues to try to fight the sharks that steal his fish.  “It is silly not to hope, he thought.  Besides I believe it is a sin.  Do not think about sin, he thought.  There are enough problems without sin.  Also I have no understanding of it.”  He continues to try in the face of extreme adversity; his harpoon gets lost, so he fixed a little knife to an oar to make a new harpoon.  “Perhaps it was a sin to kill the fish.  I suppose it was even though I did it to keep me alive and feed many people.  But then everything is a sin.  Do not think about sin.”  To live even requires sin, in some way, shape, or form.  Life itself is a paradox.  Much like Dostoevsky, Hemingway implores the Old Man to just live life, “You think too much, old man”.  “Besides, he thought, everything kills everything else in some way.  Fishing kills me exactly as it keeps me alive.  The boy keeps me alive, he thought.  I must not deceive myself too much.”  Similar to Dostoevsky, also, he points out the intractably social nature of humanity.  He needs his fellow human as much as he needs to fish to eat.  The Old Man engages a bit in the Tyranny of the Should, but then realizes such an effort is fruitless; no limes, no salt (for eating raw fish), no stone.  “‘I wish I had a stone for the knife.. I should have brought a stone.’ You should have brought many things, he thought.  But you did not bring them, old man.  Now is no time to think of what you do not have.  Think of what you can do with what there is. ‘You give me much good counsel,’ he said aloud. ‘I’m tired of it.’”  People don’t like the right advice they know is true; they want to spit it back out.  Eventually he gets back with no fish left, and makes it to his bed; tourists observe the carcass by his boat and mistakenly thinks it was a shark, misled by a waiter who could not explain to them in English; they do not understand that which was the struggle of the Old Man.  The book implores the reader to reconcile themselves with the paradox of life; with the idea of “sin”, which is really just the sin of living and also being able to think.  And also the fact of how much we need other people in our lives.