The Old Man and the Sea Critical Reviews

August 28, 1952

Books of The Times

Past ORVILLE PRESCOTT

THE Erstwhile MAN AND THE SEA By Ernest Hemingway.

everal weeks ago, along with several hundred other critics and newspaper men, I received a present from Life magazine. Information technology consisted of a set of galley proofs of some material that Life was going to publish in the issue which would appear on Thursday, Aug. 28. Ordinarily a book reviewer is not concerned with what fabric magazines publish. But this was a rather special case. The proofs were of Ernest Hemingway's new novel, "The Former Man and the Sea," and this was the first fourth dimension that such a situation had arisen, that a novel by one of the world's most historic writers was to appear in a magazine complete in one effect eleven days before its publication in volume form. Today you lot tin buy "The Old Man and the Sea" in Life for 20 cents. On Monday, Sept. 8, Scribners will publish it for $iii. Mr. Hemingway, whose books have won him a globe- wide audition, is now beingness presented to a new mass audience at bargain rates. What the book sellers who have distributed his works for twenty-six years think of this state of affairs is not on tape.

Hemingway'due south Reaction

What Mr. Hemingway thinks most it is on tape, in a Life advertisement:

"I'chiliad very excited most 'The Quondam Man and the Sea', and that it is coming out in Life so that many people will read it who could not afford to buy it. That makes me much happier than to have a Nobel Prize."

What Mr. Hemingway thinks virtually his volume also is quoted in the advertisement:

"Any I learned is in the story but I hope information technology reads just and straight and all the things that are in information technology do not show but only are with you after you have read information technology * * *. Don't you call up it is a strange damn story that it should affect all of us (me especially) the way information technology does? I take had to read information technology now over 200 times and everytime it does something to me. Information technology's as though I had gotten finally what I had been working for all my life."

"The Old Human and the Sea" is a short novel, but 27,000 words. It is much simpler and enormously better than Mr. Hemingway's last book, "Across the River and Into the Trees." No phony glamour girls and no bullying braggarts sentimentalized almost to parody distort its honest and elemental theme. No outbursts of spite or false theatricalism impede the smooth rush of its narrative. Inside the sharp restrictions imposed past the very nature of his story Mr. Hemingway has written with certain skill. Here is the chief technician once again at the elevation of his form, doing superbly what he can practise better than anyone else.

This is the story of an quondam Cuban fisherman who had gone eighty-four days without making a catch and of what happened when he hooked a monster marlin on the eighty- 5th twenty-four hours. Lonely in his footling skiff, unable to fasten the line considering the giant fish would break it if he did non lessen the strain with his own body and pay out more than line when necessary, the old man endured days and nights of hunger, exhaustion and pain from the line cutting his easily. And finally he caught the fish and lashed it to the side of his skiff only to spend his return voyage fighting off sharks.

Backbone in Face up of Danger

The excitement and tension of the old homo'southward chance, the magnificence of the peachy marlin and the dazzler of days and nights alone on the Gulf Stream are all well conveyed in "The Old Man and the Sea." Mr. Hemingway has always excelled in describing physical run a risk and the emotional atmosphere of information technology. And many of his stories have glorified courage in the face of danger. This one does, too, for the old human being is the very embodiment of indomitable backbone. "Man is non meant for defeat," says Mr. Hemingway. "A homo tin can exist destroyed simply not defeated"--that is if he has enough backbone.

Mr. Hemingway wrote about the same theme in one of his all-time short stories, "The Undefeated." Just in that story the matador who would not acknowledge defeat had no other attribute except his foolhardy backbone. In "The Former Man and the Ocean" the Cuban fisherman is also an elementary graphic symbol; but with a significant difference. He is not only courageous. He is humble and gently proud, aware of dazzler and filled with a sense of alliance with nature. And he has a loving eye. These attributes have non been common in Hemingway characters in the by. Since they are admirable and Mr. Hemingway admires them, the moral climate of "The Old Man and the Sea" is fresh and salubrious and the old man'south ordeal is moving.

Just proficient as "The Former Man and the Sea" is, it is good only in a limited manner. The fisherman is not a well-characterized private. He is a symbol of an attitude toward life. He often thinks and talks poetically and symbolically and then artificially.

The onetime man thought:

"Why did they make birds so delicate and fine every bit those sea swallows when the ocean can be and so vicious? She is kind and very cute. But she can be and then brutal and it comes so of a sudden and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made besides delicately for the sea."

A poetic and beautiful thought, merely it seems Mr. Hemingway'due south rather than the old human being'due south.

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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/books/99/07/04/specials/hemingway-oldman.html

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