Items related to The Old Man and The Sea
Synopsis
The Old Man and the Sea served to reinvigorate Hemingway's literary reputation and was greeted with relief by some critics who had been dismayed by his last full-length novel Across the River and into the Trees and believed Hemingway was a spent force. The novella was initially received with much popularity; it restored many readers' confidence in Hemingway's capability as an author. Its publisher, Scribner's, on an early dust jacket, called the novella a "new classic", and many critics favorably compared it with such works as William Faulkner's 1942 short story The Bear and Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick. Several critics note that Santiago hails from the Canary Islands, and that his Spanish origins have an influence in the novella. “Santiago is a Spaniard living in Cuba,” Jeffrey Herlihy comments, and his “Spanish self is an absent but ever-present factor in the novel.” After immigrating to Cuba in his 20s, he has adopted Cuban dress, food preferences, and “speaks two dialects of the Spanish language.” Every night Santiago dreams about Spain, and this “nostalgic reminiscing—which is for the Canary Islands, not Cuba—evidences the resonant influences of his Spanish/Canarian identity, foregrounding the migrant experience of the old man as a concealed foundation to the novella”. His biography has many similarities to that of Gregorio Fuentes, Hemingway's first mate. Ernest Hemingway and Henry ("Mike") Strater with the remaining 500 lbs of an estimated 1000 lb marlin that was half-eaten by sharks before it could be landed in the Bahamas in 1935. See Pilar for details of this episode. Gregorio Fuentes, who many critics believe was an inspiration for Santiago, was a blue-eyed man born on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. After going to sea at age ten on ships that called in African ports, he migrated permanently to Cuba when he was 22. After 82 years in Cuba, Fuentes attempted to reclaim his Spanish citizenship in 2001. Critics have noted that Santiago was also at least 22 when he immigrated from Spain to Cuba, and thus old enough to be considered an immigrant—and a foreigner—in Cuba. Hemingway at first planned to use Santiago's story, which became The Old Man and the Sea, as part of an intimacy between mother and son.
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