The Old Man and the Sea

I have a vague memory that a high school teacher assigned this out of one of those big Literature textbooks. Maybe the one with the teal spine and black cover. I remember loathing it and finding it dreadfully boring. I think a lot of the texts assigned in high school literature classes are stupid things to assign people with very little life experience. And I say that as someone who adored The Great Gatsby and would only find in later years just how deeply parts of it spoke to me. The Old Man and the Sea did not speak to me in high school, because the parts of my spirit that it could speak to were still under construction and had yet to grow ears.

I know that Hem did not love ideas of theme or symbolism in his stories and routinely mocked critics for thinking about them. In a letter to Bernard Berenson he wrote:

Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.

“Take a rest, small bird” he said. “Then go in and take your chance like any man or bird or 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 now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it.

I have no understanding of it and I am not sure that I believe in it. 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. It is much too late for that and there are people who are paid to do it.

* p50 - That was the saddest thing I ever saw with them, the old man thought. The boy was sad too and we begged her pardon and butchered her promptly.
* p55 - “Take a good rest, small bird,” he said. “Then go in and take your chance like any man or bird or fish.”
* p60-61 - The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.
* p64
* There are three things that are brothers: the fish and my two hands. It must uncramp. It is unworthy of it to be cramped.
* I wish I could show him what sort of man I am. But then he would see the cramped hand. Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so. I wish I was the fish, he thought, with everything he has against only my will and my intelligence.
* He was comfortable but suffering, although he did not admit the suffering at all.
* p66 - “I told the boy I was a strange old man,” he said. “Now is when I must prove it.” ¶ The thousand times he had proved it meant nothing. Now he was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it.
* The page made me think of Hamlet. “...to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing, end them...” Hamlet holds a special place in my heart and I suppose I see it in many things.
* p88 - I must hold his pain where it is, he thought. Mine does not matter. I can control mine. But his pain could drive him mad. (TB: were it so easy.)
* p103 - “But man is not made for defeat,” he said. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
* p104-105 - 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 now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it. ¶ I have no understanding of it and I am not sure that I believe in it. 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. It is much too late for that and there are people who are paid to do it.
* p110
* “I wish it were a dream and that I had never hooked him. I'm sorry about it, fish. It makes everything wrong.” (TB: feeling like you've ruined something in the seeking of it or the attainment of it, or of its vision, anyway.)
* Now is not the time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.
* p115 - What will you do now if they come in the night? What can you do? ¶ “Fight them,” he said. “I'll fight them until I die.”
* p117 - I hope I do not have to fight again, he thought. I hope so much I do not have to fight again.