Ernest Hemingway's the Old Man and the Sea (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations)
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No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For more information contact: Bloom’s Literary Criticism An imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ernest Hemingway’s The old man and the sea / [edited by] Harold Bloom. — New ed. p. cm. — (Bloom’s modern critical interpretations) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-1-60413-147-5 (acid-free paper) 1. Hemingway, Ernest, 1899–1961. Old man and the sea. I. Bloom, Harold. II. Title. III. Series. PS3515.E37O52 2008 823’.912—dc22 2008007061 Bloom’s Literary Criticism books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can find Bloom’s Literary Criticism on the World Wide Web at http://www.chelseahouse.com Contributing editor: Pamela Loos Cover designed by Ben Peterson Printed in the United States of America Bang EJB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper. All links and web addresses were checked and verified to be correct at the time of pub- lication. Because of the dynamic nature of the web, some addresses and links may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. Contents Editor’s Note vii Introduction 1 Harold Bloom Dynamics of Narration: Later Novels 5 P.G. Rama Rao The Old Man and the Sea: The Culmination 31 Wirt Williams The Later Fiction: Hemingway and the Aesthetics of Failure 53 James H. Justus The Angler 69 Gregory S. Sojka Contrasts in Form: Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and Faulkner’s ‘The Bear’ 81 David Timms Up to the End 95 Peter L. Hays Psychology 109 Gerry Brenner vi Contents Inside the Current: A Taoist Reading of The Old Man and the Sea 125 Eric Waggoner Of Rocks and Marlin: The Existentialist Agon in Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus and Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea 143 Dwight Eddins Santiago and the Eternal Feminine: Gendering La Mar in The Old Man and the Sea 153 Susan F. Beegel The Self Offstage: “Big Two-Hearted River” and The Old Man and the Sea 179 Thomas Strychacz Ernest Hemingway, Derek Walcott, and Old Men of the Sea 213 Edward O. Ako Chronology 225 Contributors 229 Bibliography 231 Acknowledgments 235 Index 237 Editor’s Note My introduction rather sadly judges The Old Man and the Sea a period piece, an involuntary self-parody, and an unfortunate allegory in which Santiago is Christ is Hemingway. Almost all the essayists gathered here seem to me to have read some book other than the one they purportedly discuss. P.G. Rama Rao praises The Old Man’s skill in narration, while Wirt Williams finds nothing grotesque in Hemingway’s other tepid allegory, in which the sharks are unfriendly critics. James H. Justus does see the psychological strain reflected by Hemingway’s later fictions, after which Gregory S. Sojka praises The Old Man’s heroic pathos. Faulkner’s “The Bear,” far superior aesthetically to Hemingway’sThe Old Man, is juxtaposed with it by David Timms, while Peter L. Hays sees that the story is thin and weak yet commends its prose. Gerry Brenner improbably terms The Old Man “a masterpiece,” after which Eric Waggoner invokes the Tao as appropriate to Hemingway’s allegory. Camus is contrasted to The Old Man by Dwight Eddins, while Susan F. Beegel refreshingly offers an enlightened feminist reading. Thomas Strychacz finds a dialectic of masculine and feminine strains in the narrative, after which Edward O. Ako traces a possible influence of The Old Man upon Derek Walcott. vii HAROLD BLOOM Introduction emingway’s greatness is in his short stories, which rival any other master ofH the form, be it Joyce or Chekhov or Isaak Babel. Of his novels, one is constrained to suggest reservations, even of the very best: The Sun Also Rises. The Old Man and the Sea is the most popular of Hemingway’s later works, but this short novel, alas, is an indeliberate self-parody, though less distressingly so than Across the River and into the Trees, composed just before it. There is a gentleness, a nuanced tenderness that saves The Old Man and the Seafrom the self-indulgences of Across the River and into the Trees. In an interview with George Plimpton, Hemingway stated his pride in what he considered to be the aesthetic economy of the novel: The Old Man and the Sea could have been over a thousand pages long and had every character in the village in it and all the processes of the way they made their living, were born, educated, bore children, etc. That is done excellently and well by other writers. In writing you are limited by what has already been done satisfactorily. So I have tried to learn to do something else. First I have tried to eliminate everything unnecessary to conveying experience to the reader so that after he or she has read something it will become part of his or her experience and seem actually to have happened. This is very hard to do and I’ve worked at it very hard. Anyway, to skip how it is done, I had unbelievable luck this time and could convey the experience completely and have it be 1 2 Harold Bloom one that no one had ever conveyed. The luck was that I had a good man and a good boy and lately writers have forgotten there still are such things. Then the ocean is worth writing about just as a man is. So I was lucky there. I’ve seen the marlin mate and know about that. So I leave that out. I’ve seen a school (or pod) or more than fifty sperm whales in that same stretch of water and once harpooned one nearly sixty feet in length and lost him. So I left that out. But the knowledge is what makes the underwater part of the iceberg. The Old Man and the Seaunfortunately is too long, rather than exquisitely curtailed, as Hemingway believed. The art of ellipsis, or leaving things out, indeed is the great virtue of Hemingway’s best short stories. But The Old Man and the Sea is tiresomely repetitive, and Santiago the old fisherman is too clearly an idealization of Hemingway himself, who thinks in the style of the novelist attempting to land a great work: Only I have no luck anymore. But who knows? Maybe today. Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready. Contemplating the big fish, Santiago is even closer to Hemingway the literary artist, alone with his writerly quest: His choice had been to stay in the deep dark water far out beyond all snares and traps and treacheries. My choice was to go there to find him beyond all people. Beyond all people in the world. Now we are joined together and have been since noon. And no one to help either one of us. Santiago’s ordeal, first in his struggle with the big fish, and then in fighting against the sharks, is associated by Hemingway with Christ’s agony and triumph. Since it is so difficult to disentangle Santiago and Hemingway, this additional identification is rather unfortunate in its aesthetic consequences, because it can render a reader rather uncomfortable.