This book by Ernest Hemingway is an indisputable masterpiece.* This was the third time I'd read it, and the second time I've read it in a single sitting (it's very short). Before I talk about the book I'd like to mention the actual physical copy - because (not wanting to rub it in if you end up tracking down a bog-standard modern reprint paperback) mine is beautiful; it's a pocketsize hardback from 1966, with faintly yellow-browned pages that smell of sitting on a beanbag in a sunlit attic with a full teapot and nothing to do but enjoy a good book, and a dust jacket with an excitingly expressionistic colourful painted illustration of a big fish on the front and a man in a small boat on the back. It was a Christmas present from my brother a few years ago, so cheers Seth.
Anyway, the book (this next paragraph will contain plot spoilers, but the true worth of the book is poetic rather than 'oh wow That Happened' so decide for yourself if that matters).
It is, very simply, about an elderly Cuban fisherman. He has not caught a fish for eighty-four days, and a young boy who he sometimes fishes with is concerned for him. One the eighty-fifth day, he sails out, and ends up hooking a big fish - too big to pull up, so he leaves it hooked and lets it pull his boat far away over the sea hoping it will tire itself out, which eventually it does, rising to the surface to reveal itself as a magnificent marlin, the biggest he has ever seen (and he's seen a lot - this is one experienced fisherman, as the narration shows). So when the opportunity arises, he harpoons it, and straps it to the side of his boat because it's too big to fit inside. But then, during the journey back to land, what should happen but sharks (flipping sharks!) eat his entire fish. By the time he hits the beach, exhausted from the three days spent with little food and water sat under the baking tropical sun clutching with desperate hunterly vigour onto a fishing line, there is nothing strapped to his boat but a tooth-scratched backbone with an enormous nose-sworded skull attached to one end and a giant crescent-moon tailfin to the other. The boy is distraught but proud, the other fishermen are cowed with respect and sympathy, and the old man, knackered and feeling both victorious and defeated, goes to sleep. That's it - I told you plot wasn't the main point.
Hemingway's prose aches with a purity, a simplicity and elegance, that lends to this straightforward little story a depth and grandeur that puts the reader right there in the scene; man and boy and sea and fish all observed, described, but remaining something of an enigma, known truly only to themselves, even when memories of the man's earlier adventures are recalled in narration, these help provide insight into some of what he thinks he is but we are kept outsiders to him, seeing him chiefly through his actions, which are mostly about being a really good fisherman. He is precise, efficient, attentive, strong, patient, resourceful, and persistent, and in him we see reflected the height of human capability in using ones faculties to conquer the natural world for our own needs; in this case, a fish. But unlike another (much longer) story about a rivalry between man and sea creature in which man's pride and sea creature's ambivalence rendered the whole affair meaningless and tragic, it is clear that Hemingway's old man has a deeply profound respect for the fish (even calling it 'brother' at one point), which may not make moral sense to any vegetarian readers but lends his conversations with himself amid the narration of his fishing trip an air of ecological consciousness - this man sees and takes in the splendour of the natural world surrounding him, only conquering what he must to eat and sell. His reaction when the sharks rob him of his catch is (after doing all he can to fend them off, in improbable-badass-fashion killing several of them with a knife tied to an oar) one of resignation - an 'oh well, I didn't really deserve him, I cheated by using human trickery like fishing equipment, so it's only fair enough that sharks cheat me back'. It's a cyclical story then, and though it has elements of tragedy the attitude the man seems to carry throughout is one of profound acceptance of the unpredictability of nature and yet our dependence on it - and this robs it of being ultimately tragic, as the old man has had such a long life with many adventures that he is happily able to eke out a simple existence doing what he does best and taking humble pride in it.
But really I don't think it's so much a story about human relationships with nature as it is a story about being a Good Man (in Hemingway's eyes); the old man's lifestyle and mindset are completely cohesive, and though he is past his prime he is still an excellent practitioner of a trade that blends the practical-primal peaks of everyday human endeavours well - good enough to catch the largest fish Havana had ever seen, but not good enough to save it from sharks; and therein lies the rub, try as he might, man will never conquer nature's indifference, and accepting this, knowing where we truly sit in the world and accepting it with stoic graceful willpower, is the kernel of energy that keeps the old man keen in his respect for nature even as he strives to defeat individual fish. Similar parallels about this sense of perspective being an importance mediating force in men's mindsets to pure masculine activities are revealed in conversations the old man and the boy have about baseball - the stardom of Joe DiMaggio is puzzled over when they read in the newspaper that he has a bone spur in his heel, and the old man wonders (when his hand cramps up after a day of being towed by the fish) whether Joe's minor pain would be a comparable hindrance in his field, or whether he'd just man up and get on with it and hit a home run. Basically the Hemingwayan view of masculinity is one of direct simplicity and purpose, strength of body, of mind, skill and will, but one that knows its place and its limits - chief among which is the sheer indifference of much of the world around us, including the natural world, to us. What do real men do faced with that? They persist.
Enough of my eco-feminist ramblings. This is a really good book and nowhere near as thematically convoluted as I've probably made it sound. It is a book about nothing necessarily more than an old man catching a fish, and yet there are unfathomable oceanic depths to its simplicity. It is one of the most perfectly executed long short stories (or maybe short novels) to grace the many stacks of my bookshelf, and you'd probably like it.
* He won a Nobel Prize in Literature for it, which is kind of as indisputable as masterpieces get.
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