SIGNIFICANCE OF SANTIAGO’S DUEL WITH THE MARLIN IN

HEMINGWAY’S THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA

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The year 1952 witnessed the publication of one of the most powerful works, ever written in the
whole gamut of English literature, The Old Man and the Sea, a parable of inner strength and
courage, the struggle between the hunter and the hunted and how nature fights back. Ernest
Hemingway’s attitude to Nature is not easy to define. When Nature is being for sport-skiing,
fishing, big game hunting- it is beneficent. The joy it can give is so mystical that it is beyond
words. Mountains are good and streams to fish in, but in The Snows of Kilimanjaro, mountain is
a death symbol. “But thank God,” said the old man,” they are not as intelligent as we who kill
them”.

In this universe, everyone has his fixed role to play. Santiago’s role is to pursue the great marlin.
“That which I was born for”, he reflects; the marlin’s is to live in the deepest part of the sea.
When Santiago first feels the slight, nibbling, he knows that an event of some importance is
about to occur, because deep down, a marlin is eating the sardines impaled on the point and
shank of the hook. Four hours later, the fish is still swimming steadily and the Old Man is solidly
braced with the line across his back. Like other Hemingway characters, he is now trying ‘not to
think but only to endure’. From sunset till midnight, thoughts of seeing the marlin kept recurring
in his mind. The second stage comes with the first sight of marlin,” HE was bright in the sun and
his head and back were dark purple and in the sun the stripes on his sides shoed wide and a light
lavender” (page 54). He observes the fish with awe but spoke with steadiness yet respectfully
and lovingly, “But I will kill you dead before this day ends”. Santiago now becomes aware of his
self-spirit different from the beginning of the novella who was dispirited and helpless. The first
breaching suggests that Santiago is gaining the advantage and the sight of the fish is further
spur, the goal in front in front of his eyes.

The third stage, which marks the height of Santiago’s struggle comes on the morning of the third
day. Now the marlin rises and slowly circles the boat, whole the Old Man sweats and strains to
get him close enough for harpooning. “The two of them struggle with each other to the death,
but without animosity or hatred. On the contrary, the old man feels a deep affection and
admiration for the fish. He admires its great strength as it pulls his skiff out to the sea, and
becomes conscious of his nobility as the two grow closer and closer, in spirit as well as space,…”(
Gurko Leo, “The Old Man and the Sea.” College English, vol. 17, no. 1, 1955, pp. 11–15.JSTOR,
https://doi.org/10.2307/495716).He is racked with fatigue and pain and says “You are killing me
fish…I do not care who kills who”. But he does care. Now Santiago drives home the harpoon;
the fish leaps and falls in death and forty-eight hours are over.

The second major event in the novel is his confrontation with the sharks. The struggle with the
sharks, though shorter in duration, is as intense as the fight with the marlin. This struggle comes
at a time when he has used up all his strength and he is feeling fatigued to his very bones. Up to
now, they have been friendly opponents. But now, “if sharks come,” the Old Man felt reflected,
“God pity him and me”. With the arrival of the first shark, the tragedy begins. Santiago, standing
ready with his harpoon hears the shark tearing the flesh and drives the point of his weapon and
killed. The marlin’s blood will attract other sharks. When the marlin was attacked, it was as if he
was mutilated. The process of crucifixion is now intensified. Santiago kills the second and third
sharks but when they sink into the sea, they take with him fully a quarter of the marlin’s best
quarter. This is where Santiago overreaches himself as he himself admits, “I shouldn’t have gone
out so far, fish”- his tragic flaw.

The irony of man and nature relationship is that it is at once positive as well as negative. Santiago
represents the whole of mankind who is born with instinctive intelligence, he creates Nature
and survives whereas the marlin represents not only itself but acts as a representative of Nature.
Positive and negative, good and evil are concepts propounded by human beings to rationalise
their own living experience. His fellow feeling for the marlin, “The fish is my friend too,” and his
consolation to himself is that struggle for survival is limited- “I am only better than him through
trickery”, he thinks, “and he meant me no harm.” Thus in winning his struggle with the marlin
and in killing him, the old man sets in motion of sequence of events and the arrival of the sharks
punish him for his pride.

Even before he had killed the marlin, he had been,” glad we do not have to try to kill the stars”.
It is enough he have felt to kill his fellow creatures. “Santiago’s struggle in The Old Man and the
Sea is presented by Hemingway like the struggle of the famous existential model of Sisyphus,
who is doomed eternally to roll up a hill a vast stone that will always fall back just as he is almost
to reach the top. From both the stories of Santiago and Sisyphus, we can see that the dignity of
life derives from mankind’s continual perseverance in projects for which the universe affords no
foothold or encouragement.”(Vaishnav R. Saurabh, Joshi Jagdish, “Existentialism in The Old
Man and the Sea”, Towards Excellence, Vol 11, issue no.2, July
2019).But thanks to the creatures of lower world who do not concern struggle with the heavenly
bodies which are elusive, unknown and for Santiago, unreachable. Hemingway here presents
Santiago’s simplicity who feels relieved that his struggle does not involve forces of galaxy. “In
the end, he senses that there can be no victory for either in the equal struggle between them,
that the conditions which have brought them together have made them one. And so, though he
kills the great fish, the old man has come to love him as his equal and his brother; sharing a life
which is a capricious mixture of incredible beauty and deadly violence and which all creatures
are both hunter and hunted, they are bound together in its most primal relationship,” (Jr.
Burhans Clinton, “The Old Man and the Sea: Hemingway’s Tragic Vision of Man”, American
Literature, Volume 31, Duke University Press, 1960, pp 446-455, https://doi.org/10.2307/2922437).

His realisation and his apologies to the fish are emphasised throughout the novel. But it is also
true that the greatest works (marlin representing Hemingway’s best work) come out in the face
of adversity (here sharks and sea representing the critics). “From beginning to end, the theme
of solidarity and interdependence pervades the action…” (Jr. Burhans Clinton, “The Old Man
and the Sea: Hemingway’s Tragic Vision of Man”, American Literature, Volume 31, Duke
University Press, 1960, pp 446-455, https://doi.org/10.2307/2922437)., we find his heroic
individualism.

The two players – the old man and the Marlin- are engaged not in a battle between hierarchies.
It is not a situation of one being the hunter and the other hunted, one being superior and the
other inferior. In the legend of the Fisher King as in the Arthurian Legends in general the Holy
Grail is symbol of ultimate purity. An important motif in the Arthurian Legends of medieval
England it is thought to be a cup or chalice from which Christ is supposed to have drunk from in
the Last Supper. It was also believed that Joseph of Arimathea who, according to the Gospels,
assumed responsibility of Christ’s burial after the crucifixion, used the Grail to collect the Blood
of Christ and the symbol of the Eucharist was born. In Hemingway the old man and the Marlin
become for each other sacred referrals or Holy Grail; both dismiss the world of “snares and traps
and treacheries” but not for any idyllic or mythical space of eternal peace.

Santiago evolves from man with ego to man with humility. He has now become aware that he
is not a proud hunter rather he is a creature struggling for survival just like the marlin. The
hunting and killing of marlin was a necessary act of self- knowing, as in T.S. Eliot, there is a
realisation that only pure cognitive intent will ensure understanding. The marlin may lose this
battle but it teaches is the lesson that Man should not over-reach all engulfing force of nature.
Thus when he returns home with the skeleton of marlin, it indicates that Everyman must bear
the burden of his skeleton, the Cross and recognise the weight and worth of it. The Old Man and
the Sea is an archetypal battle with the forces of nature.
 WORKS CITED

Gurko Leo, “The Old Man and the Sea.” College English, vol. 17, no. 1, 1955, pp. 11–15. JSTOR,
https://doi.org/10.2307/495716

Jr. Burhans Clinton, “The Old Man and the Sea: Hemingway’s Tragic Vision of Man”, American
Literature, Volume 31, Duke University Press, 1960, pp 446-455, https://doi.org/10.2307/2922437

Vaishnav R. Saurabh, Joshi Jagdish, “Existentialism in The Old Man and the Sea”, Towards
Excellence, Vol 11, issue no.2, July 2019
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bloom, Harold, Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and
the Sea, United States of America, Infobase Publishing, 2008.

Hemingway, Ernest, The Old Man and the Sea, United Kingdom, Penguin Random House,
1994.

Dutt, Choudhuri, Dr. Indrani, “The Old Man and the Sea: Reading the Novella”, Accessed on
6th December, 2022.