The Old Man and The Sea

The story weaves threads of masculinity, life, death, suffering, friendship, courage, truth, integrity, and self. It’s a book I’ll have to come back to again, sooner than the fifteen years that have passed since I last picked it up. Fifteen years ago, the boy’s role in the story was unremarkable to me. Today, I am transfixed.

The giant fish pulled the small boat out into deep waters away from the glow of Havana, and it fought the tension of the fishing rope till the old man’s hands bled. The great marlin fatigued the man under the heat of the sun and in the cold night, and the old man, Santiago, drifted into thoughts of how easier it would be with the boy, Manolin.

In a book of machismo, there was tenderness and affection between Santiago and Manolin. There was love and appreciation in how Santiago’s mind wandered toward the boy and in the way the two conversed with each other and knew each other deeply. They shared a history in how the old man taught the young boy his maritime secrets when the toddler was but five years old. Both desired to fish together. The old man’s misfortune chased the boy away to a different boat with different luck.

The fight in the sea wore the old man down and, for once, maybe, he expressed how it was better to have someone. When his mind wandered in weakness, Santiago told himself to stay focused because he needed to know when to give the fish some line or keep it tight.

The vulnerable moments between focus sprung forth only after the fish wore down Santiago. He whispered aloud what he wanted most in his time of need. At the grueling nexus between life and death, he hoped and desired. More than the might of an older and more experienced fisherman, he wanted someone who knew him. More than water or food, he wanted someone who he could communicate with. He wanted Manolin: he who brings him the paper, he who Santiago wakes up in the morning before the sun rises. The one who says he will chase away the bad luck with his own.

At the end of the book, the old man came back as a dried and weary husk. He collapsed on the sandy bar before regenerating enough strength to carry the boat mast across his shoulders and back to his small hut with a newspaper covered cot. Manolin tended to the old man and promised to fish with Santiago again. Everyone saw the bones of bad luck tied to the side of the boat where the sharks ripped all of the flesh.

They did not see the old man stab the first mako shark between the eyes with a harpoon, fashion his knife unto an oar to kill the onslaught of sharks who approached him, nor the splinters of the broken oar punch deep into a shark’s skull as the deep dark swallowed up the carcass. They did not see the composure of man contend with the sea.

Manolin saw the old man drift to sleep, dreaming about the lions. Manolin looked deep into the blood cracked grooves of the old man’s palms, the stinging cut against his face, and the lifeless back that held tight the fishing rope across it–and only Manolin could ponder in wonder the brutality of the journey of the old man and the sea.