Introduction to The Old Man and the Sea

Hemingway was born in Oak Park, IL in 1899. In his youth he was an active outdoorsman and a talented athlete. Following high school, Hemingway worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. In May of 1918, Hemingway volunteered for duty in WWI as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front, where he wounded his legs. Following his return home, Hemingway settled in Paris, where he was a part of the “Lost Generation” of post-WWI writers, a group that included Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ezra Pound. By the late 1920s, Hemingway had written a number of well-received short stories and novels (A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises). In the 1930s, Hemingway filled his life with adventure; he hunted big game in Africa, fished the Gulf off Cuba, and reported on the Spanish Civil War (For Whom the Bell Tolls) and WWII. Following the publication of The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway's health began to deteriorate, and he suffered from hypertension, diabetes, depression and paranoia. Despite treatment, Hemingway committed suicide on July 2, 1961.    

Hemingway has been praised for his ability to write shorter narratives. His style is noted for its simplicity, sparseness, and understatement. He subscribed to the “iceberg” theory of writing: just as the bulk of an iceberg is below the surface, what is actually read in fiction is only a small portion of what is going on.

"If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water."

- Death In the Afternoon, Scribner's, 1932, Chap. 16, 192.

 The novella The Old Man and the Sea was published in 1952, in a special edition of Life magazine. The story won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and a year later, Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for vwas defined as the achievement of one's spiritual and personal destiny. Cubans also place a high value on machismo, or maleness. Men are not expected to live up to the demands of the ideal male, but they are expected to cultivate their masculinity, through military, athletic, intellectual, or sexual exploits, to come close. Each of these themes come up throughout the story.