Old Man and the Sea” was presumably a part of

Hemingway’s “Sea Book trilogy”. The presence of

the sea in the novel is so pervasive that it assumes
the place of a sort of second protagonist in the
novel. The relationship between the old man and the
sea not only facilitates the understanding of Sea’s
significance but also reveals much about the main
protagonist, Santiago.

On the very basic level, the old man being a

fisherman, the relationship between the Sea and
himself was that which a worker has with his
workplace. The sea furnished him his daily wages in
form of fishes. The identity of the old man as a
fisherman completely depended upon the Sea. He
was considered one of the best among his lot when
he had caught good fishes but a dry fishing spell of
eighty-four days had led his contemporaries to call
him “salao” – the worst kind of unlucky. In this
respect the Sea became the domain where the old
man could assert his individuality and his existential
identity. It became the decider of whether or not
Santiago was worthy enough to have a disciple in
Manolin. However, examining the relationship
between the man and the sea merely in this light
would be an act of oversimplification on part of the
readers since this relationship has a lot more to it
than meets the eye.

Noticing the parable form of the novel a lot of critics

have told that the relationship between the old man
and the sea symbolizes the relationship between
man and the world. Just like the Sea with its
magnificent marlins had treasures hidden for
fishermen who would dare to venture deep; even the
world rewards for humans who would show the
courage of claiming them by sailing uncharted
waters. One just has to take a chance like Santiago
did. Just like the world sometimes throws hurdles on
the path of the attainment of one’s cherished goals,
the Sea made it impossible for Santiago to take
home his bounty of the Marlin. Through the unique
relationship of Santiago and ther sea, the parable
teaches the lesson that sometimes defeat is
inevitable but man can still emerge victorious
through the nobility of his human striving.

An examination of the relationship between Santiago

and the Sea would benefit much by the adoption of a
post-structuralist perspective through the binary of la
mar and el mar and the archetypal binary of the
giver and the taker. In the Spanish language the Sea
or the mar had both masculine and feminine
attributes depending upon the way in which it was
being viewed. Focusing on the la mar and el
mar binary, Hemingway writes – “He always thought
of the Sea as la mar which is what people call her in
Spanish when they love her………. Some of the
younger fishermen, those who used buoys as floats
for their lines and had motor-boats, bought when the
shark livers had brought much money, spoke of her
as el mar which is masculine”. This passage
underpins how an analysis of this binary is crucial to
arrive at a better understanding of the old man’s
relationship with the sea. The younger fishermen
who would consider the sea as el mar or masculine
had a very professional relationship with the sea.
They had no respect for the sea and thus they were
alienated from nature. Santiago the old fisherman
who regarded the sea as la mar, a benevolent
mother figure was guided by some ethical values
and understood the sea from his depth of
experience of many years as a fisherman. His close
affinity with the Sea was apparent in his love for the
many inhabitants of the water and through his
knowledge and insight into the mysteries of the Sea.
This intimate relationship gets all the more
impressed upon the reader through a contrast with
the crude, feeling-less relationship of the younger
fishermen with the self-same sea.

The other crucial binary to the understanding of the

equation between Santiago and the sea is that of the
giver and the taker. The Sea in this novel is both the
preserver and the destroyer for Santiago. In the
beginning of the novel, Santiago is shown to be
victimized by the destructive streak of the sea which
denied him fish for eighty-four long days and left him
at the mercy of his student-companion Manolin and
generous café owners. However, soon the role of
the sea as the preserver in Santiago’s life gets
identified when the Sea unites him with a Marlin fish
larger in size than his skiff and provides him with
nourishment in form of eatable fishes such as the
tuna and dolphins. At one point the roles of
preserver and destroyer was performed by the Sea
almost simultaneously as the marlin in refusing to
line along with Santiago’s skiff began to drain him off
his life completely. The malevolence of the sea was
dramatized again with the arrival of the sharks. The
old man fought a gallant battle with the shark and in
turn lost his gaff, tiller and his knife which resulted in
the sharks taking away the best part of his marlin.
Upon being viewed from the perspective of the
second binary, the old man’s relationship with the
Sea becomes one of the “struggle for survival”.

Thus we see that the relationship between the old

man the sea enhances the pleasure of critically
appreciating the novel by the virtue of its
interpretation on various levels. What Hemingway
intended for this relationship to be cannot be
ascertained for sure. However, literature being
subjective, this relationship has nothing to lose and
much to gain by critical conjecture.