April Book Report: Rerun of The Old Man and the Sea

April was a crazy, scatterbrained month. I initially planned to read Wade Davis' historical tome about Mallory's conquest of Everest and subsequent disappearance, Into the Silence. Unfortunately, I managed to lose the book after I took it hammocking at Old Stone Fort. I found it weeks later, and realized I didn't have enough time to read it before the end of the month. The need for a quick solution (a quick read...) presented itself, and I knew just where to look.

A trip to the library turned up one of my favorite books, The Old Man and the Sea. It was interesting to revisit this short Hemingway piece all these years later. The writing is quintessentially Hemingway, but there's more, an element I didn't see upon my first reading. Hemingway manages to adopt (appropriately) a sense of magical realism integral to the Latin American literature of the period.

Still evident to me were the devices Hemingway utilizes to capture the drifting nature of the story. Newly discovered was the nearly dreamy quality which proves openly reminiscent of Buendia's venture through the wilderness to find the place where he founds his town. The reader can't be sure what is, or isn't true. The old man admits a few times to feeling like he isn't even sure what is real. He depends on his pain to remember what is happening, to keep reality tenable.

Pain and its tie to palpable reality is a common thread of the book. The old man's poverty keeps him on his feet. His lack of luck feeds his hope. His physical pain in the fight with the fish keeps him awake and coherent in dark moments. As if to keep him from slipping off into dreams, fate deals him a cruel hand after he manages to catch the biggest fish he's ever seen.

His pain keeps him alive, keeps him hungry. His cross to bear makes him who he is. Sadness for his plight would be easy, both for his part and that of the reader. The boy, his only friend, is sad for him. But the old man, he takes his pain in, processes it, and absorbs it into his being, and in so doing, the tragedy becomes something beautiful, a tale of adventure gone wrong.