The Old Man and the Sea: A Romance

" 'The birds have a harder life than we do except for the robber birds and the heavy strong ones.  Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful.  But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea.'

He always thought of the sea as la mar which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her.  Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman.  Some of the younger fishermen, those who used buoys as floats for their lines and had motorboats, bought when the shark livers had brought much money, spoke of her as el mar which is masculine.  They spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy.  But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them.  The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought.”

(The Old Man and the Sea 32-33)

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The old man Santiago has a deeply-held respect for the ocean and its inhabitants.  His descriptions of the tuna border on fascination and romantic inspiration: "[The fish] came out unendingly and water poured from his sides.  He was bright in the sun and his head and back were dark purple and in the sun the stripes on his sides showed wide and a light lavender" (69).  His love of the sea as feminine, as life-giver is sincere, declaring that porpoises are "good" because "they play and make jokes and love one another.  They are our brothers like the flying fish" (53).  United with the animals of the ocean, Santiago recognizes the role of the sea as mother for fisherman as well as the fish. 


Susan Beegel points out that we should "recognize that the sea...is a protagonist on equal footing with Santiago," as he himself points out that the sea is not a "place," but a being (Beegel 153, Hemingway 33).  The same sentiment that he feels for his lost wife, whose photograph he had taken down because "it made him too lonely to see it," he feels for the massive fish that he catches.  Resistant to the idea of masculinizing the sea and making it an enemy, the old man pities the fish, apologizes and wishes simultaneously that the animal would get away or that he would give up and end his torturous struggle.