The Old Man and the Sea, remembered

"The Old Man and the Sea could have been over a thousand pages long and had every character in the village in it and all the processes of how they made their living, were born, educated, bore children, et cetera. That is done excellently and well by other writers. In writing, you are limited by what has already been done satisfactorily. So I have tried to learn to do something else. First, I have tried to eliminate everything unnecessary to conveying experience to the reader so that after he or she has read something it will become a part of his or her experience and seem actually to have happened. This is very hard to do and I’ve worked at it very hard."

- Ernest Hemingway

On May 4, 1953, Ernest Hemingway won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The Nobel Prize in Literature followed a year later, for "his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in 'The Old Man and the Sea', and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style". Hemingway was in his fifties, having written "The Sun Also Rises", "Farewell to Arms", and "For Whom the Bell Tolls". He could have been noticed earlier, but it was his last major work of fiction, which was something else.

The novel was significant for many reasons, one of which was Hemingway's writing style. It was a simple tale about an aging fisherman in hunt of a giant marlin. Some would see Biblical references between the lines, as it was about a leap of faith. But Hemingway, raised in Oak Park, Illinois, had more to say. Santiago, the titular character, was the most experienced in his hometown, but he was without a catch for almost three months. He was considered a salao, the worst form of unluckiness, because of this. This didn't discourage him, believing that that marlin could be found in the Gulf Stream, which was way far from the seaside.

Hemingway made the readers get under Santiago's skin, while he was alone in the sea. The isolation enabled them to feel every sensation he felt. Then the tribulations, after he got his catch. Some may be more excited, others distressed. It would depend on how they would see Santiago. He had nothing to prove, being at the autumn of his life. But the sea was more than a rite of passage for fishermen. Does this mean that the book has similarities with "Moby Dick"? Maybe, as both Herman Melville and Hemingway depicted this body of water as an enigmatic figure, another major character.

Aspiring writers can learn from this.

"Watch people, observe, try to put yourself in somebody else’s head. If two men argue, don’t just think who is right and who is wrong. Think what both their sides are. As a man, you know who is right and who is wrong; you have to judge. As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand," Hemingway said.