Biblical Symbolism in The Old Man and the Sea.

             Ernest Hemingway's novels were adventurous, colorful, and romantic, as was his personal life. In fact, many critics have concluded that his dramatic life was Ernest Hemingway's finest work, and it was the experiences he had along his restless and often violent journey that provided the literary world with some of American literature's most influential novels. Like all great writers, Hemingway used his life as the varied landscape for his novels. Though the protagonists were, indeed, fictional, their emotions and observations were pure Hemingway. As with any other artist, his personal experiences were interwoven in his work, and offer the only true glimpse anyone will ever have of the real.

             Ernest Hemingway, as opposed to the roguish bon vivant often portrayed by the media.

             Hemingway continued to view himself as a youthful adventurer despite his official entry into middle age. However, by the 1950s, he could no longer deny the presence of "father time," and decided to confront the issue head on in the medium with which he felt most comfortable, fiction. The result was the 1952 novel, The Old Man and the Sea, a brief novel with a subject matter representative of the epic tradition of Greek philosophers and biblical scholars. As Hemingway himself was about to begin the slow journey towards old age, many believed his life was the inspiration for the Cuban fisherman Santiago, who seemed to have been left behind by life. Incredibly, the story of The Old Man and the Sea is contained within a three-day and three nighttime periods. The protagonist is a man on a solo journey, fighting a battle while still maintaining his own moral creed. Hemingway sets the solitary tone of the story with his simple opening lines, "He was an old man who fished alone" (1). That singular line spoke volumes about Santiago, whose pride would not be in any way diminished by the passage of time.