Allegorical Interpretations In Hemingway’s The Old Man And The Sea

Abstract

The story of the old Cuban fisherman comprising of hardly 100 pages, a classic of American literature, has an abundance of meaning upholstered into it rather than a clear surface meaning. Hemingway's code hero, Santiago, has a crucial message to convey to the worldwide readers. It is clear that, on one level, even when a man is in the midst of defeats and insults, with strong determination he can win moral victory when he proceeds headstrong with courage and determination. On the other level, the novella offers an allegorical interpretation entirely personal to the author, Hemingway, “as an account of his own struggle, his determination and his own struggle and his literary vicissitudes” (Ramji Lal, 71) The assertion of moral and religious ideas, setting it apart as the best manifesto of parable, before readers, the hidden meaning of the novella is unlayered through the paper one by one. The 1952 parable of man against nature in a poignant novelette, The Old Man and the Sea, has innumerous allegorical interpretations and has employed Christian ideals and belief to its core.