Ernest Hemingway was both a modernist and a realist and was a leading figure in both movements. His laconic style presents the reader with minimal description and dialogue, eschewing commentary, moral judgment, or psychological explanation. Although Hemingway exhibits a preference for locations and situations far from the Middle America of his birth, often setting his work in Europe or Africa, he tends nonetheless to depict ordinary people struggling with the vicissitudes of everyday life. These modern subjects are depicted in the harsh and arbitrary atmosphere of modernity, in which there is no higher power to reward virtue or punish vice but only a pitiless struggle for survival which his protagonists may very well lose.

In The Old Man and The Sea, Hemingway presents these themes with his characteristic hard-edged style, which emphasizes the harshness of Santiago’s existence. He has had no luck for months, and when he finally does catch a fish, his epic struggle in landing the monster still results in his losing it to the sharks before he reaches the shore. This might be a tragedy in the literature of previous eras, but, as Hemingway presents it, Santiago’s misfortune is not inflicted by any malign power and has no cosmic significance—it is simply an unvarnished presentation of the way life is. Hemingway therefore presents the modernist themes of nihilism and lack of meaning or purpose in an arbitrary universe.

Modernism emphasized a sense of disillusionment about life. Modernist writers such as Hemingway had seen the horrors of war, and their works reflected a sense that life was not going to live up to its promise and that the promises of the past—such as the idea that faith would be rewarded—were no longer true.

The Old Man and the Sea reflects these modernist themes. The old man, Santiago, has spent months fishing, but he has not caught any fish. When he finally catches a giant marlin, it is consumed by sharks before he can reach shore. The marlin is symbolic of achieving goals, and Santiago finds that his quest ends only in futility and disillusionment. He cannot count on anything working out. In the end, all he has is the friendship of Manolin, the boy who fished with him, and the baseball scores. In this sense, Santiago is living a life that reflects the modernist idea that life is full of disappointment and that faith is fruitless. One must instead content oneself with momentary mass pleasures such as baseball.

Modernism was a movement in art and literature during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and was marked by a drive to break with traditional styles and closely linked to the realism movement. Modernist writers experimented with different literary forms and styles. Some of the influences on the American modernists included a growing sense of a national identity, suffrage, immigration and race relations, a quickly changing modern world, and the two world wars.

Earnest Hemingway was an American novelist. He lived in Paris in...