SOURCE: "Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea and the Male Reader," in The American Imago, Vol. 20, No. 2, Summer, 1963, pp. 161-73.

[In the following essay, Hofling offers a psychoanalytic reading of The Old Man and the Sea, contending that for the adult male reader of the story, Santiago serves both as a father figure and someone who, because of his "victory-in-defeat" or lack of adult success, brings to mind a regressive "latency" experience of adolescence.]

In psychoanalytically-oriented literary criticism there are three principal ways in which a composition may be approached. The critic may study the protagonist from a clinical, a dynamic, and, occasionally, a genetic point of view, as if he were a real person, endeavoring to enrich one's understanding of the character and thus of human nature in much the same way as in a case presentation. The critic may study the composition as a psychic production of its author, endeavoring to shed light on the personality of the latter. Finally the critic may endeavor to study the impact of the composition on himself and/or upon readers in general.

Of the three approaches, the last is the least often used. It is probably the most open to adverse criticism, since another reader may always say with complete honesty that he is not affected in the way described. On the other hand, it can be of particular value in the study of the author as author, i.e., as one with a degree of mastry of techniques of arousing certain responses in his readers.

It is this third approach which is utilized in the present paper, an effort which is thus in no sense a balanced criticism of the master-work upon which it is based.

In an attempt to apply the insights of psychoanalysis toward gaining a fuller understanding of the emotional impact of The Old Man and the Sea upon the reader, an appraisal of the protagonist becomes a logical starting point. Indeed, if one is reading purely for pleasure, this is what one tends naturally to do. Despite the close interrelationship of plot and character and despite the high degree of artistic unity which marks the tale, a sufficiently leisurely pace is preserved before the great crisis for one to form deep impressions of the Old Man's personality while not yet fully absorbed in the narrative.

The physical characteristics of Santiago, the fisherman, are simply and vividly portrayed, and they are in harmony with other aspects of his personality as these are gradually revealed. Well past his physical prime, the Old Man is by no means enfeebled. Gaunt and weatherbeaten and old he is and with none of the surplus vitality which, presumably, he would once have revealed even in repose. Yet his shoulders and neck are powerful in action, and his eyes are "cheerful and undefeated." Hints of weakness are given, but they are largely relative; it is clear that Santiago has, in his day, been of quite exceptional strength (as is shown, for example, in his reminiscences of "the hand game").

Psychologically speaking, one of the most significant statements that can be made of the Old Man is perhaps the seemingly simple one that he is heart and soul a fisherman. His sense of identity, his sense of purpose, and his sense of worthwhileness are entirely bound up in his occupational role. His enduring pleasure is the functional pleasure of his work. Through his work he remains himself; through his work he remains in contact with his world.

As we are given to understand early in the book and are repeatedly shown throughout the narrative, Santiago¹ has been and continues to be not merely a good, but a great fisherman. His knowledge of wind and weather, of marine and avian life, and of "tricks of the trade" remains sensitive and profound.

In his work and in his way of living, the Old Man shows courage, fortitude, and a kind of simple nobility. He is humble in a healthy sense of the word, i.e., in the sense of freedom from arrogance and unearned pride. The fisherman is primarily a man of action—of aggressive action when the situation calls for it, but he is by no means unthinking. ("But he liked to think about all things that he was involved in.")

The Old Man's strength has allowed him to be gentle (as in waking the boy) and to have been a good teacher of Manolin. From the start of their relationship he had not merely permitted but encouraged his young pupil to reach out, to function up to his growing capacity.

There is a great simplicity about Santiago. Though withouth religiosity, he is rather superstitious. He is prone to a boyish hero-worship ("the great DiMaggio").

As the narrative begins, the fisherman has become lonely but not embittered. He is capable of loving, both in reality and in fantasy: the boy, the lions, the sea, and many of its creatures. His sentiment in these matters does not become sentimentality. He is relatively free from a disturbing hostility. His heterosexual libido is greatly diminished ("he no longer dreamt of women"), with the remainder being sublimated.

The Old Man dwells much in the past (in dreams and daydreams), but he is by no means indifferent to the present. The pennant race and the lottery catch his interest, and he continues to think of ways to improve his fishing equipment.

At the opening of the story, Santiago is clearly experiencing a depression, the nature and extent of which are relevant to the ensuing action. It is a quiet affair, pervasive rather than profound. The lifelessness of his features in repose, the considerable lack of interest in food and sex, the tendency toward rumination, and the lessened ability to sleep (all of these evidently somewhat beyond the usual changes of advanced age), point in this direction, as, quite possibly, do the Old Man's thoughts of death.

Yet there is ample evidence, on the one hand, that the depression is not severe (clinically speaking), and, on the other, that it is not related to an unusually strong sense of guilt. For example, Santiago's previously mentioned rather lively interest in current sporting events is not in keeping with the existence of a serious depression; nor is the fact that he takes rather good care of himself (drinking shark's liver oil and eating turtle eggs). He is by no means a willing martyr, and, even at the last, he is appreciative of the fact that others are interested in him (inquiries about the search parties). Indeed, his conscious philosophy of life remains both brave and optimistic, a feature which is, of course, not at all characteristic of a severe depression. ("Man is not made for defeat" and "it is silly not to hope.")

The last mentioned point is to be qualified by the recognition that these conscious attitudes involve an element of denial. In other words, one senses the potentiality for a deepening of the depression. Yet within the span of the story, this potentiality does not become an actuality. Similarly, it may be said that, in the central events of the tale, the Old Man courts danger and takes unnecessary risks. Yet it can scarcely be argued that a self-punitive motive is the principal one for the risk-taking.

The sources of the Old Man's low spiritedness, that is to say, of his considerably diminished self-esteem, are, in fact, fairly clear. They are the lessening of his strength by reason of age, his loneliness, his ill fortune,² his diminished reputation, and his increasing dependence upon the boy, Manolin. Santiago's depression is the result of a sense of shame and of direct narcissistic injury rather than of a sense of guilt.

The Old Man's dependence upon Manolin, we are shown, has several aspects. Santiago receives food, companionship, assistance, admiration, and affection from the boy. There is no question but that he is in conflict about the dependent aspects of their relationship. As one piece of evidence, there is his pretense of having food in his cottage. In the same vein are his thoughts—spoken aloud at a later point in the story—"The sea feeds me. No, I must not deceive myself too much; the boy feeds me."

This insight is allowed only with some difficulty.

Yet it is, after all, allowed. Thus, while one can readily document the existence of a conflict in the fisherman between the demands of pride, on the one hand, and those of a group of dependent strivings, on the other, one can, at the same time, find evidence to show that the portion of the conflict which involves Manolin is of only moderate intensity. In addition to flashes of insight such as the one quoted (incompatible with intense conflict), there is the essentially unambivalent nature of the Old Man's emotions and behavior toward Manolin. The fisherman shows a sustained kindness to the boy, a graciousness even, which could not exist in the presence of strong negative feelings. At no time has the Old Man any need to depreciate his pupil; on the contrary, he has consistently encouraged the boy's manliness and fostered his competence.³

At the outset of the story, then, one finds in Santiago a mood which, though subdued, calls for vigorous action to ameliorate his situation. There is a purpose not unlike that of Ulysses in Tennyson's poem.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulf will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved heaven and earth; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

What happens to this protagonist, Santiago? The gross external events of the tale can be very quickly summarized.

For eighty-four days, Santiago has caught not a single fish. On the eighty-fifth day, the Old Man rows far out into the Gulf Stream, where he hooks the largest marlin ever seen in that area. For two and a half days he struggles to make the catch, and he finally succeeds in doing so. Nearly exhausted, he is then forced into a running battle with a series of marauding sharks. He kills a number of them, but they leave him only the skeleton of the marlin, which he finally brings into port. Deprived of any material gain from his venture and psysically worn out, the Old Man sinks into a profound sleep, briefly interrupted by a conversation with the boy, Manolin.

Here is the presentation of a seeming defeat, and an undeserved defeat, at that. The reader is saddened by the account. Yet there is more than one kind of sadness, and the kind experienced at the close of The Old Man and the Sea is not enervating, not depleting, but curiously involving a trace of quiet exhilaration. Does the reader sense that he has witnessed a kind of victory in this defeat? If so, what is the nature of this victory? What are the deeper strata in the reader's personality which are activated by the story, and by what technical means does the author bring about this response?

First it may be well to recognize the magnitude of the test to which Santiago is exposed. It should be clear that The Old Man and the Sea is not the story of a man, once capable, who has become professionally incompetent through senescence and who finally loses a battle fought for routine stakes and against routine odds. Hemingway has presented such a story in "The Undefeated." Toward Manuel, the bullfighter, one feels a pity that is less positive, a kind of admiration that is more limited, and a sense of resignation less tinged with hope, than is the case with one's feelings toward Santiago. The prizefighter in "Fifty Grand" comes, perhaps, a bit closer to eliciting emotions like those roused by the Old Man, but, for a number of reasons—his material success, to name one—not identical with them.

On the contrary, there is a great deal to indicate that, in the central experience of the tale, Santiago faces a quite exceptionally severe test. A marlin eighteen feet in length and 1500 pounds in weight: as the bartender says, "There has never been such a fish!" There is not much in the story to suggest that the Old Man could have done appreciably better at any previous period of his life,⁴ and there is nothing to suggest that any of the other fishermen could have done better than the Old Man.

Next one may note the ways in which Santiago may be said to have passed this severe test. Some of these are evident while he is still alone at sea. He does not, for example, abandon the long struggle with the fish, but brings this phase of the adventure to a successful conclusion. He does not stop fighting the sharks so long as they attack, killing the last of the marauders.

His judgment survives. (". . . he sailed the skiff to make his home port as well and as intelligently as he could.") His optimism survives—or, if one prefers, his ability to make a limited but effective use of denial. ("She's good, he thought. She is sound and not harmed in any way except for the tiller. That is easily replaced.") Most significantly, his self-esteem not only survives but is enhanced. ("He spat into the ocean and said, 'Eat that, Galanos. And make a dream you've killed a man.'")

In the fishing village on the Old Man's return there are indications of an objective nature that Santiago has achieved a kind of triumph. While his reputation as a fisherman had never been lost, but merely tarnished, it is now restored. His achievement receives open admiration. ("Many fishermen were around the skiff looking at what was lashed beside it and one was in the water, his trousers rolled up, measuring the skeleton with a length of line.")

Of greater significance than the reactions of the villagers is a shift in the arrangement between the Old Man and his young friend, Manolin. Santiago's bravery in the face of suffering has mobilized further admiration and compassion, plus a degree of guilt, clinching the boy's determination to resume fishing with him, whatever the opposition. An appraisal of the relationship between the Old Man and the boy, underlying this aspect of the denouement—and a great deal else,—takes one quite deeply into the significance of the story and into an understanding of the author's great technical skill.

To come straightway to one of the principal psychological points, one may offer the impression that Santiago has regressed to approximately the same psychosexual phase as that to which Manolin has advanced, and that this phase is late latency.

The fisherman's having put aside his dead wife's picture as too painful a reminder of their relationship is, of course, strongly reminiscent of the partial "forgetting" by a boy of his mother during latency. The Old Man's hero-worship and the type of hero involved (DiMaggio) are similarly typical. The general emphasis on male-male relationships and the utter deemphasis of male-female relationships are further bits of evidence. Above all, there is in the Old Man—to a striking degree—that "conflict between industry and inferiority" which Erikson has so clearly shown to be a decisive one during the latency period.

With the oncoming latency period, the normally advanced child forgets, or rather sublimates, the necessity to "make" people by direct attack or to become papa and mama in a hurry: he learns to win recognition by producing things. . . . He develops industry—i. e., he adjusts himself to the inorganic laws of the tool world. . . . To bring a productive situation to completion is an aim which gradually supersedes the whims and wishes of his autonomous organism. His ego boundaries include his tools and skills: the work principle (Ives Hendricks) teaches him the pleasure of work completion by steady attention and persevering diligence.

His danger at this stage lies in a sense of inadequacy and inferiority. If he despairs of his tools and skills or his status among his tool partners, his ego boundaries suffer. . . .⁵

Aside from the very extensive sharing of interests and values between Manolin and the Old Man, cues to the boy's age are limited in number. It is a good while since Manolin has been five years old; he is old enough to be a valued helper, but not generally considered old enough to assume much initiative. He is still subject to parental instructions. Manolin displays no conscious interest in girls or women, but a great deal of interest in learning what for him is the trade of a man. All in all, the impression from reading the story is perhaps that of a boy of ten or eleven years,⁶ a boy of the latency period. He is an appealing character; in his presence—a point to be elaborated further on—the reader tends naturally to view the Old Man through his eyes.

To return to the question: what is the nature of Santiago's victory? He is still poor; he is still old; he is, if anything, physically weaker for the buffeting he has received; he may be dying. Yet all this does not obscure the impression that his fortitude and skill and perseverance have, in some sense, won out. From the nature of the test, from the ways in which it has been passed, and from the glimpse forward which Santiago allows himself (of fishing with Manolin), one is led to conclude that the victory is primarily a victory over a deepening sense of shame. Whether he is to survive or perish, whether—as seems to be understood in the former case—he is to be increasingly dependent upon Manolin or not, the Old Man is in a stronger emotional position to accept whatever happens next.

If one turns now from the bare facts and the immediate implications of the characterization and the action, if one attempts to appraise the effects of the tale upon the reader, one may simplify matters a good deal by confining one's attention to the adult male reader. To digress for a moment, one may note in passing that the impact of The Old Man and the Sea is, as a rule, greater by far, and, in a sense, more clear-cut upon men than upon women. The relatively modest sales of the book and the box-office failure of the artistically made motion picture attest to the limited appeal of the story for women. One also gathers, from casual conversations about the book, that many women readers find the story pathetic rather than inspiring and, in general, somewhat confusing. It is perhaps doubtful if the average woman reader may be said to react to the story in any fundamental way, whereas the male reader, even when rather inarticulate, appears to have a considerable intuitive understanding of and response to what is portrayed.

It may be worth recalling briefly the two principal ways in which a reader may become emotionally involved with the protagonist of a literary work. These are, of course, through various types of partial identification and through taking the protagonist as the fantasied object for various types of strivings. As a rule, for a given reader and a given literary work, one mechanism is clearly predominant over the other, though it seems likely that ordinarily both are in operation to some degree. (For the adult male reader, one may cite Fielding's Tom Jones as an example of the case in which his involvement would be very largely through identification and Austen's Pride and Prejudice as an example of involvement in which taking the protagonist as object is the more significant.)

It is important to note that in The Old Man and The Sea —for the adult male reader—there tends to be quite significant involvement by both routes and, perhaps, in nearly equal proportions. It becomes pertinent to inquire just how this double involvement is established and how the oscillations set up in the reader between the one emotional position and the other are related to the kind and intensity of the effects produced in him by the story.

Notice how the structure of the tale favors this dual involvement. In the introductory phase and in the last phase Manolin is present, and various references are also made (by the author) to other members of the little community and their attitudes toward the Old Man. By these techniques the reader is encouraged to respond to Santiago as an object. On the other hand, during the long central portion of the story, the Old Man is alone, struggling against various forces, inner and (in the present connection, more importantly) outer. During this phase deep-going reader identifications are fostered.

During the first phase, one's responses to Santiago are heavily influenced by a sort of father-transference, perhaps softened and rendered less ambivalent by elements of a grandfather transference. Numerous aspects of the Old Man's character are introduced which can form the basis for admiration and respect: his courage, pride and optimism; his past achievements, etc. Yet other aspects—his humble position, his advanced age, his ill fortune, etc.—are presented which neutralize the ordinarily concomitant emotions of fear, envy, and anger (usually preconscious or unconscious). Still other aspects—his gentleness and kindliness toward the boy—stimulate one's affection.

The identification which develops during the central phase may well begin in a quite general and superficial fashion; one may identify with Santiago as one is apt to do with any brave man struggling against odds. As a result, however, of the groundwork of characterization which has already been accomplished (the evidences of the Old Man's being in the emotional position of latency), the more significant basis for the identification becomes the reader's own latency period experiences and fantasies.

In this connection it is worth mentioning again the extent to which—in this central portion of the tale—the Old Man is presented as being in conflict with environmental forces. The use of projections here is obvious—the author's, Santiago's, the reader's, depending upon which point of view one chooses to adopt—but this is not really the most valuable point in analysing this phase of the story. The point of special significance here is that a sense of being in conflict with environmental forces and, relatively speaking, the actual being in such conflict is typical of latency (the world of tools, projects, and attempts at mastery of the environment). Thus this aspect of the story favors the particular type of identification just discussed.

Keeping in mind both types of reader involvement—with the Old Man as object and with the Old Man as a half-forgotten part of oneself—one can see an important basis of the artistic requirement that his degree of triumph in the latter portion of the second phase and in the third phase be incomplete, be tinged with elements of failure and of resignation. Insofar as he is an object via a father-transference, for Santiago to have been fully successful, for him to have remained physically unscathed and to have brought in the huge fish (with all its richness of symbolism) intact, would have aroused the reader's envy and jealousy to an extent which would have interfered with the desired effect.

At the same time, insofar as he is an identification figure reminiscent of the reader's latency experiences, for Santiago to have been completely successful would have weakend the whole identification process, since latency is above all, a time of preparation and not of adult type successes.

Thus the peculiar poignancy of the third phase of the story and of the mood which lingers after the book is closed is a culmination of certain features of the first and second phases, reinforced by features of the third phase itself. First the reader's latency period love of his father has been mobilized; then, through identification with the protagonist, the central features of the reader's own latency experiences have been brought to life in a stirring fashion. While the effects of these old dynamics are still active, the reader is once again brought to respond to the protagonist as object. Thus an exceptional degree of empathy is made possible.

On the basis of these close ties between reader and protagonist, what further delineation of the components of this final emotional effect can be achieved? First, as to the sadness. There are, of course, many nuances of which such an affect may be composed. Plainly this particular sadness is not akin to despair. To use a neglected and wholly nonprofessional term, one might say that there is a wholesome quality about it. For the reader, this is a sadness with a future; something comes of this sadness. It is a sadness appropriate to the loss of a father-figure toward whom one's negative emotions have been largely resolved. It is a sadness which facilitates something akin to an effective mourning response. (It is true that the reader's emotions are apt to be tinged with a sense of guilt—as it appears Manolin's were—but the guilt feelings derive from a sense of "faults" of omission rather than of commission. One wishes that he might have helped the Old Man in some way.)

As in actual mourning (though, of course, on a small scale), there is—as one reads the last words and after one has closed the book—a final process of partial identification with the lost object. This occurrence is in addition to and in some measure distinct from the identifications taking place during the reading of the story. It is this element which is responsible for the reader's sense of having participated in some kind of a triumph. Vicariously—through the Old Man—he has triumphed over the threat of shame. The Old Man's victory-in-defeat is, for the reader, a recapitulation of some of the favorable aspects of latency. He, too, is now readier for whatever may happen next.

Notes

¹ The name is, of course, the Spanish form of Saint James (the Apostle), fisherman and "fisher of men." Santiago de Cuba has as its predecessor Santiago in north-west Spain. In the latter are two large stones, called to this day "Barca" and "Patron," i.e., "the ship" and "the skipper." The sanctity of these stones derives from the old belief that the bones of Saint James had, after his martyrdom, been brought there for burial. After the Moorish conquest, the region around Santiago was the only part of Spain that retained its independence, and it was the place from which the reconquest of the peninsula was begun.

² A question can, of course, be raised as to the extent to which this "ill fortune" has been self-induced, thus becoming a symptom, rather than a cause, of depression. The author gives two clues, however, which limit the weight of this interpretation: the other fishermen consider the Old Man to be unlucky rather than foolish or self-destructive, and two past instances are mentioned in which Santiago has vigorously surmounted comparable lean periods.

³ Manolin, in turn, shows the Old Man an intuitive tactfulness, born of love, but this circumstance would not prevent ambivalent behavior on the Old Man's part if his pride violently rejected dependence upon the boy.

⁴ One of the few points tending in this direction may be the Old Man's regretful thought, "If I had the boy with me. . . . ," if this is interpreted to mean, "If I had youth on my side . . ."

⁵ From Childhood and Society, pp. 226-227.

⁶ In the motion picture, however, the part was cast, for technical reasons, as that of a young adolescent.