SOURCE: "Crucified in the Ring: Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea" in The Hemingway Review, Vol. III, No. 1, Fall, 1983, pp. 2-17.

[In the following essay, Wittkowski contends that Santiago's struggle and suffering are patterned after that of the bullfighter and Christ on the Cross, and further that the ideal of the fighter-athlete in the novella encompasses and takes the place of the ideal of Christ.]

When The Old Man and the Sea appeared in 1952, Philip Young wrote that it was a metaphor for life as a fight and man as a fighter. It was a metaphor for which Hemingway indicated his deep respect and enlists ours through the enhancing use of Christian symbols.¹ That was the impression of most readers then and probably is still today. However, in 1956 Carlos Baker gave a new twist to the critical discussion of the story, one which had far-reaching consequences. He stated that the religious associations attest to a Christian mentality which in the course of the story's development supplants the fighter ethos of the old man.² This encouraged several critics to point out Santiago's insight into the tragic limitations of humanity and the consequent victory for a democratic and interpersonal way of thinking.³

The basis for and main thrust of such interpretations were religious argumentation, arriving at the non plus ultra that Santiago's actions were in fact an imitatio Christi. ⁴ To be sure, the critical results were often more modest, for in Hemingway's works, and especially in the case of Santiago, the central image of the killer stands along side that of the sufferer,⁵ and Hemingway's Catholicism and ethical thought lack the dimension of transcendence.⁶ One critic, Julanne Isabelle, felt that Hemingway, in good Augustinian fashion, was concerned with the relationship of the individual soul to God, but Isabelle nevertheless shares the same objections as the others. In the final analysis she too ascertains no more than that the writer and his heroes do not deny God, even though they often claim to want no part of religion.⁷ Baker observes that "consciousness of God is in his [Hemingway's] books." With this both unquestionable and modest result he too was finally satisfied, conceding that the story's Christian symbolism as he understands it does not tally, for Santiago maintains his fighter's pride in the end (Artist, p. 319). In making this concession Baker undermined the theses upon which his own interpretation and the entire resulting Christian and moral meaning of Hemingway's works rise or fall, namely, that Santiago's pride changes into humility and love. Baker had arrived at this view by concluding that humility and love would have to remain when pride disappeared, a fact he saw confirmed by the sentence: "He took all his pain and what was left of his strength and his long gone pride and he put it against the fish's agony."⁸ This statement reveals not the loss of pride, but rather the opposite. Baker evidently misunderstood Hemingway's particular manner of expression. Such paradoxical hyperbole is extremely characteristic and significant for all his work. On one occasion it is said that Santiago acted "with all his strength, and more strength he had just summoned" (The Old Man and the Sea, p. 103). And prior to this he says of the marlin and himself: "Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so" (p. 71). Personal and human limitations in general are conceded, but only to serve as a foil for the will to exceed such limitations and bring a heightened awareness of being able to overstep them by conjuring as if out of nowhere the necessary strength, both physical and spiritual. The latter is above all the pride of the fighter and the killer. The ability to summon up his strength fills Santiago with the intense pride of a man in command of himself—as a demiurge. (Demiurgic, meaning half-god and smaller world-creator, has served in Europe since the 18th Century as a synonym for Prometheus/promethean, dramatizing artistic and existential autonomy.) Such likeness with God pervades the same similarity Hemingway attributed to the proud killer and provides for the mutual enhancement of both. Yet the result is scarcely an imitatio Christi, but rather a meaning quite apart from Christ.

Let us look somewhat more closely at the rhetoric, the paradoxical hyperbole, attending this attitude. It occurs whenever Santiago considers the seriousness of his situation. When he cannot open his cramped left hand he avers: "If I have to have it, I will open it, cost whatever it costs" (pp. 66-7). He will not admit his exhaustion and he even claims: "I feel good" (pp. 71 and 82). On three separate occasions he declares he will stay with the marlin "forever" (pp. 58, 64, 66). And toward the end of the battle we read: "I must get him alongside, he thought. I am not good for many more turns. Yes you are, he told himself. You're good for ever" (p. 102). When he scarcely knows how he will continue the battle with the sharks he says: "I'll fight them until I die" (p. 128).

With the strong exaggerations of all these utterances Santiago attempts to bolster his confidence so severly put to the test. This is the "psyching" speech used by fighters in the ring, whose manner of metaphor is familiar to all readers of Hemingway.⁹ Santiago's "faith" (pp. 11, 18), "hope" (p. 115), and "confidence" (pp. 29, 76, 78) are not to be equated with Christian faith and hope. Santiago's belong to the fighter-ethic, which has been stylized and intensified to the pathos of the demiurgic self-creator again and again in Santiago. Santiago evokes the meaning of his remembered victory in hand-wrestling solely for the purpose of "giving himself more confidence." Back then he had been called "The Champion," "Santiago El Campeón." The rematch he had won easily by breaking his opponent's "confidence" while gaining himself the demiurgic proud confidence "that he could beat anyone if he wanted to badly enough" (p. 76).

Confrontation and victory in competitive sport serve here as the model, the ideal, and ultimately the metaphor. The same holds true for the baseball games whose results Santiago studies carefully and sorely misses when out to sea. The superlative champion he simply calls "the great DiMaggio," just as Manolin, his partner in these dialogues, reverently says "Jota" instead of J. when speaking of "the great John J. McGraw." During the battle with the fish the thought of his idol is a source of inspiration, satisfaction, and even a sense of obligation for Santiago: "I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio."^9a After his victory over the marlin, he remarks: "I think the great DiMaggio would be proud of me today." And when he has finally killed the Mako shark, he muses: "I wonder how the great DiMaggio would have liked the way I hit him on the brain?"

The fully conscious pride of the fighter and killer is unmistakable. Though it is also combined with humility and modesty, the seeming humility of comparing oneself with stronger persons and not with weaker ones does not destroy pride, but ennobles it. This humility, Santiago emphasizes, is "not disgraceful" and denotes "no loss of true pride" (p. 14). For him humility is not a primary virtue. It must adapt itself to pride, that is, subordinate itself to it.

On one occasion Manolin calls Santiago "the best fisherman," a title at first rejected by Santiago. That Jesus, too, was so named suffices for pushing Baker to construe the old man's modesty as Christian humility (Artist, p. 300). That still does not work, however, for Manolin then repeats his assertion and this time Santiago accepts it: "Thank you. You make me happy." For all their humble intent, Santiago's subsequent reservations maintain this pride. He hopes that no fish will be strong enough to refute Manolin's opinion ("prove us wrong"), an opinion which he himself shares: "I may not be as strong as I think. . . . But I know many tricks and I have resolution" (p. 25). This he proves throughout the story.

Critics believe that along with "humility," the Christian virtue of "gentleness" could bridle pride. Santiago says to himself: "Rest gently now against the wood and think of nothing." Then "the old man rode gently with the small sea and the hurt of the cord across his back came to him easily and smoothly" (p. 73). One critic believes that "suffering and gentle and wood blend magically into an image of Christ on the cross."¹⁰ Perhaps there exists here an "abstract relationship of words" of the kind that fascinated Hemingway,¹¹ possibly even between "cross" and "across," just as surrounding this passage there are several specific allusions to Christ. At the same time these images commingle with the typical traits of the fighter. More appropriate to a fighter than to Christ is the admonition not to think, which occurs more often than the corresponding exhortation to think about only that which is encouraging. Shortly before this, the central concept of suffering finds its expression in the boxing notion of "taking it," an expression implying the willful acceptance of suffering: "he took his suffering" (p. 71).¹² "Wood" and "comfortably" occur in close proximity. This is also the immediate meaning of "gentle" in the sentence cited. It calls to mind on the one hand Christ on the Cross, yet at the same time the fighter, too, who sits down, leans against the ropes and relaxes between rounds.

Such double associations of Christ and the fighter are encountered more and more frequently. Their meaning needs to be clarified. "Gentleness" in the Christian sense of suffering is, of course, never found in Santiago. His relationship with Manolin, the sea, and some animals could indeed be described as "gentle." But this does not justify the comparing of Santiago with Saint Francis, for Santiago only loves certain people and animals, while despising and detesting others. He also possesses "gentleness" as an adjunct to his cardinal virtue, that of a Spaniard's chivalrous pride. Several variations of this he manifests in his feeling of shame when pretending he has nets, a place to wash, and a meal; in his ability to receive gifts with honor; in his polite attentiveness toward his benefactor and companion during the meal; and in his chivalrous gesture of giving away the head and sword of the marlin to those who helped him a little though he himself had lost everything. Santiago is not "gentle" like Jesus, but rather like the fighters Ole Andreson, Robert Jordan and Richard Cantwell, who are called "gentle," but still do not feel as Christians do. The chivalrous character of his "gentleness" in particular calls to mind the wounded matador, who in spite of his "suffering" remains "gracious . . . completely calm and very gentle and courteous" toward the bystanders.¹³

As in the case of "humility" it is wrong to interpret "gentle" in Christian terms simply because this word may be used in a Christian sense and because there are textual associations with Christ. In a non-Christian context these words could evoke a totally different and even diametrically opposed meaning, namely one of antithesis and secularization. After all, both words designate values that are completely of this world and, as ever, aligned with pride. It is through pride that Santiago's ethos clearly gains its unity and cohesion. It is its core. Referring to his pride Santiago repeatedly restores the unity and order of his will in the face of contrary inclinations. Therein lies the victory in his defeat. He is all the more able to gain this victory because those tendencies are integral to his fighter's code. That in turn is possible only because he applies this code to everything he does, and because, inversely, he views his every act as something to which the code is directly applicable, namely, a fight. Moreover, this fight is analogous to the combat of competitive sports and not to the battles of, say, work and everyday life.¹⁴

To catch the marlin and defend it against the sharks is important for the fisherman. But risking his life to do so and continuing the battle when it has become purposeless and even reckless, leading to a disintegration of physical being ("Something in my chest was broken") certainly does not serve a man's livelihood but is solely the fulfillment of the fighter's code. Santiago regards his profession as the arena in which he wants to establish and maintain mastery in the struggle for victory or defeat. Accordingly, he understands his body not as the end result of his profession but as a mere means. Like an athlete, he forces himself to eat and sleep, although he likes neither. In May he drinks the bad-tasting shark liver oil and eats turtle eggs in order to be strong in the fall for the large fish. He trains body and mind, controls them, uses them with great economy, risking his body without reservation only if necessary. If his body does not satisfy his demands, then he hates it and despises it. He endures his suffering like the heavily bleeding Antonio Ordonez, who, when his brother comes to lead him from the ring, is infuriated and repulses him with the words, "And you call yourself an Ordonez" (DS I, p. 109).

The jesting conversations with the boy concern the odds of the baseball teams and then of the fisherman. During the actual struggle with the marlin Santiago reassesses his prospects again and again, attempting to improve them. He must show the boy "what a man can do and what a man endures" (p. 73). This endurance characterizes the demiurgic person, but "the good performance, the good show" is the concrete realization of this attitude. The matador wants to put on a good show, just as Jack Brennan feels that is the least he can do, although he knows full well he will lose his title (SS, p. 316). Santiago yearns too to give his performance in front of spectators, in front of his pupil, his model and idol, and his fellow fishermen. Since this is not possible, he performs for an invisible forum, the one to which the matador also feels obliged, namely, the historical and suprahistorical sphere of the championship fight.¹⁵ His struggle becomes a testimony of self and the experience of his own championship. Finally, and not to be overlooked, Santiago stages his performance for the great marlin.

It was within the relationship of Santiago and the marlin that critics thought they had uncovered a decisive transformation from pride to love and humility in Santiago, a cessation of the previous coexistence of pride and love, of the greatest sin and the greatest virtue. Such was Baker's thought, and he saw in it a "philosophical crux" (Artist, p. 317). But there is no reason to do this. It is part of the ritual of the fighter that opponents demonstrate good friendship at every opportunity. The matador, whose chief virtue according to Hemingway is pride, loves the bulls, precisely because he must kill them. And in spite of the ofttimes deadly rivalry between matadors they help each other in the arena, where the "closest brotherhood there is" prevails.¹⁶

Santiago addresses the fish as "brother":

You are killing me, fish. But you have a right to. Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother. Come on and kill me. I do not care who kills who. (p. 102)

The fighter's priorities, the validity of his code begins to weaken. But victory here for the Christian values of love and mercy would contradict what must follow. All emotions opposing the decision to kill are rejected.¹⁷ This is all the more possible as respect for one's opponent and ultimate union with him are integral to the fighter's code. They confer nobility and warmth upon the will to victory, and give it precedence. Thus Santiago rejects as well every impulse of opposing emotions:

Now you are getting confused in the head, he thought. You must keep your head clear. Keep your head clear and know how to suffer like a man. Or a fish, he thought. (p. 102)

Santiago calls the fish "brother" as an equal, ideal opponent and sharer in hsi destiny. Between them there exists the same lonely bond as between boxers in the ring or between matador and bull: "Now we are joined together . . . And no one to help either of us." They are bound in a lonely way "beyond all the people of the world" (p. 102). Furthermore, what transpires between Santiago and his fish can be understood only by the few who, together with them, belong to what Hemingway loved to call the secret order of the initiated. The writer stresses the communion, the very kinship of these two in their combative and demiurgic mode of existence. This is what is meant when Santiago calls himself "a strange old man" and the marlin "old fish" and says of the marlin that it behaves "strangely." As an attribute "strange" is regularly accompanied and clearly circumscribed by words such as "strong," "powerful," and "endure" (pp. 15, 19, 73). In one instance such words refer to the fish, another time to fish and fisherman. He marvels at how the marlin battles, and when he thinks that the fish "decides to stay another night" (p. 72), even though that scarcely seems possible, he concedes to the animal the demiurgic self-determination which characterizes the expression of his own will.

In such union and kinship with his opponent, it is no wonder that Santiago feels compassion for the fish between rounds, and when the pride of his victory has faded, compassion remains. It is the experience of the matador with an especially good bull, and it is Santiago's also. However, this is not evidence of a change in attitude on his part. Nor is his battle against the sharks.

I killed the shark that bit my fish. And he was the biggest dentuso that I have ever seen. I wonder how the great DiMaggio would have liked the way I hit him on the brain? . . . But you enjoyed killing the dentuso. "And I killed him well." (pp. 113 and 116)

This is not a man filled with Christian charity, as Baker maintains (Artist, p. 317), but one with the pride and self-esteem of the fighter and killer. Certainly, this pride is founded to some extent upon pity and pain for the marlin, and ennobled by it, yet: "When the fish had been hit it was as though he himself were hit" (p. 113). "The sharks did not hit him again" (124). "I cannot keep him from hitting me" (112). "Come on Galanos" (118 ff.).

Beyond attesting to communication between fish and fisherman these sentences reveal that above and beyond the now dead marlin, is a struggle between the man and the sharks. Santiago himself sees it as such. It again becomes important for him to fulfill the code of the fighter, to demonstrate the axiom: "A man can be destroyed but not defeated." In this he identifies with his dead opponent. And speaks to him: "But we have killed many sharks, you and I, and ruined others. How many did you kill, old fish?" This is how his final thoughts and words to the fish must be interpreted. Beyond any and all Christian feelings he is bound to the fish in antagonism toward the sharks and in the pride of the fighter and the killer.

This ethos outlives all other feelings mentioned. In the end, it is not a question of the marlin or the sharks, but simply of the fact that the old man has been defeated. It is his last thought upon returning and his first one after his sleep of exhaustion: "They beat me. . . . They truly beat me" (p. 136). He adds: "We must get a good killing lance and always have it on board" (p. 138). Just as before, he will go far out on the ocean to fight and kill.

This should put to rest all speculations concerning a change of attitude on Santiago's part. Critics did not try to deduce such a change so much from the context, as from a number of individual utterances by the fisherman. After the sharks have begun to mutilate the carcass of the marlin, Santiago expresses his sorrow at having killed the marlin; he has gone out too far from shore. This most likely implies that he has been robbed of his prey, that his opponent, whom he has learned to respect and love, has been shamefully dispoiled. He did not want that. Had he known this in advance, he would not have gone out so far and would not have killed the marlin. Considered more carefully, it was really no longer possible to relinquish the marlin once the fish had struck and pulled the boat out to sea. Santiago could only have cut the line, thereby delivering the animal to an equally sad fate, for the marlin had a hook in its mouth and could not eat. Nor would that have been legitimate within the code of the fighter. On the other hand, Santiago's unhappiness about what has happened, and about the marlin, are legitimate. Though objectively beside the point, his laments do give voice to pity and regret, both of which are appropriate here. On the other hand feelings of regret, sin, and guilt are not necessarily implied but they could be, and Santiago's thoughts really do move more or less clearly in this direction. To be sure, he noticeably disapproves of or ignores such sentiments along with their religious and moral implications every time and exhorts himself to continue fighting, to endure. At the close of the story Santiago still thinks and acts contrary to those ideas. This leads the reader to a significant conclusion, namely that Hemingway conjures up such impulses expressly to undermine them and render them powerless in the end. This is in keeping with Hemingway's increasingly secular use of "humility" and "gentle," and is admittedly much more provocative, something one would hardly expect of a simple fisherman. But it is something one would readily expect of the author talking over his character's shoulder. A close look at Santiago's discussions with himself is therefore warranted.

After the attack of the first shark Santiago wonders whether it might not have been sinful to kill the fish. Then he consoles himself: "then everything is a sin. . . . You were born to be a fisherman as the fish was born to be a fish." He next remarks: "You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and sell for food. . . . You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman" (p. 116). Critics have construed his mention of pride as self-reproach. Though Santiago being a fisherman is an obvious justification for his chosen course, pride is not set in opposition to it. The same holds true for pride that is thus played off against the idea of sin. One can scarcely ignore that Hemingway coolly yet emphatically declared that pride, the cardinal virtue of the matador (i.e., of the killer), was a Christian sin.¹⁸

Those who give the story a Christian and moral interpretation are thus correct that allegiance to the code of the fighter and a feeling of sin are mutually exclusive. But they overlook the fact that the concept of sin remains wholly foreign to Santiago and his code:

Do not think about sin, he thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it.

I have no understanding of it and am not sure I believe in it. . . . Do not think about sin. It is much too late for that and there are people who are paid to do it. Let them think about it. (pp. 115-16)

This is frivolous and even cynical. Hemingway is extending to the clergy his often documented contempt for the "uninitiated" who comment on art, war, and battle as a matter of routine and profit. It is also an anti-Christian polemic when Hemingway gives the impression that Santiago busies himself with the question of sin more for the sake of amusement, as a substitute for a radio or some reading material (p. 116). Santiago's non-committal and mildly comical relationship to God and the saints is similarly worth noting. To be sure, he asks for their help, but only because his operating principle is to leave no stone unturned and no means untried. He relies far more upon himself. The figures of his faith are relics of his religious inheritance, just as the pictures in his cabin are "relics of his wife"; "I am not religious," he says. But, when Santiago does want to involve himself more deeply in matters of consequence, the simple fisherman is dependent upon the traditional concept of sin:

You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?

"You think too much, old man," he said aloud.

But you enjoyed killing the dentuso, he thought (p. 116).

As with the iceberg, beneath the surface of these awkward sentences lies the mass of Hemingway's philosophy of killing. The explanation ends abruptly, of course, for nothing can be accomplished through the concept of sin. After all, one is dealing with the axiom that one kills the opponent one respects and loves with enjoyment and pride. Killing, Hemingway says, is a feeling we cannot share with anyone.¹⁹ This "moment of truth" deepens the isolation from one's fellow man and intensifies the communion with an opponent as noble as the marlin. It also intensifies the awareness of being alive to the extent of believing oneself immortal and akin to God because of that immortality—just as the matador is God-like because he exercises the divine privilege of "administering death" ( DIA pp. 213, 233).

These may be dramatizations. However, we are dealing with an artist and man who knows precisely what he means. He opens his bullfighting book with the laconic observation that from a Christian point of view the Corrida is unjustifiable (DIA, 1) and as a bullfighting enthusiast, he has nothing in common with that viewpoint. We are already familiar with his remark that pride is a Christian sin and a heathen virtue. These are less disguised objections to the Christian ethic.²⁰ Beyond the self-awareness of the matador they constitute an ethical sphere that is to stand in marked contrast to Christianity and on equal footing with it.

Such is the thrust of Santiago's discussion of sin. When he justifies his actions, the underlying idea is that an elite of great fighters and killers is united by the adherence to a common code which transcends individual worldviews. If possible, this is an even greater challenge to Christianity. Though deduced logically from the pride of the fighter and killer, from the pride of the demiurgic person, it is more than this. It is what Hemingway, with his flair for and delight in dramatic confrontation, calls the dark side of pride, the "pride of the devil" (DS II, p. 77).

Thus Santiago's discussion of sin gives those who would interpret the story in Christian and moral terms little room for critical satisfaction. The story is much the same in Santiago's thoughts about happiness:

Maybe I'll have the luck to bring the forward half in. I should have some luck. No, he said. You violated your luck when you went too far outside.

"Don't be silly," he said aloud. . . . "You may have much luck yet." (p. 128)

That he might have forfeited happiness and earned punishment through hubris is quickly dismissed. Though he appears to at first, it is questionable whether Santiago ever actually views events in such moral terms. From now on "luck" is for him something akin to practical success. By having taken such a great risk, he does not believe he has lost the moral right to success at all, but rather that he has won it. He has forfeited "a lost harpoon and a broken knife and two bad hands, and eighty-four days at sea. They nearly sold it to you too" (p. 129). It is not a matter of crime and punishment, but one of risk and gain, of an "exchange of values." "You paid some way for everything that was any good" (SAR, p. 148). Santiago has paid, but the value he expected and was entitled to expect, was withheld from him. The shadow does not fall upon him, but upon the opposing side, whatever it is called—destiny, the order of the world, God. All moral and religious values are thus supplanted by another value. Hemingway did this expressly in The Sun Also Rises, where he played off the idea of an exchange of values against the idea of "retribution or punishment."²¹ Here he does it again over the shoulder of the old man, though only by innuendo. The voice of remorse turns out to be—as in the discussion about sin—a hidden challenge to the Christian and moral way of thinking, the "pride of the devil."

This sheds further light on Santiago's final "out too far." At the end of his journey he asks himself what actually was the thing that beat him and replies: "Nothing . . . I went out too far" (p. 133). That is a very simple truth, as the ultimate defeat shows. He ventured out too far to save his victory. But there are undertones of self-reproach here. "Nothing" appears to emphasize that he himself and he alone was to blame. To be sure, it also can mean: I myself made the mistake that brought about defeat and brought me to my destiny. Whether Santiago means to accuse himself or to justify his choice and acceptance of destiny is impossible to say. However, one does learn that Santiago will again go out far from shore and kill. The conversation the next day confirms that the sentence was at least intended as justification too. When Santiago laments he has been conquered, Manolin answers: "He didn't beat you. Not the fish," Santiago replies: "No. Truly. It was afterwards" (pp. 136-7).

Thus it is not now and never was really a question of crime and punishment, but one of victory and defeat, of applying the fighter's model. This Santiago does, and he does it arbitrarily. The fight with the marlin is kept separate from the fight with the sharks. The defeat in the latter does not count. Santiago remains champion. For the battle with the sharks does not correspond directly to the model of sport confrontation. On the other hand, in the fight with the sharks, Santiago still adheres to the fighter's code and ethos. He thus fulfilled his ethos so completely as to bring about his defeat. Moreover he demonstrated the way in which this ethos can be applied to fighting the sharks as well as to catching the marlin, and thus, in principle, to all endeavor. He determines demiurgically that his own misfortune is to take place and be judged "on his own terms."

The "as if," the imaginative arbitrariness with which life is seen in terms of sport combat and the sport's code has been called "quixotic gesture, quixotic pride."²² Critics justifiably pointed to the Existentialists. Santiago and his author also create through their actions an unbridgeable gap between themselves and the masses ("beyond all people"). But in so doing they do not leave their proper place in the order of things, in fact they assume it. It is not the purpose of their actions to set themselves apart from all other people. They make their own choice simply to demonstrate their ability to do so;²³ they do it because they attribute the highest possible value to their chosen ethos and style of existence and because in the case of success they are not isolated but rather united in the secret order of the initiated.

This tendency to reduce and stylize existence to this fighter-in-the-ring model is easy to recognize in Hemingway's own life. It may be at work in his preference for the short story, in his habit of first conceiving novels as short stories, then as a connected sequence of individual scenes;²⁴ and equally so in his characters. Superficially they can be divided into fighters or sufferers, but they are actually two sides of the same coin.²⁵ They all have to defend themselves, to fight and to suffer: Nick, Jake, Brett, Catherine, Henry, Maria. And it is more so for Harry, Jordan, Cantwell, and, above all, for the men in the ring, the boxers Ole Andreson, Jack Brennan, Steve Ketchel; and the matadors Maera (DIA), the rivals in "The Dangerous Summer," the "kid fighter" in In Our Time (chap. 9), Manuel ("The Undefeated"), Pilar's former lover (FWBT, chap. 14), Belmonte and Romero (SAR).

Within the narrow confines of their fictional world these heroes also withdraw into a small special sphere which they can easily maintain. Their situations and behavior more or less resemble those of the fighter in the ring, whether actually or only in their own perceptions of things. Both are the case with Santiago, and one sees what he gains from them. Santiago's fundamental feelings of "Geworfensein" (being cast out into existence) and "Dennoch"²⁶ (nevertheless) are transcended by the pride of having been set upon his life's course by virtue of the fighter's code which he has himself chosen. While everyday life was complicated for him, here he knows what moves against him and what he must do. Whether he wins or loses, he knows his worth and his place among his competitors, and his place in history. This gives his existence meaning, certainty, and unity. He proceeds with that "complete and respectful concentration on his work which marks all great artists" both in and out of the ring. At the climax of the fight he acts with the controlled rage that drives the very greatest and best of fighters "to go way past the impossible."²⁷ By visualizing himself as a prize fighter in competition, set apart from the masses in the shadows beyond the ropes, he gains distance from and control over himself and "heroics" and "drama" as fascinating stylistic components of his existence.²⁸

Because such a perspective is subjective, arbitrary, and imaginative, it has to be constantly revived to endure. Santiago does this by calling to mind such fight models as the baseball games, Joe DiMaggio, and his own mastery in the "hand game." For Hemingway, the tragedy of a King Lear, a bull, or a boxer going down silently fulfills the same function.²⁹ Hemingway considered it indispensable to see several good fights a year: "If you quit going for too long a time, then you never go near them. . . . That would be dangerous" (Ross, p. 20). Though shortly before his death, visitors found him broken, a crumbling ruin of his former self, the autographed picture of a world boxing champion hung on the wall, and the TV guide was opened to the Saturday-night fights.³⁰

Even at the end he found inspiration and comfort in the model after which he had stylized his existence. It is possible that the cultivation of his own personality was the eccentric experiment of a nervous and anxious person, but in the final analysis it was successful. The face became the mask.³¹ Around 1950 Hemingway seemed to sense this in himself; he relaxed. Whereas he had at one time rather mournfully said that the world breaks and kills everyone,³² now, with a sharp touch of humor and irony, he called life temporary avoidance of death and persons who had managed to escape it once more "un-killed characters." He had lived long enough with death to hope confidently for "the grace of a happy death" (ARIT p. 240). Cantwell's death, which as Young prophesied, anticipated and shaped Hemingway's own death,³³ suggests that, as in the case of the matadors, "grace" is the perfected, controlled pose. The calm smile in the face of death, and the demiurgic, devilish pride of an autonomous man are the factors which finally take on meaning in the fighter-in-the-ring model, in words with which Hemingway uncovers in advance the meaning of his own death:

"Only suckers worry about saving their souls. Who the hell should care about saving his soul when it is a man's duty to lose it intelligently, the way you would sell a position you were defending, if you could not hold it, as expensively as possible, trying to make it the most expensive position that was ever sold. It isn't hard to die." (Ross, p. 30)

It is reported by Ross that he opened his mouth, laughed, first silently, then aloud, and concluded: "No more worries . . . It takes a pretty goodman to make any sense when he's dying."

How, though, can the analogies between Santiago and Christ accord with a fighter's ideal compounded to the point of demiurgic autonomy and the pride of Lucifer? Again and again—though critics would not like to concede this today—Hemingway plays off his own values against Christian ones. With obvious delight and enjoyment he dramatized this as a dangerous and risky endeavor, and elevated it to the level of a devil's rebellion. He was still playing with this idea at the very end in "The Dangerous Summer," and he played with it shortly before the Santiago story, in Across the River. In the latter work there is a purely fictional secret society. Its leader is called "The Revered One," an analogy to the title "Reverend." But it is said that he will roast in hell; for this reason the religious authorities forbid a public burial (ARIT, pp. 57, 61). Cantwell too will end up in hell where his special guards will refuse admission to unwelcome contemporaries; "and I don't even believe in hell," he says (p. 250).

It appears to be less a matter of belief than of delight in decorative gesture when Hemingway prays for the matadors but not for himself because that would be egoistic (DS II, p. 76). Further evidence are his disrespectful prayer parodies,³⁴ his remarks on bullfighting cited above, or his observation on the fatally wounded matador that as long as they think the man has an immortal soul the doctors will try to keep him alive, even when "death would seem to be the greatest gift one man could give another" (DIA, p. 220). Hemingway gave himself this gift, and the question of whether he lacked belief in immortality or respect for it is a moot point.

Nonetheless, direct attacks on Christianity are relatively infrequent in his works. On the other hand, he frequently secularizes religious concepts in order to juxtapose them with occurrences and characters from his own value system, thereby "sanctifying" the latter. Sexual union and killing afford mystical ecstasy "that is, while momentary, as profound as any religious ecstasy" (DIA, p. 206). Injuries and sufferings which a dangerous life entails and which must be accepted as compensation for killing and injuring signify "castigation" and effect "purgation."³⁵ Killing is a pre-Christian "extra-sacrament" (FWBT p. 286).

Some matadors celebrate their battle like a mass. They administer death as a priest administers the Sacrament. Killing is their divine privilege and it evokes feelings of immortality and likeness to God (DIA, pp. 213, 233). They are met as "messiahs" (DIA, pp. 167, 171). A nun prays fervently to "Our Lady" for a victory by the University of Notre Dame football team.³⁶

The ominous expressions "Blessed Virgin of Pilar" and "Red Bride of Christ" point to the violated Virgin Mary who surrenders herself to her lover and of whom it is jokingly said that she serves him, her "Lord and Master," as Maria Magdalena did Jesus (FWBT, pp. 303, 352, 203). The very title "The Light of the World" suggests that the whore Alice is not damned, but rather defended in accordance with Chapter 8 of the Gospel of John. For what her rival glibly claims for herself holds true for Alice, namely, that she loved the great boxer "like you love God. He was like a God he was. So white and clean and beautiful and smooth and fast and like a tiger or like lightning." The former world champion was and is for this woman what Jesus was to his followers: "I am the light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." And finally, the Crucifixion painting of the "good, anticlerical" Goya could serve as an announcement of crucifixions, like a poster for a bullfight, with the following text:

A crucifixion of six carefully selected Christs will take place at five o'clock in the Monumental Golgotha of Madrid. . . . The following well-known, accredited and notable crucifiers will officiate, each accompanied by his cuadrilla of nailers, hammerers, cross-raisers, and spade-men. (DIA, p. 204)

The figure of Christ on the Cross actually occurs in the early dialogue "Today is Friday." The legionnaires argue the merits of the crucifixion as if it were a fighting match, as if Christ's conduct were that of a fighter in the ring. The central leitmotif is the repeated commentary, "He was pretty good in there today," and Jesus "took his suffering." At the same time he fulfilled the ritualized code of the fighter from its demiurgic aspect; though condemned to suffer, he "acted" in a personal way and thus made the fight his "play." As with all Hemingway heroes, in his defeat Christ preserves to the end the unity of suffering and fighting. These are certainly not specifically Christian virtues, but generally those of the fighter. Though here embodied in Christ and thus sanctified, a Luciferian reversal takes place as the highest good of Christianity is legitimized only after, and through, affirmation of the elementary virtues of the fighter.

One can now clarify the meaning of the analogies between Santiago and Christ on the Cross. Those previously mentioned all converged in the metaphor of the fighter. There are yet other cases. The great DiMaggio "who does all things perfectly even with the pain of the bone spur" or, as Santiago so solemnly puts it, with the pain of the "espuela de hueso" (OMS, p. 75). In spite of this clear allusion, he shares exemplary stature with Christ only in very general terms. Specifically, he shares with him affirmation of genuine virtue in the fighter.

In the moment of Santiago's total exhaustion, he detects a copper-like sweet taste in his mouth and spits (pp. 131, 138). One can perhaps concur with Baker that it may have been the taste of vinegar on a sponge (Artist, p. 319). One can just as easily call to mind the young matador who, after having killed six bulls, sinks to the ground from the excessive exertion and vomits.³⁷ The blood on Santiago's face reminds Baker of the blood beneath the crown of thorns (Artist, p. 319). However, the actual expression of suffering in the face of the fighter certainly fascinated Hemingway. When Maera, his wrist wrenched out of joint, has finally killed the bull after six attempts, he stands there, a tall man with sunken eyes, his face dripping with perspiration. When Jack Brennan is hit by a low blow his face looks terrible for the remainder of the fight; it was the most frightful thing the narrator had ever seen. In his boxing match with Cohn, champion matador Romero's face takes a terrible beating and is "very noticeable" (SAR, p. 219) during the bullfight the next day. Santiago's hand is covered with blood and scars. Baker believes that throughout his entire struggle Santiago thinks about his hands like a person crucified (Artist, p. 314). But matadors like Maera and Antonio Ordonez think too of their sensitive hands,³⁸ as do all fighters. Cantwell, who has been frequently injured and is still in good shape, says that boxers wear gloves to keep themselves from getting bad hands. Further, he has a mutilated hand that he regards with disgust, even as a traitor, just as Santiago views his left hand. Yet in Renata's dreams Cantwell's appears as "the hand of Our Lord."³⁹ For this reason the old sinner, headed for damnation, though he doesn't even believe in it, does not share qualities with Christ at all. Drawing parallels between his scars and those of Christ, between him and Christ, is a rather provocative equation.

Now we come to the final three and most well-known analogies between Santiago and Christ on the Cross. When the fisherman sees the "galanos" coming, he says: "Ay—a noise such as a man might make, involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hand and into the wood" (p. 118). Santiago is the man crucified, the "galanos" the soldiers of the crucifixion—to use imagery from the Goya travesty—like men from the cuadrilla of crucifiers, "scavengers as well as killers." They sever the legs and fins of the turtles with their swords and proceed in a similar fashion with the marlin and thus indirectly with Santiago too, with whom the fish and the turtles are closely linked. The latter have strong hearts, feet, and hands as he does. He, for his part, loves them and eats their eggs (p. 40).

On the other hand, Santiago is himself crucifier and killer. As he leans against the wood and so reminds one of Christ on the Cross, he says: "I'll kill him though . . . In all his greatness and his glory" (p. 73). Indeed, he drinks shark liver oil, and the teeth of the "dentuso," the great Mako shark, resemble his fingers, especially when they are bent into claws. It is expressly stated that the "dentuso" is not a scavenger; it fights alone. It is the strongest fish of the sea, a champion like Santiago. It is "beautiful and noble" (p. 117), and but for its jaws is the twin of the swordfish. The swordfish, for its part, has killed many sharks and yet "in all his greatness and his glory" calls to mind Christ on the Cross. The struggles between Santiago, the marlin, and the sharks are evidence that "everything kills everything else" (p. 117). Each is sent out into life to fight and to suffer, to crucify and to be crucified.

Looking more closely at the passage one sees the peculiar "Ay." As an involuntary reaction it is a cry of pain and suffering, yet simultaneously something akin to the automatic onset of resistance, of protest; it is a battle cry. The words which follow bear this out: "Ay, the old man said, Galanos. Come on Galanos" (p. 119). This same element of self-defense and refusal to give up is once again implied when Santiago upon his return lies on his bed "face down . . . with his arms straight and the palms of his hands up" (p. 134). For an analogy with Christ on the Cross the "face down" is disturbing. Oddly enough Hemingway's heroes have a pronounced preference for this position. Santiago falls onto his face whenever the marlin pulls him off his feet. In For Whom The Bell Tolls Jordan observes the bridge mostly while lying on his belly. The ill and overcome matador, struggling to maintain his composure, lies "face down on his bed with his mouth against a handkerchief." If thrown onto his back, a fighter is usually beaten: and when he wants to get to his feet, he first rolls into a "face down" position. Whoever takes this position wants to protect himself, to take and conceal his pain: he intends to gather strength, get up and continue the fight. A boxer will prop himself up on one knee. Cantwell, who in general has pronounced fighter's habits does it. He constantly walks with slightly exaggerated "confidence," even when not necessary. In bars he always sits in a corner with his back to the wall. From that position he can survey the room and keep his flanks guarded ( ARIT, pp. 65, 115). It is the same force of habit which makes the fighter assume the "facedown" position in a given situation, though the only purpose for the gesture is an artistic one; a variation of the Christ-analogy in which the protagonist refuses to admit defeat.

This is the obvious purpose of one allusion to the Passion (pp. 113-14). Santiago has come ashore. Although it is unnecessary and absurd in his exhausted condition, he shoulders the mast and climbs up the steep bank. On top he falls and lies there "with the mast across his shoulder." He tries to get up but it is too difficult. He remains sitting with the mast on his shoulder and looks down the street. Finally, he struggles to his feet and goes on. "He had to sit down five times before he reached his shack."⁴⁰

The mast brings to mind Christ making his way toward Golgotha. It also brings to mind the boxer who goes down, works himself up onto his knees, then to his feet, automatically, as it were, for as long as he is able. In this way the passage is linked to the previously mentioned one and with others where Santiago is pulled off his feet by the marlin, receives bloody facial wounds, and gets up again, where Santiago with shoulders heaving and twisting tries to reel in the circling marlin, alternating sitting down to rest and working himself back to his knees, and finally back to his feet again.

All allusions to Christ on the Cross, in other words, and particularly these final, clearest ones, are simultaneously allusions to the fighter in the ring. Nowhere, however, does this synthesis signify the dominance of a specifically Christian attitude. On the contrary, it sanctifies a non-Christian ethos. It implies that a perfection, an authenticity is only possible on the basis of this ethos. Thus the fighter-in-the-ring model subsumes the Christ model. The former confronts the latter with the Luciferian claim to equality and even superiority. The Christ analogy is, at the same time, antithesis.

Santiago's behavior continually manifests greater combative activity than one associates with Christ. Stated differently, in Santiago the fighter-metaphor intensifies the combative elements of the Christ model. Thus Santiago, the mast on his shoulder, struggles to his feet six times, while, according to the Bible, Christ rose only three times on his way to Golgotha. The symbol of Santiago's defeat, the mast with the sail torn to shreds, is taken up only at the end, when the battle is finally lost. But when he takes it he does so without reservation or hesitation as though it were an obvious and familiar fate. Actually, he carried the mast already at the beginning of the story, and when he finally does return home empty-handed, after 87 days, he has repeated his record streak of bad luck. This "permanent" defeat does not detract from his accomplishments. On the contrary, it reinforces what matters: the affirmation of "what a man can do and what a man endures" (p. 73).

Is this, as Brooks instructs,⁴¹ the desperate struggle of a man who no longer has God and must replace him, but cannot? Isn't the hero's bravery, perceived only by the faithful, perhaps an incognito of a hidden God? Or is not such an assumption based, as Atkins maintains,⁴² upon a totally inadequate scrutiny of the facts and upon an a priori view of bravery and despair? Are not most of us far too much slaves to traditional values, believing that if these were to crumble, a frightful void would take their place?

The pride of the devil is, to be sure, hyperbole. Behind it lies a typical American admixture of self-exultation and self-irony, of friendly raillery, demonic dramatics, and delight in the inflated role and rivalry. In the final analysis, Hemingway only includes metaphysical content in order to draw the boundary between metaphysics and his peculiar value system in a provocative way. He certainly does not want to replace good with evil, but only feelings dictated by convention with those which one really feels ( DIA, p. 2). "Moral is what you feel good after and immoral is what you feel bad after" ( DIA, p. 4). This simple definition takes the "good" and the "bad" conscience in purely empirical terms, as does situation ethics.⁴³ Thus when Brett says, "You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch. . . . It's sort of what we have instead of God," it is not, as critics would have it, religious despair. It purports that good and evil are a question of a primary sense of values and not of religious dogma. For this very reason Brett replaces the religious argument with an ethical one.

To find despair in the story of Santiago one has to read it into the story. In his discussion of luck the old man remarks, "Luck is a thing that comes in many forms and who can recognize her?" (p. 129). He certainly does not experience his luck as consciously as Jordan or Cantwell. He is too simple a person for that. But there is no question that he does experience luck, which a life in nature and intensification of existence in moments of greatest exertion can afford. The closing configuration of images, in which the old man in the hut dreams about the lions while down below the beheaded skeleton of the fish floats amidst garbage and cadavers, points to disintegration and death. Santiago is headed toward this. But that holds nothing frightening for him. His existence as killer and fighter has provided him with castigatio and purgatio. He is without family and scarcely allows himself a minimum amount of sleep and nourishment. The sea, whose clear "unimpressed blue" is reflected in his cheerful, unvanquished eyes, becomes for him "the one single, lasting thing." Now and then he frees himself from it, just as he does from the fish and his battle with them—once again the phenomenon of intensification—and then: "the lions are the main thing that is left" (p. 73). He happily dreams of them playing on the golden banks "so white they hurt your eyes" (p. 27). They may symbolize something skin to the undestroyed dead leopard beneath the dazzlingly white summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro, which the natives call "House of God," namely deliverance from the transitoriness and impurity of earthly things. There too, the religious association sanctifies something entirely of this world, namely a measure of ethical essence attained in death, the last "moment of truth."⁴⁴ This measure is very great in Santiago's case, and he continues to subject himself to the purgatio and castigatio of his ascetic way of life and his enervating battles. But by bringing the basic form of life and the valid answer to it (namely suffering and acting) to perfect realization in battle and in the demiurgic fighter's ethos, he demonstrates and attains outside of Christianity a perfection which Hemingway, with the pride of Lucifer, places alongside and in opposition to that of Christianity. Furthermore, the fighter's ideal encompasses that which is truly authentic in Christ. It lays claim to the respect and esteem usually rendered to Christianity and its creator. It takes the place of Christ. For this reason Santiago's suffering and fighting are stylized into two models, one of which subsumes the other in antithetical fashion: the fighter-in-the-ring and Christ on the Cross.

Notes

¹ Philip Young, Ernest Hemingway (New York: Rinehart, 1952), pp. 103.

² Carlos Baker, Ernest Hemingway, The Writer as Artist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), p. 299 ff.

³ Clinton S. Burhans, Jr., "The Old Man and the Sea': Hemingway's Tragic Vision of Man"; Keiichi Harada, "The Marlin and the Shark," both in Hemingway and his Critics, ed. Carlos Baker (New York: Hill and Wang, 1961) pp. 262, 265, 275-6.

⁴ John Halverson, "Christian Resonance in 'The Old Man and the Sea,'" English Language Notes II (1964), p. 54.

⁵ Melvin Backman, "Hemingway: The Matador and the Crucified," in Hemingway, ed. Carlos Baker, esp. pp. 245, 255.

⁶ Leo Hertzel, "The Look of Religion: Hemingway and Catholicism," Renascence, XVII, p. 81.

⁷ Julanne Isabelle, Hemingway's Religious Experience (Ne w York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1964), pp. 93, 71.

⁸ Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952), p. 103. Further citations are to this edition.

⁹ See Arturo B area, "Not Spain But Hemingway," in Hemingway, ed. Baker, pp. 210-11.

^9a That is, "he makes the difference" (p. 23). See Burhans, p. 264, who emphasizes the advantages to the team: DiMaggio, after all, was famous as a "team player." Nothing, however, in the text calls that to mind. Here the accent is placed on the uniqueness of the champion, and not, as Burhans would like, on the solidarity and interdependence among people.

¹⁰ Backman, p. 256.

¹¹ George A. Plimpton, "An Interview with Ernest Hemingway," in Hemingway, ed. Baker, p. 27.

¹² Santiago uses it as on p. 114: ". . . take it when it comes"; and as the boxer Ad Francis says in "The Battler": "I could take it," The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, n.d.), p. 131.

¹³ Ernest Hemingway, "The Dangerous Summer," Life, Sept. 1960, Parts I-III; II, p. 82; III, p. 96.

¹⁴ Baker, Artist, pp. 297-8.

¹⁵ "He's competing with history," says Hemingway of Antonio Ordonez ( DS, I, p. 109).

¹⁶ Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1954), p. 186; DS, II, p. 76.

¹⁷ ". . . his determination to kill him never relaxed in his sorrow for him" (p. 83).

¹⁸ Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1932), p. 233.

¹⁹ Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935), p. 120

²⁰ John Atkins, The Art of Ernest Hemingway: His Work and Personality (London: Peter Nevill, 1952), p. 156.

²¹ Cf. Ernest Hemingway, Across the River and Into the Trees (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950), pp. 71 , 235, 240; For Whom the Bell Tolls (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940), p. 166, where Jordan says, "S o if your life trades its seventy years for seventy hours I have that value now and I am lucky enough to know it." Also see Helmut Papajewski, "Die Frage nach der Sinnhaftigkeit bei Hemingway," in Anglia LXX, (1951), p. 204; Horst Oppel, "Hemingway's ARIT," in Hemingway, ed. Carlos Baker, p. 220-21.

²² Cleanth Brooks, The Hidden God (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), pp. 8, 11, 20. Robert Penn Warren, "Hemingway," Kenyon Review IX, (Winter 1947), p. 2, speaks of the "principle of sportsmanship."

²³ John Killinger, Hemingway and the Dead Gods: A Study in Existentialism (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1960), p. 70.

²⁴ Lillian Ross, "How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?" The New Yorker, May 13, 1950; rpt. in Hemingway: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Robert P. Weeks, p. 23; Michael F. Moloney, "Ernest Hemingway: The Missing Third Dimension," in Hemingway, ed. Baker, p. 184.

²⁵ With this presumption Backman corrects his previously advanced thesis, pp. 245, 255.

²⁶ Papajewski, p. 200.

²⁷ Hemingway on the matadors in DS II, pp. 66, 82.

²⁸ Hemingway, GHA, p. 41 ; Killinger, pp. 70, 96.

²⁹ Cantwell observes, for example, that boxing world champion Gene Tunney read 'Lear,' ARIT, p. 171.

³⁰ Alfred G. Aronowitz and Peter Hamill, Ernest Hemingway: The Life and Death of a Man (New York: Lancer, 1961), p. 201; Leslie Fiedler, "An Almost Imaginary Interview: Hemingway in Ketchum," Partisan Review (Summer 1962), pp. 400, 403.

³¹ André Maurois, "Ernest Hemingway," in Hemingway, ed. Baker, pp. 51, 47.

³² Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929), p. 267.

³³ Young, p. 93.

³⁴ The "Nada" prayer in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"; the prayer of the fearful matador for good bulls ( DIA, p. 90); the prayer of the nun for the victory of her football team in "The Gambler, The Nun, and the Radio."

³⁵ Cf. n. 24; "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," SS, p. 32; Atkins speaks of Macomber's "purgation," p. 171; ARIT, pp. 235, 240, and 71, where Cantwell connects these ideas with boxing concepts. What he says of himself and those he loves holds also for Hemingway and Santiago: They belong to those "who had been there and had received the castigation that everyone receives who goes there long enough"; they were "hit solidly, as every man will be if he stays."

³⁶ Ernest Hemingway, "The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio," SS, pp. 474 ff.

³⁷ Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time, chap. 9.

³⁸DIA, p. 80; DS, II, p. 80.

³⁹ARIT, pp. 284, 84. If necessary, this could be held against Baker's view that Santiago speaks to his hands as if to companions in suffering and names his left hand traitor, just as Christ named the thief on his left ( Artist, p. 314).

⁴⁰ That is, according to my count, a total of six times. Joseph Waldmeir, in "Hemingway's Religion of Man," ed. Weeks, in contrast, calculates seven, and Julanne Isabelle agrees with him (Hemingway's Religious Experience, p. 65). Here and in other instances Waldmeir is mislead by his interest in holy numbers.

⁴¹ Brooks, pp. 20-1; Warren, p. 6.

⁴² Atkins, pp. 141-148.

⁴³ James B. Colvert, "Ernest Hemingway's Morality in Action," American Literature, XXVII (1955), p. 377.

⁴⁴ "The moment of truth" is actually the moment in which the bull is killed. However, for Hemingway it means every conscious and sovereign turn with deadly danger as well as the moment of final reckoning. He confessed that he wanted to reach immortality through his literary performance. "And if it is good enough, it will last as long as there are human beings" (Maurois, p. 49).