October’s Well-Read Weekend

October 12th-13th: This weekend marks the inaugural Well-Read Weekend when we all will be reading Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.

A bronze statue of Hemingway in Havana, Cuba. Photo by Richard Hedrick on Unsplash.

Welcome back to the Well-Read Weekend. Each month, we will choose a new short classic to read over one weekend and discuss the following week. Our first short classic is The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.

In reference to this novella, Hemingway is famously quoted as saying,

“There isn’t any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse.”¹

Is it really true that there isn’t more to understand from this classic text? Or is this a snarky retort to the endless questions Hemingway received from journalists, critics, and fans of the book?

We can look again to Hemingway’s own words to get a sense of what he really means. In 1954, Hemingway was interviewed by Time Magazine while he was out fishing on his boat off the Cuban coast. He tells the interviewer, “No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in.”

So it seems that yes, the sea really is the sea, but Hemingway references “symbols arrived at beforehand”. This does not mean that there is no symbolism, only that there is no intended symbolism at the outset of writing.

Hemingway expands on this immediately after:

I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things. The hardest thing is to make something really true and sometimes truer than true. ²

While purposeful symbols may not be planted within the book, Hemingway still intends for his story, characters, and setting to evoke a meaning beyond themselves. Just as a puzzle comes together to reveal an image beyond its pieces, Hemingway’s writing speaks to something more than its parts, to something true.

When reading The Old Man and the Sea, consider the meaning beyond the words. Look for symbolism not intended but revealed.

Interestingly, Hemingway was interrupted during the interview by his fishing.

“Could be fish there,” he says.

In The Old Man and the Sea, there’s something swimming beneath the surface. Look for connections and meaning beyond what the author has given to you. Seek something “truer than true.”

And remember, “could be fish there”.

1. Letter to Bernard Berenson (13 September 1952); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker.

2. "Books: An American Storyteller," (13 December 1954); published in Time Magazine.