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A Phenomenological glimpse:
Hemingway’s ‘Old man’
A novella by the present day publishing industry’s standards, The Old
man and the sea is arguably one of the most read works of Ernest
Hemingway.
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Ernest Hemingway |
This gem of modern literature which does not present an elaborate and
intricately woven plot carries deep undertones of philosophical merit
beneath the seemingly simplistic exterior unburdened by traits of
voluminous vocabulary or grandiose sentential flow.
The work may be viewed as hailing the human spirit which endures the
trials and tribulations of a harsh world, and perseveres unrelentingly
in hope to savour the sweetness of triumph. The novel can be studied and
commented on from a multitude of thematic perspectives, based on a great
many aspects of the story such as its thematic imagery, how characters
portrayed may be studied from angles of class politics, and a great many
other vantages.
As one reads the novel, one striking element is how the image of the
protagonist, the ‘Old man’, Santiago becomes a central point to
understand the physical, bodily hardships of the trade of the Cuban
fisherman.
One may even suggest that the physical realities that surround the
community in which Hemingway places Santiago may be understood by means
of deducing how significance is built in the narrative which describes
the Old man’s body at certain instances in the novel.
The story narrated of Santiago may appear indicative of some faint
trait of ‘existential’ writing which presents life in the grimness of
mere existence. However the zest for life that can be read through the
character of Santiago and his aspirations, though an aged fisherman
whose ‘glory days’ as a bold seafarer have long left him, infuses the
story with a sense of yearning for what can be celebrated in ‘life.’
As the narrative switches between the third person authorial voice
and Santiago’s own ‘first person’ monologues, it is interesting to note
that the tonality of the text does not seem to undergo a dramatic shift.
The consciousness it represents seems very unitary though the
narrative voice changes. Looking at the text of “The Old man and the
sea” from a point of phenomenological contemplation, the image of
Santiago’s body while braving the menaces of seafaring can be considered
a focal point with great significance.
Phenomenology was developed by Edmund Husserl in Germany as a
philosophical method to perceive phenomena as acts of consciousness and
how they may be understood as ‘objects’ which are reflected upon and
analyzed. Adopting a ‘first person’ view point to study phenomena as how
it would appear to the speaker’s consciousness as well as how it would
be to any other consciousness is also an essential.
Therefore the ‘objectification’ of phenomena within the consciousness
could seem the approach by which a phenomenological interpretation is
possible. In this respect the ‘Old man’ Santiago may be viewed as
presenting a series of phenomena just much as his body may be looked
upon as an object which Hemingway has portrayed in the light of an image
which could be given a phenomenological reading.
In this regard a rather interesting line of discussion as to how the
‘body’ may be read in terms of its situational placement in a context of
art and aesthetics is provided by Richard James Calhoun (1963) in the
article “Existentialism, Phenomenology, and literary theory” brings up
the theoretical dimensions of phenomenology propounded by Maurice
Merleau-Ponty who was a contemporary and an associate of the French
philosopher Jean Paul Sartre.
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