Salman Rushdie as an essayist with the reference to ' Imaginary Homeland'

Introduction:

                He was born in Bombay on 19 June 1947. He was born in middle-class Muslim family. He is Indian born English novelist, essayist, critic etc. The book entitled “imaginary Homeland” was published in 1992. It is a collection of seventy-five non-fictional essay. The main theme he deals with are

                In “Imaginary Homeland”: the collected essays, including discussion of topics ranging from Indian history, social injustice, literary criticism, and the publicized threat against his life.

Imaginary Homelands: essay and criticism:

                In this collection of essays from the 80’s, Salman Rushdie reviews authors, past and present, and political issues, foreign and domestic. Since Rushdie is originally Indian, now British, “foreign” and “domestic” take on shifting meanings. He observe that “commonwealth literature” is marginalized in England, but argues that the English language in India and in other post-colonial lands has taken on a life of its own, often appropriating British values and using them better effect than the British did.

                He says that even though the British Empire is no longer, the British have reconstituted the Empire within England. Former subject peoples from India, the Caribbean, Africa and elsewhere have migrated to England, and Rushdie notes that they are treated as outsiders, even after having been in England for generation. Zadie smith, another writer with a colonial heritage, writer about the same issues, but always with a relentlessly upbeat and striving take on them. Rushdie takes a more Olympian and pessimistic view of the same struggles.

                The essays strongly reveal Rushdie’s faith in secularism and his life views stemming from his life as a migrant. The essays near the end of the collection are from after the controversy and make for very gripping reading -first, the motivation that led Rushdie to write the satanic verses and what the book was really supposed to embody, and second, the chilling experience of a man who has been sentenced to death, a sentence which can never be revoked and who must live in hiding and constant fear from assassins.

                “Imaginary Homeland” is a collection of Salman Rushdie’s writing from 1981 to 1991. They include essays, book review, interviews, and random musings dating from the beginning of his popularity after his novel ‘Midnight’s Children’ until the third anniversary of the death fatwa pronounced on him by the Ayatollah Khomeini for his book ‘The Satanic Verse’.

                As with any collection of essays, ‘Imaginary Homeland’ is in inconsistent and not every essay will   interest every reader. However, there’s sure to be a lot of gems here for fans of Rushdie. The literary legacy of the 1980s is quickly being erased from the popular memory, and readers today are forgetting the output of that underappreciated decade. Reading ‘Imaginary Homeland’ is important to refresh one’s knowledge of the 1980s from a literary standpoint. Also, Rushdie proves himself again a man deeply troubled by oppression. He often mentions Pakistan’s ruthless US-supported General Zia, and in “A conversation with Edward Said” deals with the issue of Palestinian identity. His reviews of V.S. Naipaul’s “Among the Believers”, a journal of travels through the new Islamic states that sprung up in the 80s, and his two essays on the reaction of Muslims to ‘The Satanic Verse’ are helpful works to read in this time when dealing with Islamic extremism is such a driving force in international relations. Critics have often found Salman Rushdie hard to classify, wondering if he is an Indian or British writer, or a “commonwealth” novelist, and Rushdie confronts the madness of classifying everything in “There is No Such Thing As Commonwealth Literature”.

                Rushdie thought his works focuses on the curious position occupied by the migrant or the exile. The central issue is that Rushdie and other postcolonial thinkers of his ilk believe that the act of migration is one that profoundly changes the individual, transforming the relationship of the migrant with both his or her home country and new host country, and impacting their identity massively as a result. Issues such as “home” and “belonging” are crucial in this sense, as migrants find that their idea of ‘home’ becomes detached from their home country, as they are not allowed to ’belong’ there anymore. However, at the same time, they definitely do not ‘belong’ in their host country, and this is often unfortunately manifested through prejudice of racism. However, this new Diaspora identity, although it is thought of negatively by many, is actually viewed as potentially a position of  strength. Note the following quote from ‘Imaginary Homelands’.

                                “Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately to the notion that something can also be gained”.

Dual identities:

            in his essay ‘Imaginary Homeland’, Salman Rushdie raises the point that duality in an author’s identity provides a highly unique point of view within their work. Rushdie describes his experience writing his novel ‘Midnight’s Children’ on the basis of his experience relocating to Britain from India. In regards to the stand point he has on being an author with a dual sense of identity from both cultures he says: “our identity is at once plural and partial. Sometimes we feel that we straddle two cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools. But however ambiguous and shifting this ground may be, it is not an infertile territory for a writer to occupy if literature is in part the business of finding new angles at which to enter reality, then once again our distance, our long geographical perspective may provide us with such an angles”. Here, Rushdie’s point is that it holds true not only for those of dual geographical or national identity, but for those with intersecting identities involving race and gender as well. Authors who have personally experienced and grappling with several components that make up their identity are at an advantage of having a unique position. Although it may pose challenges within their writing, (for example Rushdie contemplates writing in English over his native language) it also enables them to tell a story that is nonetheless distinct and valuable. For example, being a man of color within a society that functions on white privilege and is primarily patriarchal and is primarily patriarchal has a different experience to tell than a woman of color that lives in the same society that imposes those constructions. Though it may be difficult for the author, the “territory” that he/she occupies is still valuable and is worth being read and listened to. Literature has the ability to provide a space for these stories to add richness to communicating the human experience and I think Rushdie’s statement within his essay upholds this idea.

Commonwealth literature does not exist:

                Nicely coincides with the idea of strategic essentialism. Like in the fifth paragraph Rushdie says it’s weird how there’s “a school of literature whose supposed members deny vehemently that the disempowered or “colonized” peoples are remarking English itself. He talks about how “commonwealth literature” is category which narrows “English literature” to be “something topographical, nationalistic, possibly even racially segregationist” and how it’s divisive. He’s big proponents of a universal community of writers. And he makes a good case for it. Example? Rushdie himself was born in India and wrote about Pakistan from England, which he cites as evidence for “the folly of trying to contain writers inside passports”. He ends by saying that “commonwealth literature” should not exist if you set up enough books and appoint enough research students.

The New Empire within Britain:

Here, he talk about the serious matters like ,

       Institutional racism

      The racist English language

      The willed ignorance shown by the reality of racism

      Racist stain in the attitude of the white Britons and so on.

Here he also mentioned the incident in which a judge had no problem with the offensive word for black people ‘Nigger’ because it was his nickname in his school days! Another example is of Lord were incapable of becoming judge. Why? They came from the society, which does not follow the moral code of conduct strictly. He exploit of such real examples makes his writing convincing and effective. The Britons neglected these facts and counter argued that, “you have voting right, no mass killing of black happen to PURE the society, the law hasn’t declared the dominance of the white over the black”. It shows how serious the problem racism has become. Though the visible is the tip of iceberg, ‘it can sink the ship’ of humanity.   

                He gives an example of how black and white immigrants were treated in the similar two cases. First, an African black family landed at Heathrow airport and the media made a huge fuss out of it. Second, in the same week, a white Zimbabwean family came there was no hue and cry. Even though blacks were, citizens they were denied the right while the white who were not the citizens and had the ancestors living in Britain centuries before were treated like legal British citizen. He also talk about English language that how smoothly it has accepted the hideous terms that we do not find in any other languages. I.e. wog, frog,  yid, spic, dago, so on. And it is a well known fact he writes,

“A language reveals the attitude of the people who use and shape it”.

Attenborough’s Gandhi:

                In this essay, he writes that it is Christian longing to have such a spiritual leader to run politics and the organization of America. Then Gandhi becomes an ideal for those who did not get a benefit of being a follower of second incarnation of Jesus Christ. He is defined by Rushdie as a crafty Gujarati lawyer, who could not run his job successfully because he did not want to do evil doings. Attenborough wanted to redefine the concept of revolution in words of Rushdie,

“Revolution can, and should, be made purely by submission, and self-sacrifice, and non-violence alone”.  

                Considering him as a member of minority class bring out post-colonial view point in his writing that western people always tried to consider Asian countries to be seen, studied, observed, view, analysiminority regions and always to be suppressed they wanted to mangle history of India for century. There may be an intention of selecting only Gandhi in his film, Rushdie, later in his writing mentions that somewhere, it is not possible to include other freedom fighter of Indian independence because a selection is a central idea to any work of art. An artistic selection does not remain sole selection but it creates meaning and meanings. But one of the critical comments can be mentioned why did not Richard select the other followers and freedom fighters of India in his documentary? This can be a post-colonial reading of the text GANDHI that American people or rather Richard wanted to make Gandhi as a superior, so other as inferior people.

                Then he exemplifies the whole matter in terms of American massacre and the assassination of Gandhi to take very critically and suspiciously. Those innocent and zealous individuals in Amritsar were condemned by massacring and General Dyer was not condemned. He was welcomed with honor and reputation in England. These scene were accurately staged and with passion, but why? The case of Amritsar is miscalculated, he writes,

“Artistic selection has altered the meaning of the event”.

                Considering Gandhi’s autobiography “The study of my experience with truth” as not a political work but rather it is based on the experiments that Gandhi made on truth and non-violence. The event like Brahmacharya and surrounded anecdotes were omitted by Attenborough in which Gandhi had lied with young naked women all night to test his will-to-abstain, are well known. The big change lies in Attenborough’s Gandhi, challenge the idea of master and slave. At the end of the essay Rushdie mentions that the film, Richard has produced was opulent, lavish and finally crushes the man from his centre. Oppressor’s language that Rushdie employs in this essay is more skeptical and crafty. We do not know when it turns from praising something to criticizing something else.

Conclusion:

                Rushdie’s work is relevant to the question of postcolonial is concerned with question of identity. He is not obsessed with   finding some kind of proper personal identity as property, as it would reflect both the self-duping and the oppressive power of humanism. He says that,

“Identity is at once plural and partial. Sometimes we feel that we straddle two cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools.”

                And it is this sense of difference which is a source of writing. He has continued to write criticism, essays, reviews, and novels that stress the importance of free speech and religious tolerance. Through a blend of magic realism and commentary on contemporary issue, Rushdie has secured a place among the most proactive of modern writers. 

Stream of Consciousness - Narrative technique in 'To the Lighthouse'

                Oxford Dictionary of literary terms (writing) suggests, that “they can also distinguish psychologically and literarily. In a psychological sense, stream of consciousness is the subject-matter, while interior monologue is the technique for presenting it”. And for literature ….”while an interior monologue always present a character’s thought ‘directly’, without the apparent intervention of a summarizing and selecting narrator, it does not necessarily mingle them with impression and perception, nor does it necessarily violate the norms of grammar, or logic-but the stream of consciousness technique also does one or both these thing”.

Etymology:

                The metaphor of stream of consciousness was coined by American philosopher and psychologist William James in his book ‘The principles of psychology’.

The contribution of Virginia Woolf: The stream of consciousness

She realized that it is not enough to express only outside reality by regarding as the use of one technique. She created the inner side of personality with experimental forms in her novel. She shows not only the mirror of reality integrating with society, but also the picture of people’s mind. She interested both the inner and outer life simultaneously. She more interested in the inner than in the outer life of a character. The main point that she wanted to show us is to demonstrate the soul or ‘psyche’ truthfully and realistically by using the stream of consciousness technique.

                Interior monologue: the human psyche is not a simple entity functioning logically and rationally. That’s why there is the interior monologue. Interior monologue is the silent speech flowing from the mind of a given character and introduces us directly into the internal life of the character without the author’s adding his or her own perspective

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      1.       Direct interior monologue:- the character speaks neither or another character within the story nor the reader, and the author either never interferes or does so very subtly. The direct interior monologue most nearly approaches a true stream of consciousness effect. I.e.in the last forty-five pages of Ulysses, James Joyce uses direct interior monologue to trace his character.

      2.       Indirect interior monologue: it uses second or third person pronouns and the author appear less distant, guiding the reader through the unspoken thoughts of the character’s conscious. Thus, indirect interior monologue produces writing with just a tad more coherence. Woolf makes frequent use of this method in her novels, Mrs. Dalloway and To the lighthouse.

There are also two more conventional methods of writing the stream of consciousness. Which writers have adapted to serve their purposes.

      1.       Author uses narration and description to present the thought of the character’s mind, and the reader always remains positioned within the character’s psyche. i.e. Dorothy Richardson’s ‘pilgrimage’.

     2.       In the soliloquy, the character translates his or her thoughts into verbal speech spoken only to him/her self. Silent soliloquy acknowledges and, thus, purposes to communicate ideas to that audience, creating more coherent and ordered writing. i.e. William Faulkner’s ‘As I lay Dying’.
                In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode that seeks to portray an individual’s point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character’s thought process, either in a lose interior monologue, or in connection to his or her action.
               James tendency to merge emotional sensation together(he belonged, even at the age of six..) this is followed, in mid-sentence, by a return into James consciousness, as we see that the picture of the refrigerator is ‘endowed’ from him with heavenly bliss. There is a short sentence describing the heavenly bliss (the image of the refrigerator is ‘fringed with joy), and this is succeeded by a list of similar items or experiences (‘the well-barrow’; ’rooks cawing’), which have such resonance in his mind that they have become a ‘private code’. In the middle of the sentence there is another change of perspective, this time an externalized image (how he looks while he is cutting out the picture), which is followed by a further shift in viewpoint, as Mrs. Ramsay, watching him, pictures her son as an important grown man.
              There is something so extraordinary going on here that once we have accepted Woolf’s technique, and are able to understand it instinctively, we may simply enjoy the beautiful felicities of phrasing, or marvel at her eye for evocative detail. We may not think about the incredible skill, and the remarkable originality, of this way of writing that changes course in the middle of sentence, while incorporating a quesi-objective point of view. We may also fail to wonder why Woolf writes in such an unusual way.

     Stream of consciousness and dialogue in ‘To the Lighthouse’:
                      Dialogues in Woolf’s novel have served against one of the major themes of the novel. We see Mr. Ramsay’s unhappiness when he realizes that he had already reached the prime of his life, we see Lily try to create a painting which she knows will remain, but worries where. Lily yearns to understand Mrs. Ramsay beyond from what she is superficially perceived by everyone. From early in the novel it can be seen that Lily admires Mrs. Ramsay. Lily strives to be like her, and even by the end of the novel with Mrs. Ramsay’s passing, lily still feels inadequate and feels as though, unlike Mrs. Ramsay who comforted her husband, lily cannot do the same for Mr. Ramsay who so desperately needs encouragement. Lily wishes to know Mrs. Ramsay; lily yearns to know find out what it takes to genuinely understand and know another. Lily wishes to know what it would be like to be “waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same”. Lily not only wishes to know how it is possible to gain such intimacy with another being, but how it would be to feel unified. This can be seen with lily when she wonders if there is any way to know the truth within someone:

             “Sitting on the floor with her arms round Mrs. Ramsay’s knees, close as she could get, smiling to think that Mrs. Ramsay would never know the reason of that pressure, she imagined how in the chamber of the mind and heart of the women who was physically, touching her, were stood, like the treasures in the tombs of kings, tablets bearing sacred inspiration, which if one could spell them out, would teach one everything, but they would never be offered openly, never made public. What art was there, known to love or cunning by which one pressed through into secret chambers? What device for becoming like waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same, and one with the object one adored? Could the body achieve, or the mind, subtly mingling in the intricate passage of the brain? Or the heart? Could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs. Ramsay one? For it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscription on tablets, nothing could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought, learning her head on Mrs. Ramsay’s knee”.

           Though Woolf’s uses stream of consciousness readers can trust lily’s thought and see her innermost thoughts. Lily’s thought process and feelings, just like the other characters in Woolf’s novel honestly reflect the way human being reflect.

“How then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were? Only like a bee, drawn by some sweetness or sharpness in the air intangible to touch or taste, one haunted the dome-shaped lives, ranged the wastes of the air over to countries of the world alone, and then haunted the hives with the murmurs and their stirring; the hives, which were people”.

             These lines addressed lily’s login to understand Mrs. Ramsay and humanities longing to understand each other. Humans are like like bees; they belong to only their own hive. But what they long to only their own hive.  We, the bees and humans are reminded by bees’ buzzes and the appeal of vibrancy that the attractiveness of knowledge, the longing for intimacy, the sweet smell of honey and the bitterness of knowing that these desires are insatiable and unattainable.

Indirect interior monologue in ‘To the Lighthouse’:

                In the case of indirect interior monologue, the omniscient author’s continuous intervention is essential to guide the reader in reading the character’s mind. The use of frequent parentheses is her novels which exerts severed functions. Parentheses can be signals of digression and of simultaneity as this one, “Teaching and preaching human power, lily suspected”.

                I respect you in every atom; you are not vain; you are entirely impersonal;

               You have neither wife nor child (without any sexual feeling, she longed to

               Cherish that loneliness), you live for science (invduntarily, section of potatoes rose before     her eyes); praise would be an insult to you; generous, pure-hearted, heroic man!

                The narrative is thrown backwards and forwards between lily’s voices. Lily’s dwelling on the austerity of Bankes’ life indicates not only Bankes’ desire for solitude, but also hers –and at the same time shows her resistance to her own loneliness. She wants at once to extend and to limit, to see more of Bankes and less of herself. This conflict is represented in the simultaneous development of two registers: the succession of main clauses inscribing lily’s voice and the little interruption of the parentheses, at the corner of lily’s eye.

Free association in ‘To the Lighthouse’:

                Three factors control the association:

• Memory- which is its basis
• Sense- which guide it
• Imagination- which determines its elasticity

Lily Briscoe, the artist, while watching the sea, feels her mind ebb and flow with it. When she paints the picture by the seaside, her mind exhibits an exuberance of vivid picture and sights: she seems to see Mrs. Ramsay and later she sees somebody in the drawing room set an odd-shaped triangular shadow over the step. We may trace her free association as follows:
Looking at the sea

• Thinking of her picture sitting down and examining with her brush a little colony of plantations, seeing Mr. Carmichael
• Thinking of Mrs. Ramsay stirring the plain taints with her brush
• Thinking of Charles Tansley rising a little mountain for the ants to clime over
• Thinking of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay screwing up her eyes and standing book

Conclusion:  

                Woolf’s presentation of the character’s interior monologue is not only coherent in meaning, but also conventional in appearance. Her use of indirect interior monologue allows the narrator to reveal the characters flow of thoughts and takes the reader into the consciousness of the characters in the novel. And free association makes the readers step into the inner worlds of her character by their feelings, thoughts, memories etc. so there is no question that Virginia Woolf is at her best when she is writing the conscious, subconscious and even unconscious part of her character. 

'Old man and the Sea': Hemingway's Tragic Vision of man

How his personal life reflect in ‘Old man and the sea’:

                Many parallels have been drawn between Ernest Hemingway’s life and fiction. Scholars generally agree that Nicks Adams is the character who most closely represents Hemingway the man. There is some dissension, however regarding whether it is in fact Hemingway’s personality or simply his experiences which are being personified by his character. Most of Hemingway’s fiction is based on his own personal experience. When creating the fiction, he invents from this experience. He suffered(injury) at the age eighteen when he served as an ambulance driver for the Italian army, and how and why this episode resurfaces in his literature.

What was his inspiration for ‘old man and the sea’? :

                Gregoria Fuentes, Hemingway’s long time fishing companion and first mate of the pillar, had this to say about his friend’s possible inspiration:

“When we went to sea, we found the old man and the sea. We found him adrift on a little boat with a big fish tied there and when Hemingway went to write he wanted to give it a name and I said why don’t you name it the old man and the sea”.

                If we take Fuentes at his word, then this was Hemingway’s inspiration and the old man he saw that day became a model for the old man in the book. Everything that occurs in the story was likely invented by Hemingway. Writing remains an act of invention. It may initially be based on actual experience, but to make it truly fiction and to define it as such, it must be invented. Hemingway knew and understood that better than anyone. This is one of the many reasons why his work endures.

                Hemingway created an image of himself that was larger than life; literally-people always thought he was taller than his actual height of six feet. His reputation, however, was no accident, and in maintaining Hemingway the myth he alienated many people who had to deal with Hemingway the man. He exaggerated or outright lied about some of his exploits in hunting and war. He had great difficulty to maintaining friendship and marriages. Though he professed not to care for praise, he sought it out and got cranky when it wasn’t given. He could be charming and charismatic or bullying and boorish-often to the same people. And his obsession with manliness-well, let’s just say that the guy bad a few issues with his mom. And though his writing championed those who never gave up, in the end he surrendered in his own battle against depression, ending his life in suicide. But as wrote in ‘old man and the sea’, “man can be destroyed, but never defeated”. More than forty tears after his death, Hemingway’s work lives on his own bibliography and in the countless authors he inspired.

                After his first success in the literary world, Hemingway married and divorced three times. His fourth wife was Mary Welsh. During the 1930s he spent time in Spain and Africa and resided in key West, Florida, where he gained a reputation as a sportsman and athlete. He fought bulls in Spain, haunted in Africa and fished in Florida. The main character of Santiago in old man and the sea was based on someone he encountered during his fishing adventures on the Gulf Stream. While on his boat, he and his friend Carlos Gutierrez encountered a fisherman and a boy being dragged through the sea in a rickety boat, struggling against a big fish. The old man refused any help from Hemingway and his skipper. The story first appeared as an anecdote in an article in Esquire called “on the blue water” in April 1936.

                The tale of the old, courageous fisher man is also said by critics to reflect the author himself. Gary Brenner described Santiago as the aging author Hemingway and the marlin as his noble and beautiful published works. Other recognizes Hemingway’s love of gallantry. Sean O’Faolain is quoted by Carlos Baker as saying that Hemingway trotted the globe “in search of the flame of the spirit in men and beasts”. In old man and the sea, this flame is a characteristic of both Santiago and the marlin.

                ‘Old man and the sea’ was Hemingway’s last published work and he received the Nobel Prize in 1954. Towards the end of his life, he suffered a lot of pain-high blood pressure, enlarged liver and withdrawal. Ultimately, he was unable to endure his pain. Then he was driven to suicide on July 2, 1961.

                Hemingway’s books seem to have a similarity to Hemingway himself. His code heroes may have been previously wounded or gone through some sort of an ordeal, and so they could have a drinking problem, or a problem of sleeping. They seem to be disillusioned, and or self-oriented, and are not usually loyal to a large cause, but rather a small group of people or a relatively small idea or thing.

                Hemingway once said, “As you get older, it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary”. He knew this because he actually invented his famous code hero. His code hero was a macho man that indulged in liquor, women, and food, and usually did not fear god. While reading ‘old man and the sea’ , the reader is not exposed to the usual Hemingway code hero. He creates an aging hero that proves to be the opposite of the normal code hero by his disinterest in physical pleasure, the presence of religion, and the presence of a companion.

                He also uses the character of old man, marlin as a symbol and also there other many symbols. For example, the marlin represents strength, beauty and the last challenge we all go though. The lions in his dreams resemble youth, freedom and also strength. Santiago, the old man, symbolizes Christ in many ways.

                This book also takes place in the 1940s when Joe DiMaggio played baseball. The old man, a fisherman, lived in Cuba and fishes in the warm gulf waters. Cuba is a perfect setting for the book. During this time period many impoverished people lived in Cuba. Fishing was the primary way to earn a living. Marlins are found mainly in the gulf and it was important for Hemingway to create realistic character that would actually be found in that location. He is also drawing upon his own experiences to make the story more realistic. Despite commonly of being in places in places near the equator this is very harsh place to live.

                Santiago’s battle with the fish produces myriad biblical images and while most obvious are Santiago-as-Christ, other exist as well. An arvin well, for example, provides a Santiago-as-Cain analogy: “Repeatedly, (Santiago) addresses the fish as ‘brother’…..yet, at the same time, he is relentlessly determined to capture and kill the marlin, as Cain killed his brother”. Wells furnishes another provocative analogy by equating the fish as Christ and Santiago as the crucifier. During the battle, Santiago exclaims, “Christ …..I did not know he was so big….I’ll will kill him though….in all his greatness and his glory”. He states, “significantly this is the only places in the story where the expletive, Christ is used and the echo in the (last) sentence is unmistakable…for thine is the power and the glory forever”. John Hamilton further illustrates this point by equating the fish with the Christian acronym, or lchthus (Jesus Christ, son of god, and savior): “it is inconceivable for one as widely read and travelled in fishing and Christian circles as was Hemingway….not to have become familiar with the fish as a god-man symbol”. When Santiago finally kills the fish, he thrusts the harpoon into “the fish’s side just behind the great chest fin”, thus reminding us of Christ’s side being pierced while on the cross.

                 On the level of significance,  Santiago is Harry Morgan alive again and grown old; for what comes to Morgan in a sudden and unexpected revelation as he lies dying is the matrix of the old fisherman’s climatic experience. Since 1937, Hemingway has been increasingly concerned with the relationship between individualism and interdependence; and ‘old man and the sea’ is the culminating expression of this concern in its reflection of Hemingway’s mature view of the tragic irony of man’s fate: that no abstraction can bring man an awareness and understanding of the solidarity and interdependence without which life is impossible; he must learn it, as it has always been truly learned, through the agony of active and isolated individualism in a universe which dooms such individualism. From beginning to end, the theme of solidarity and interdependence pervades the action and provides the structural framework within which the old man’s heroic individualism and his love for his fellow creatures appear and function and which gives them their ultimate significance

                Then there are the qualities which define man’s true place in a world of violence and death indifferent to him, and they are the context which gives the experience of the old fisherman its ultimate significance as the reflection of Hemingway’s culminating concept of the human condition-his tragic vision of man. For in his understanding that “it is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers”, the fellow creatures who share life with us and whom he loves, the old man is expressing Hemingway’s conviction that despite the tragic necessity of such a condition, man has a place in the world. And in his realization that in going alone and too far out, “beyond all people in the world”, he has ruined both himself and also the great fish, the old man reflects Hemingway’s feeling that in his individualism and his pride and his need, man inevitably goes beyond his true place in the world and thereby brings violence and destruction on himself and others. Yet in going out too far and alone, Santiago has found his greatest  strength and courage and dignity and nobility and love, and in this he express Hemingway’s view of the ultimate tragic irony of man’s fate: that only through the isolated individualism and the pride which drive him beyond his true place in life does man develop the qualities and the wisdom which teach him the sin of such individualism and pride and which bring him the deepest understanding of himself and of his place in the world. Thus, in accepting his world for what it is and in learning to live in it, Hemingway has achieved a tragic but ennobling vision of man which is in the tradition of Sophocles, Christ, Melville, and Conrad.

                It is not enough, to point out, as P. Weeks does, that”from the first eight words of ‘old man and the sea’ ….we are squarely confronted with a world in which man’s isolation is the most insistent truth”. Truth which is at the same time paradox, for Santiago is profoundly aware that “no man was ever alone on the sea”.  Leo Gurko feels it is –“the culmination of Hemingway’s long search for disengagement from the social world and total entry into the natural”. If the old man leaves the society to go “far out” and “beyond all people in the world”, the consciousness of society and of his relationship to it are never for long out of his thoughts; and in the end, of course, he return to his “good town”, where he finds it pleasant “to have someone to talk to instead of speaking only to himself and to the sea”. To go no further than Santiago’s isolation, therefore or to treat it, as Weeks does, as a theme in opposition to Hemingway’s concern with society is to miss the deepest level of significance both in this novel and in Hemingway’s writing generally.

                Edger Johnson has shown, the true direction of Hemingway’s thought and art from the beginning and especially since 1937 has been a return to society- not in terms of any particular social or political doctrine, but in the broad sense of human solidarity and interdependence. If he began by making “a separate peace” and by going, like Santiago, “far out” beyond society, like the old man, too, he has come back, through Harry Morgan’s “’no man alone’”, Philip Rawlings’s and Robert Jordan’s “no man is an island” , and Santiago’s “no man is ever alone on the sea”  with a deepened insight into its nature and values and a profound awareness of his relationship to it as an individual”.

                In the process, strangely enough- or perhaps it is not strange at all-he has come back from Frederic Henry’s rejection of all abstract values to a reiteration for our time of mankind’s oldest and noblest moral principle. As James B. Colvert points out, Hemingway is a moralist: heir, like his world, to the destruction by science and empiricism of nineteenth-century value assumption, he rejects equally these assumption and the principle underlying them-that intellectual moral abstraction possess independent super sensual existence. Turning from the result nihilism, he goes to experience in the actual world of hostility, violence, and destruction to find in the world which destroyed the old values a basis for new ones-and it is precisely here, Colvert suggests, in reflecting the central moral problem of his world, that Hemingway is significant moralist.

                But out of this concern with action and conduct in a naturalistic universe, Hemingway has not evolved new moral values; rather, he has reaffirmed man’s oldest ones-courage, love, humility, solidarity, and interdependence. It is their basis which is new-a basis not in supernaturalism or abstraction but hard-won through actual experience in a naturalistic universe which is at best indifferent to man and his values. E.M. Halliday observe, that “we are part of a universe offering no assurance beyond the grave, and we are to make what we can of life by a pragmatic ethic spun bravely out of man himself in full and steady cognizance that the end is darkness.”

                Though perfectly realized symbolism and irony, then Hemingway has beautifully and movingly spun out an old fisherman’s great trial just such a pragmatic ethic and its basis in an essentially tragic vision of man; and in this reaffirmation of man’s most cherished values and their reaffirmation in the terms of our time rests the deepest and the enduring significance of ‘old man and the sea’.  

Hemingway –Santiago:

Santiago	Hemingway
Is a perfectionist about all details of fishing	He created his writing with immense care
Has endured a lengthy spell during which he could catch no fish	Had gone a decade without publishing a highly acclaimed novel
Is a no longer regarded by the villages as an undisputed master fisherman	His reputation as a master of his craft had been questioned by some critics
Struggles with effects of aging on his professional abilities	He had recently turned fifty and begun to question whether he was past his prime
Santiago is alone; his wife is dead	He had experienced the death of several people close to him. his mother Grace Hemingway; his former wife and the mother of his children, Pauline phieffer it; and his publisher, Charles Scribner, all died during the year that Hemingway was writing ‘old man and the sea’

                A final comparison between Santiago and Hemingway lies in the fact that they both face “sharks”. For Hemingway, these would be the critics, who, with their bad review, could destroy his achievement.