Studying English Literature

Generally speaking, Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea may be seen as a culmination of his long-drawn experiment spanning over 25 years and speculations towards finding out the means through which the “closed literature” can be converted into “an open one”, that is, to universalise the significance of the themes. He was very much aware of the danger in and difficulties with “closed literature” which in its factual texture, so lightly woven, presents such opacity of vision that the reader is unable to see through it any larger implication and that he may even “find himself squirming with aesthetic claustrophobia”. Hemingway revolted against these stylistic limits which factualistic naturalism necessarily imposes on the sensibility of an artist. In Death and the Afternoon he asserted that the writer of prose ought to aim at “architecture, not interior decoration”; in other words, to provide the particular kind of fenestration through which the reader is able to catch glimpses of large...

Albert Camus in Le Mythe de Sisyphe summed up human existence on earth by drawing a parallel with the myth of Sisyphe. Sisyphe, cursed by Zeus, constantly fails despite his incessant attempts to keep the stone on the hill-top, whence they are sliding down. Though this is a typical existentialist approach to life and can never be applied to The Old Man and the Sea, the main outlines of the myth comprise an archetype which has been exploited by writers since the times of the Greek tragedians. The philosophical explanation for the crux of the matter is that man is compelled by necessity to struggle for existence—to launch himself/herself into some kind of action, which at some plane is transformed into an ambitious project. This innate human tendency to achieve the impossible does not care for the limit of human capacity, drawn by the universal laws of nature. This tendency ultimately leads to fall or defeat. Hemingway conceived of and wrote The Old Man and the Sea with this awareness of ...