Being a journalist in profession Hemingway had a firsthand
experience of the World War I which made him realize the
inevitability of death, from this realization Hemingway
constituted his philosophy for life that brutality and
disappointment are the larger part of the substance of life.
Through Santiago’s ambitious venture and his combat with an
unknown, more powerful adversary, Hemingway tries to show
that one man alone can never win. And in victory or in failure
the protagonist recognizes the need for solidarity and the fact of
interdependence of all living creatures.
The old man is alone in the voyage accompanied only by his old
age. He is abandoned by his fellow mariners, they thought him
unlucky. At times the old man talks to himself or to a small bird
on his skiff which shows how lonely he is in the midst of the
sea.
Later he calls the fish his “brother”. Santiago is the code hero.
Though he is old yet he does not offer an impression of a 
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helpless creature instead he possesses courage, honesty,
endurance and skill.
His triumph is in survival and his struggle with the sharks may
leave him striped of flesh but cannot destroy the skeleton spirit
which is the essential identity of all individual. From this rises
the philosophy of human struggle, which Hemingway make his
protagonist say “But a man is not made for defeat,” he said “A
man can be destroyed but not defeated.” Thus, the novel
becomes the triumph of man over the forces of nature.
Hemingway presents two world of realities – the world of
external reality and the inside world of human sentiment.
In The Old Man and the Sea “Hemingway attempts to make a
real old man, a real boy, a real sea, real fish and real sharks.”
Santiago, the ocean, the marlin, the sharks, the lions all become
the version of the voyage into the gulf stream of the self.
His action takes on symbolic reverberations when Santiago
humanizes and identifies with the great fish on the end of the
line: “His choice (the Marlin’s) had been to stay in the deep
water far out beyond all snares and traps and treacheries. My
choice was to go there and find him beyond all people. Now we
are joined together and have been since noon. And no one to
help ether one of us”
. Structurally, the novella follows the traditional pattern of the
quest or the journey. Santiago has an unexplainable “call” or
vocation to be a fisherman and to meet the marlin in the deep 
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water. Santiago is not just a fisherman; he is The Fisherman –
the one chosen from all the others because of his superior merits
of skill and character. The great marlin will not come to a great
fisherman; he will only be caught by a great Man.
Santiago is not alone. A literal cord joins him to his “brother,”
the fish. Other equally strong cords bind him to the “things” of
nature – the Sun, the Moon, and the Starts; the sea life and the
birds; his town, his neighbors, the boy, and his past. It is as
“whole” man that he meets the fish and brings him back; and it
must be as Man, not fisherman, that his experience be measured.
“You are killing me, fish, the old man thought. 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.”
Man’s struggle for a dignified survival in a non-human universe.
There is something of Christ. Every quest and confrontation is a
discovery of self. “Fish… I love you and respect you very much.
But I will kill you dead before this day ends” Ignoring all the
pain and tiredness the old man prepared to kill the fish. The
metaphor of blood has an in suitable association with Christ.
He fought until he was left without a weapon. Then he knew he
was beaten and turned the skiff home. The sharks bit into what
was left of the great fish, but the old man did not heed them.
Hemingway has presented an allegory by showing the old man’s
struggling against nature represents that every man is in his own 
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cross. Here the victor and the victim are presented as the cross
and the Christ. The two states are interrelated. The fish becomes
the mankind of which Santiago is the savior.
The old man beating off the sharks is like life rebelling against
death. The old man and the great fish are lashed together and are
steering on towards home, just as earlier they had been bound by
the “pain of life,” and thus have become the symbol of life;
while the sharks now symbolize death which must be resisted
even though it will vein. Even the old man’s killing the fish is
the preservation for sustenance and it is the way every creature
live on. The old man in severe hunger ate the flesh of the fish,
though he considered him to be his brother. But in such on
extreme situation one sacrifice’s one’s brother only to secure
one’s own life.
The old man was dreaming of the lions on the beaches of Africa
establishes the desire for immortality and the fact the “man can
be destroyed but not defeated.” Santiago will now fulfill his
dreams through the boy. Mandolin is the young Santiago, who
with the vitality of life will explore the sea accompanying the
old man in his lonely voyage.