The Old Man and the SeaPart 1

Tuesday evening / Wednesday morningSeptember 12th & 13th 1950

Narrative Voice

3rd person omniscientFocus on Santiago

Religious allusions

40 days without a catch before Manolin switches boats•Moses•Noah

Manolin catches 3 fish on his first day out•Trinity•The loaves & fishes

Names •Santiago – Spanish for St James •Manolin – Emmanuel•Perico / Pedrico – St Peter•Martin – St Martin

Cuban cultural allusions

Passion for Baseball•Heroics•Statistics

Games of chance and fatalism•Lottery

Traditional fishing communities

Where Sport meets Religion

Both involve ritual behaviour

Both have ritualised language

Both engender hope and faith

Both encourage a loyal following

Both offer the opportunity to take us outside of

ourselves

Joe DiMaggio & The Yankees

An Allegorical Tale?

Multiple levels of meaning

Surface realism

Underlying universal myth

•Transformation in the face of enduring hardship

•The triumph of imaginative vision over physical

limitations

Archetypal CharactersCollective unconscious universal representations

The spiritual father, mentor and

master

The youth, apprentice & hope for the

future

Passing the Baton

Dreams of lions

Bequeathing to the next generation

Natural cycles and immortality

3 Adversaries

The worthy opponent

The noble predator

The ignoble scavenger

Santiago – ‘a strange old man’

Ragged clothing

Thin & gaunt

Skin cancer

Scarred hands

Childless widower

A survivor & professional fisherman

His strength and eyes are not those of an old man

‘The Old Man’s tricks’tapping into reserves

‘Youth is wasted on the young’

Imaginative vision to draw youthful vigour

DiMaggio, Mandolin & the lions

The Memory of ‘El Campeon’

To Suffer

To Transcend

To Transform