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Santiago as a tragic hero 

Introduction:-

The Old Man and the Sea is a novel written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952.

It was the last major work of fiction to be produced by Hemingway and published in his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it centers upon Santiago, an aging fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. The Old Man and the Sea was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953 and was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954.

Definition of tragic hero :-

“A hero who suffers from a tragic flaw that eventually causes his downfall.” A tragic hero is the protagonist of a tragedy.

Character of Santiago :-

 Santiago is a Cuban fisherman who has had an extended run of bad luck. Despite his expertise, he has been unable to catch a fish for eighty-four days. He is humble, yet exhibits a justified pride in his abilities. His knowledge of the sea and its creatures, and of his craft, is unparalleled and helps him preserve a sense of hope regardless of circumstance. Throughout his life, Santiago has been presented with contests to test his strength and endurance. The marlin with which he struggles for three days represents his greatest challenge. Paradoxically, although Santiago ultimately loses the fish, the marlin is also his greatest victory.

Santiago as a tragic hero:-

In the novel “The Old Man and the Sea” the main character, Santiago is a tragic hero with a tragic flaw. His hubris ultimately leads him to triumph for a few reasons. Santiago’s hubris helps him to develop into a passionate, optimistic and determined individual; this is what ultimately helps lead him to his triumph.

“A man who lives correctly, following the ideals of honor, courage and endurance in a world that is sometimes chaotic, often stressful, and always painful.”

The "Old Man" is a Cuban, without money to buy proper gear or even food, and past the days of his greatest strength, when he was "El CampÈon" of the docks. He fishes for his living, far out in the Gulf Stream, in a skiff with patched sails. It is September, the month of hurricanes and of the biggest fish. After eighty-four luckless days a marlin strikes his bait a hundred fathoms below the boat. The old man, Santiago, is "fast to the biggest fish that he had ever seen and bigger than he had ever heard of." The ultimate is now demanded of the craft which a half-century of fishing has taught him.

It is a tale superbly told and in the telling Ernest Hemingway uses all the craft his hard, disciplined trying over so many years has given him. Both craft--writing and fishing--are clearly in mind when the old man Santiago thinks of the strangeness of his powers as fisherman. "The thousand times that he had proved it meant nothing. Now he was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it." When the boy who took care of him asked if he was strong enough now for a truly big fish, he said, "I think so. And there are many tricks."

In "Big Two-Hearted River," one of the best and happiest of his early short stories, Hemingway sent a young man very like himself off alone on a fishing trip in completely deserted country in northern Michigan. They young man, Nick, needed to be alone and to control his thinking with physical tiredness and to get back to something in himself to which memories of fishing seemed to offer a clue.

The trip was a success because Nick, grateful for the purity of his pleasure, was able to set himself limits. He did not go into the deep water of the swamp where the biggest fish were, but where it might be impossible to land them. "In the fast deep water, in the half light, the fishing would be tragic. In the swamp fishing was a tragic adventure. Nick did not want it." There was plenty of time for that kind of fishing in the days to come.

 In it Hemingway has described a fishing adventure which is tragic, or as close to tragedy as fishing may be. In "The Old Man and the Sea," as in the early "Big Two-Hearted River," the art and the truth come from a sense of limits. In the new story, however, a man exceeds the limits, and pays a price for it that is more than his own suffering.

The line of dramatic action in "The Old Man and the Sea" curves up and down with a classic purity of design to delight the makers of textbooks. But what Santiago brings back suggests something new about Hemingway himself, defines an attitude never so clearly present in his other work.

In "The Old Man and the Sea," it is all quite different. The old man has learned humility, which he knew "was not disgraceful, and carried no less of true pride." Humility understands the limits of what a man can do alone, and knows how much his being, the worth and humanity of his being, depends on community with other men and with nature, which is here the sea. Santiago has the language to express this, as the American Harry Morgan did not. Santiago speaks in those formalized idioms from the Romance languages which in so many of Hemingway's stories have served to express ideas of dignity, propriety and love. Santiago lives in a good town where he had been happy with his wife, and where there is now the boy. He had taught the boy fishing, and the boy loves him. "Queva" the boy says devotedly. "There are many good fishermen and some great ones. But there is only you."

In the evening when he came back empty-handed many fishermen made fun of him but he was not angry. Still other, of the old fishermen, looked at him and was sad. Santiago, though not a religious man, started muttering prayers and promises to make a pilgrimage to the virgin de cobre if he caught the fish.

Conclusion:

At the end we can say that as a noble and kind hearted man Santiago always suffers from tragic flow of life. But he never ever complaint about their bad lucks. Santiago’s character gets sympathy from the readers through the entire novel.

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