Introduction & Overview of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Old Man and the Sea Introduction

When The Old Man and the Sea was published in 1952 to wide critical acclaim, it had been twelve years since Ernest Hemingway's previous critical success, For Whom the Bell Tolls. His major writing effort during the intervening period, Across the River and Into the Trees, published in 1950, had been widely dismissed as a near-parody of the author's usual style and themes. The Old Man and the Sea, however, was a popular success, selling 5.3 million copies within two days of its publication in a special edition of Life magazine. A few complaints about the stilted language of some of the Spanish transliterations came from critics. Some also found Santiago's philosophizing unrealistic. Nevertheless, the story won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1953. A year later, Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Nobel committee singled out the story's "natural admiration for every individual who fights the...
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