Question

Old man and the sea interpretation

Answer 1

According to Hemingway, the sharks don't symbolize anything in The Old Man and the Sea. At least that's what he said when the book was published in 1952. Despite what Hemingway said, and even though it was his work, it's hard to ignore the glaring symbolism the sharks do present. The two different types of sharks provide two distinct symbols for Santiago and Hemingway. To the protagonist Santiago, the shovel-heads are unworthy creatures, but the Mako symbolizes death, which Santiago knows he is close to facing. The shovel-heads, to Hemingway, symbolize literary critics. When Hemingway published The Old Man and the Sea, it had been a decade since his last publication. That publication was devoured by critics, and the common sentiment from them was that Hemingway was through as a writer. Hemingway's motivation for writing The Old Man and the Sea was to prove them wrong. Since The Old Man and the Sea is considered one of Hemingway's best works, he clearly did what he set out to do.
But Hemingway did more than just write a novel that would make him immortal in the literary world. He made a statement about critics, about the people who slandered his art without having the courage to produce any on their own. When Santiago's fish gets destroyed by shovel-head sharks, it's clear that Hemingway has literary critics in mind. The shovel heads are described as follows:
'They were hateful sharks, bad smelling, scavengers as well as killers, and when they were hungry they would bite at an oar or the rudder of a boat. It was these sharks that would cut the turtles' legs and flippers off when the turtles were asleep on the surface, and they would hit a man in the water, if they were hungry, even if the man had no smell of fish blood nor of fish slime on him.'
These creatures were not noble or worthy. They were hateful scavengers, which echoes Hemingway's feelings toward his critics--the people who said he was finished as a writer