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The old man and the sea

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I must have been about 11 years old but already a veteran reader when I came across a copy of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, a story of an epic battle between an old fisherman, Santiago, and the biggest catch of his life, a feisty marlin across the vast expanse of the Pacific ocean after a long 84 days of ill luck. This short novel (174 pages) is the story Ernest

Hemingway heard from a friend of:
…an old man fishing alone in a skiff out of Cabañas hooked a great marlin that, on the heavy sashcord hand-line, pulled the skiff out to the sea. Two days later the old man was picked up by fisherman sixty miles to the eastward, the head and forward part of the marlin lashed alongside. What was left of the fish, less than half, weighed eight hundred pounds. The old man had stayed with him a day, a night, a day and another night while the fish swam deep and pulled the boat.

When he had come up the old man had pulled the boat up on him and harpooned him. Lashed alongside the sharks had hit him and the old man had fought them out alone in the Gulf Stream in a skiff, clubbing them, stabbing at them, lunging at them with an oar until he was exhausted and the sharks had eaten all that they could hold. He was crying in the boat when the fishermen picked him up, half crazy from his loss, and the sharks were still circling the boat.

Drawn many a time from memory, the story of the old man and the sea carries a lot of metaphorical and literal meanings that a novice literary critic cannot exactly deduce. On the surface, it is just an adventure story about an old fisherman eking out a life as many of those whose lives are similar across the globe do, that is, is the story of those that live by harvesting whatever they can from the ocean, but also having to deal with all the challenges and the dangers associated with a life on the open waters of the sea. Such is the reality those in the poorer sections of society often face, giving rise to such phrases as ‘the ill luck of the poor’ and teachings that garner a spirit of subservience amongst the less fortunate.

The old man is in a sense the representation of not only the inhabitants of the gulf of Cuba, he is the representation of the precariousness of the daily struggle in the face of unforeseeable circumstances on the open sea that is itself the representation of life or the earth. The poor do not have the benefit of solid grounding, they have to twist and turn with the tide, riding on the next wave without the benefit of surety under differing circumstances.

The author, Ernest Miller Hemingway, was born on July the 21st, 1899 and died on July the 2nd, 1961 from a self-inflicted shotgun wound in what has been termed an apparent act of suicide. The multitalented Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer, journalist, and sportsman and his economical and understated style, which he termed the iceberg theory (a style he developed in his early days as a journalist when he had to focus his newspaper reports on immediate events, with very little context or interpretation. When he became a writer of short stories, he retained this minimalistic style, focusing on surface elements without explicitly discussing underlying themes. He believed the deeper meaning of a story should not be evident on the surface, but should shine through implicitly) had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and his public image brought him admiration from later generations.

This is the whole genius of his style of writing; that the reader should be inspired to go out and look for further meanings to the tale he penned and connect it with other meanings in real life. In his words, Hemingway found the exercise the best way for the reader to understand his works, often citing, “what he made up was truer than what he remembered.” A work of literature is written for the interpretation by the masses, and this means that they too should be given room to draw meanings relevant not only to their world but also their experience.

It is said that Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short-story collections, and two nonfiction works. Three of his novels, four short-story collections, and three nonfiction works were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature. Hemingway grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, and after high school, he was a reporter for a few months for The Kansas City Star before leaving for the Italian Front to enlist as an ambulance driver in World War I.

In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms published in 1929 and whose main themes can be deemed to be mankind’s inescapable placement against two polar opposites; the themes of love and violence with the lead character deciding to leave his military post to pursue the love of his life.

The story of The Old Man and the Sea opens with the aging fisherman, Santiago, having gone 84 days without catching a fish, and being seen as experiencing or going through “salao”, the worst form of ill-luck for a fisherman. The protagonist in the novel is seen as so unlucky that his young apprentice, Manolin, ends up being forbidden by his parents to sail with him. The young is instead told by his elders to fish with successful fishermen (to perhaps save him from the specter of ill luck surrounding the old man).

The boy however visits Santiago’s shack each night, hauling his fishing gear, preparing food, talking about American baseball and his favorite player, Joe DiMaggio. Santiago tells Manolin that on the next day, he will venture far out into the Gulf Stream, north of Cuba in the Straits of Florida to fish, confident that his unlucky streak is near its end. This begins the gist of the tale of the old man that sets out against the odds with inadequate gear into the vast open waters of the gulf. Uncertainty and doubts dominate the first lines of the adventure, and Hemingway chooses not to cover the external details to include the reader in the imaginative processes.

There is room for everyone to make their own individual conclusions with regard to the meanings held by the tale of the lone old fisherman in a skiff on the open waters of the Cuban gulf.
“On the eighty-fifth day of his unlucky streak, Santiago takes his skiff into the Gulf Stream, sets his lines and by noon, has his bait taken by a big fish that he is sure is a marlin. Unable to haul in the great marlin, Santiago is instead pulled by the marlin, and two days and nights pass with Santiago holding onto the line. Though wounded by the struggle and in pain, Santiago expresses a compassionate appreciation for his adversary, often referring to him as a brother. He also determines that, because of the fish’s great dignity, no one shall deserve to eat the marlin.”

An ambulance driver in the midst of the First World War, Hemingway could have come face to face with the realities of what hope means to the mind/s of those going through a tough experience. The old man is not only salved by the hope of a big prize that will sell well at the market and enable him to feed his family. He is pulled by the prize across the vastness of the sea, in a sense helping him bear the pain of the fishing line’s burn. He refers to the fish as brother not because he respects it; he does so because he understands that there is a type of pain that is shared: between self-preservation and necessity, between the hunter and their quarry. Both feel the instinctive need to live, but the demands of the world put them at opposing sides. The hunter (in this case, the fisherman) understands.

On the third day, the fish begins to circle the skiff and the old fisherman, worn out and almost delirious, uses all his remaining strength to pull the fish onto its side and stab the marlin with a harpoon. Santiago straps the marlin to the side of his skiff and heads home, thinking about the high price the fish will bring him at the market and how many people he will feed. It is ironic that the old man is delirious, but it is a reality of life and living that individuals come to face at some point in their lives.

One will go thirsty in the middle of the largest body of water in the world; because the water therein is salty and therefore undrinkable. One will go hungry in the middle of abundance because they lack the right gear to hook in sustenance. They thus end up embracing the struggle as the only companion they have, in this case the fisherman assuming the companionship of his quarry, the marlin he has hooked but which he sadly cannot haul onto his small skiff due to its large size. There are similar stories in real life that carry similar realities such as the Robertson family story (Survive the Savage Sea) where they had to survive the open waters of the Pacific in an open dinghy for over six weeks until they were rescued by Japanese fishermen.

In the tale, the old fisherman is on his way in to shore attacked by sharks that are attracted to the marlin’s blood floating in the sea water. Santiago in the struggle kills a great mako shark with his sole harpoon, but he loses the weapon and is forced to make a new harpoon by strapping his knife to the end of an oar to help ward off the next line of sharks; five sharks are slain and many others are driven away by the newfangled knife harpoon.

They however keep coming as is their nature when attracted by the smell of blood, and by nightfall the sharks have almost devoured the marlin’s entire carcass. What remains is a skeleton consisting mostly of its backbone, its tail, and its head. The old fisherman knows that he is destroyed and tells the sharks of how they have killed his dreams in his raving rants of despair. He reaches the shore before dawn on the following day and struggles to his shack, carrying the heavy mast on his shoulder, leaving the fish head and the bones on the shore. Once home, he slumps onto his bed and falls into a deep sleep.

Fellow fishermen gather the next day around the boat where the fish’s skeleton is still attached. One of the fishermen measures it to be 18 feet (5.5 m) from nose to tail. Pedrico is given the head of the fish, and the other fishermen tell Manolin to tell the old man how sorry they are. Tourists at the nearby café mistakenly take it for a shark. Manolin, worried about the old man, cries upon finding him safe asleep and at his injured hands, and brings him newspapers and coffee.

When the old man wakes, they promise to fish together once again. Upon his return to sleep, Santiago dreams of his youth of lions on an African beach. There is hope after all the struggle, and the pain of the misfortune is in a way shared.
The experiences (adventures) in Hemingway’s life could have woken his conscious to the realities of life as it is lived and not as it is wished. The tale of the old man and the struggle with the fish at sea became one of the influencing factors that led to his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature in 1954. It may have been due to the tale’s account of the human struggle to gain for the benefit of others in the face of perilous challenges and conditions.

What we need often pushes us to corners of the human world where even angels would fear to tread, but we as humans are forced to go there for the sake of the well-being of others. We are in a sense the old man and marlin in a vast open sea many a time in our lives, the struggle to gain sustenance for our fellow human beings and kin leaves scars on our hands. Often, the prize is torn to shreds as the marlin is the morning after the three day struggle with the old man. The world is the sea, there are fishermen, the fish and the predators to deal with on an ongoing basis, but we should all do the best we can in this sea called life.

Tšepiso S. Mothibi

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Insight

Shining Like Stars: Part One

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Last week, in a piece titled “Hope Springs Eternal”, I wrote about the relative values of (leftist) political commitment and Christian faith in a world that is beset with violence, poverty and oppression. Now I’m offering a review of a book by Lindsay Brown titled Shining Like Stars: The power of the gospel in the world’s universities, which explores the work of evangelical students in propagating the Christian faith in some of the world’s most dangerous countries, such as Columbia, China, Russia, Sudan and the DRC. Countries where despair seems to be a pretty rational response to the lives that huge numbers of people are forced to lead. I shall concentrate on cases where that effort to spread the Christian faith is allied to a commitment to agitate for better political and social conditions.

As an aside, I begin by quoting Will Shoki, editor of the invaluable online opinion journal Africa is a Country. I know I’ve mentioned him at least once in previous weeks, but that is because they are so good. In a piece Shoki wrote for the edition of March 4th this year, he records the Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek’s reference to “the courage of hopelessness”, whereby “it is only when we despair and don’t know anymore what to do that change can be enacted.” Shoki adds: “I have never been quite sure what this means — in fact, I have never been quite sure what Zizek means about anything.” Which is to say, Zizek is a pretty difficult read, but his work is a nut it’s well worth cracking.

Be that as it may. Let us turn again to the question how, in a harsh world largely run by greedy, selfish, murderous brutes, a dedication to the message of the gospels and a commitment to political and social transformation can be a joint life-saver.

Lindsay Brown, the author of the book I’m reviewing, was for many years General Secretary of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES). Towards the end of his book there is an Appendix in which he lists around 150 student organisations worldwide that are affiliated to IFES. Many countries where IFES-allied groups have a strong presence are only nominally Christian, many others (for example, China and the Gulf States) are hostile to the gospel. In Lesotho — where neither of these impediments holds — the relevant body is called the Scripture Union of Lesotho, Tertiary Ministry (SULTM); as Brown’s book doesn’t touch on Lesotho, I’d be very interested to hear from my readers about the activities of SULTM.

The first chapter of Shining Like Stars is titled “Never Underestimate What Students Can Do.” This begins by recounting the story of Daniel and his three fellow captives in Babylon under the tyrant Nebuchadnezzar, the story that ends with three of the young Jews being saved by their faith when they are cast into the burning fiery furnace. Then there are reminders of the long history of evangelism in western Europe, followed by the observation: “world mission is less and less about westerners going elsewhere to serve Christ, but about believers from everywhere going everywhere . . . for example, during the twenty years of civil war in Chad its displaced students, sent by the government to study in other countries, founded IFES movements in Niger, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Burkina Faso.”

One of the first of many testimonies the book contains is, however, from a female British student of Russian, identified simply as Elizabeth, who travelled as an evangelist to one of the -stan countries, former Soviet republics of Central Asia (which of the former -stans this was isn’t specified). It was a perilous but highly successful mission. Elizabeth records: “My birthday was fun. I had five cakes and three parties. They really know how to make cakes here!” Not much peril involved in that, you might say. But then Lindsay Brown notes that many sensitive words in Elizabeth’s testimony have the letter “x” inserted in them and explains that this was to escape electronic surveillance.

And so it seems being an IFES evangelist can be a bit like being James Bond, except more graceful. The second chapter in Brown’s book is titled “Our Sovereign God and Human Courage” and that’s where I’ll pick up the story next week, as well as detailing the activities IFES evangelists organize to attract students to the gospel. And then — after all, the chief focus of this piece — how they strategise evangelical work in relation to the advocacy of political and social transformation.

To be concluded

Chris Dunton

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Hope springs eternal

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Given the abysmal state of the world today, what is it that keeps one going? I mean, just look at the mess we’re in. The cowardice of world leaders faced with the challenge of climate change —world leaders most of whom are, of course, in thrall to capitalism (for when it comes to our mismanagement, that’s what really rules the roost). The appalling violence in Ukraine and the Middle East. The apparently endless misgovernance of countries as diverse as Lesotho and Nigeria. How does one not give into despair?

Me, I have an interim resource and a vastly more profound one. The former is my commitment to left-wing socialism, a conviction that life on earth can be vastly improved by following the principles of Marxist-Leninism (not — an important qualification — the corrupt form of those principles that moulded dictatorships such as the Soviet Union). The second resource is faith in the message of the Gospels, the embracing of our Lord Jesus Christ. For with this, the ills of the world pale into insignificance. Which is not — I absolutely insist — to refuse the responsibility of political commitment to ease the suffering of millions on earth, a duty we have while we’re still stuck on the bloody place.

Of those two resources, one allows a limited, constrained kind of hope, the other a hope that is boundless.

To expand on the notion of hope, recently in these pages Bishop David Ramela quoted the great Czech author and political leader Vaclav Havel, who became President of his country after resisting Soviet oppression in acts of dissidence for which he was imprisoned. Havel, as quoted by Bishop Ramela, wrote: “I am not an optimist, because I am not sure that everything ends well. Nor am I a pessimist, because I am not sure that everything ends badly. I just carry hope in my heart . . . I am thankful to God for this gift. It is as big as life itself.”

Hope as distinct from optimism? Well, a couple of references here. First, the great Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (like Havel, imprisoned for his beliefs, in his case by Mussolini’s Fascists) wrote of the need to maintain “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” In other words, any reasonably intelligent person knows that things are going to screw up, but must act as if this were not the case. And another Marxist, the British critical theorist Terry Eagleton (the mentor of your columnist, incidentally, when he was an undergraduate — and ever since) has written a fine book, Hope Without Optimism. I shan’t go into that here, but shall review it in this column in a few weeks’ time.

Turning to the relationship between political commitment and the Christian faith, the evangelist preacher Robert Sheehan once commented: “Many Christians put more weight on political programmes and economic packages than on the power of the gospel in the nation. Do you?” The answer, I would hope, is “no”, but “quite a lot of weight all the same.” And I’m going to sign off this week with a lengthy quotation from the New Testament—namely, Ephesians 2: 14-22—which has to do with the relationship, in the time of Paul’s evangelism, between Jews and Gentiles. It is a passage — to refer to my piece some weeks ago on the Gaza crisis — that one would like to read to the Hamas leaders in Palestine and to Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu before banging their heads together.

“For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordnances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace. And that he might reconcile them both to God in one body, through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father. Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you are also being built together for a dwelling place in God in the Spirit.”

Joining, harmony, hope.

Chris Dunton

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Insight

Reading and emotion

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What does a good piece of writing do? How does a piece of writing evoke emotions in you? Well, reading is a good art that can stimulate and sharpen our sensibilities. In this instalment we focus on the emotional journey triggered and enabled by good literature. While other books may educate us and sharpen our cognitive abilities, that is the abilities to think and solve problems, reading literature of fiction does more; it stirs our emotions and sharpens our affective capacities.

By affective capabilities, we refer to the abilities to feel and tune in to our emotions and sensibilities. Life, after all, is not only about heart facts and reason. Life is about feeling and experiencing and the ability to put ourselves into other people’s shoes. Reading literature is so liberating and humanistic! Reading art in all its many genres grounds us in the varieties of human experiences and engenders in us tolerance, understanding and empathy.


Stories have a way of taking us on journeys real and imagined which stories transform us from the inside. These stories allow us to visit far-flung places and meet new people and feel their environment. Art has a way of mending bridges because through stories we come to understand people who may seem different from us. And at times we may have felt hatred and dislike for them and their way of doing things. But through reading about them, we hear their stories. We experience that which they are experiencing. We begin to see them from the inside out, and we get to know what lies underneath their skin, so to speak. That’s why they say that we can only begin to make sense of the world once we have reduced the whole world to stories. Let’s write a small story together and ascertain how it would move us. Let’s go.


“He trudged on thinking how he would approach Mwandionesa. Her warm and coy smile flashed before his eye.


Slowly mustering up a morsel of self-belief, Themba trudged along the battered, winding road in the heart of a thicket of musasa trees in the Musirizwi enclaves in Chipinge, south-eastern Zimbabwe. Like a heavy burden, a gnawing sense of failure nibbled at his conscience and a sense of uselessness clung on the air with unrelenting defiance. The stain of failure, the feeling that his people and he were inconsequential had taken lodging in his entire being. That is why he found a sense of solace only from isolating himself in his flimsy cocoon of loneliness like the proverbial ostrich which buried its head in the sand. He would have an occasional home-brewed beer called chikeke and thereafter lock himself within the labyrinth and sordid visceral being.


A gaunt bird flew overhead and he heard its flapping feathers amidst the thickening doom and darkness. “Bird”, he retorted to its presence, “what would you do if you were ever crushed by the label of failure.” A soft, warm tear tricked down the rugged terrain of his face. “Makauyo went to Egoli and returned without a name to himself, Khuyumani, too, lies buried in the bowels of the soil with nothing to show” he said as if he were speaking to the bird.


As he touched the cold handle of the door to his heart clutching a small, whimpering puppy in a cardboard box, he could hear the breathing of Mwandionesa and her stabbing, moist eyes asking him without a word where he has been for the last three days. He stood for a moment which seemed like an eternity. With false bravado, he mustered a not-so-convincing, frail knock. Mwandionesa, heavy with child, slowly made for the door and slid it open. Themba did not know what to do. He loved her but he did not know how to express it, like a person bereft of a language. Mwandionesa rummaged her pots on the dying embers of a hearth and gave him respectfully a plate with sadza and a small portion of chicken. A tear escaped-one, two, and another! She broke down, a downpour of tears streaming down her lips. “Themba, ngendaa yei weidaro mwamuna wangu? Indaa yei ndiripe Dube? Indaa yei weiita mukuba wekunzerereka kungaitei imbudzi irikumakaba isina unousha?” (Themba, why do you treat me in a manner? Why do you behave as if you are a stray goat without a shepherd? If I have wronged you I am prepared to appease you”).


“Look at me, Themba,” she demanded as a visibly pregnant and swollen stomach bulged through her threadbare blouse. The puppy whimpered plaintively. With hesitation Themba went to where Mwandionesa stood. With his furrowed labour-weary hands he touched her waist and led her to their mat of reeds made of “umhlanga” as she was fond of referring to reeds. She did not protest. A glow, a faint glow burnt in her eyes as she eased comfortably on his lanky chest. She fumbled for his hand and shepherded it to the lower regions of her belly and said, “He was kicking all these days you were away.” Themba was engulfed in a flurry of emotions; guilt as well as pride. With deliberateness, Mwandionesa said, “this boy will be called Thando. Yes Thando. He will build this homestead and more should you feel that you don’t have a home.” Themba nodded in agreement.
Themba began to feel the warmth of her presence as her succulent breasts pressed against his lanky chest and slowly closed his eyes…”

What a gripping tapestry which evokes a lot of emotions! It’s a story that stirs a lot of emotions; from empathy, sadness and an inner glow in the heart at the end. As the story begins, we feel Temba’s struggles, fear and hopelessness. He seems to be carrying a huge emotional burden and a crushing sense of defeat. I hope you have also seen Temba’s bid to reassert his sense of being and purpose through his desire of caring for a puppy – we could actually feel it whimpering. And the new hope ignited at the end of the story and affirmations of hope and new beginnings! The birth of a child always brings with it new beginnings – hope springs eternal!
So here we are! Stories are so humanising. Learning to read art in all its genres evokes emotions in us. It sharpens our affective side and warms our hearts.

Vuso Mhlanga teaches at the University of Zimbabwe. For almost a decade and half he taught English language and Literature in English at high school. Send your comments and questions to: mhlangavuso85@gmail.com

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