Canary Islands

The Canary Islands appear in the old man Santiago's dreams as a recurring landscape of his youth, representing a lost world of adventure and vitality that sustains him during his ordeal at sea. They are not merely a geographical reference but a symbolic counterpoint to his present struggle, a place of memory that offers solace and continuity.

Dream Geography and the Lost World

Santiago dreams of the Canary Islands as part of a nightly ritual that has replaced his earlier dreams of storms, women, great fish, fights, or his wife. In his sleep, he no longer dreams of contests of strength; instead, he only dreams of places now, and of the lions on the beach. The Canary Islands appear specifically as part of this dream geography: he dreams of the different harbours and roadsteads of the Canary Islands, a vision that follows his dream of the white peaks of the Islands rising from the sea. This archipelago is thus woven into a sequence of remembered landscapes that includes the long golden beaches of Africa, the high capes, and the great brown mountains. The dreams are so vivid that he lives along that coast every night, hearing the surf roar and smelling the tar and oakum of the deck and the smell of Africa that the land breeze brought at morning.

Connection to Youth and the Sea

The Canary Islands are linked to Santiago's youth as a sailor. He tells the boy Manolin that when he was the boy's age, he was before the mast on a square rigged ship that ran to Africa, and he has seen lions on the beaches in the evening. This youthful experience of voyaging to Africa and the Canary Islands forms the foundation of his identity as a fisherman and a man of the sea. The islands are part of the broader maritime world that shaped him, a world of square-rigged ships, long voyages, and encounters with the exotic. The dream of the Canary Islands is thus a dream of his own origins as a seaman, a time before the eighty-four days without a fish, before the patched sail that looked like the flag of permanent defeat.

Sustenance and Solace

During his three-day battle with the great marlin, Santiago draws on the memory of these dreams for sustenance. When he is exhausted, his hands cut, and his back aching, he wishes he could sleep and dream about the lions. The lions, which he first saw on the beaches of Africa during his voyages to the Canary Islands, are the main thing that is left in his dreams. They play like young cats in the dusk, and he loves them as he loves the boy. This dream of the lions, which is inseparable from the dream of the Canary Islands and Africa, provides him with a reservoir of strength and a sense of purpose. It is a reminder of a time when he was young and strong, a time before the present ordeal. The dream of the lions returns at the very end of the story, after he has returned to the shack, his hands ruined, his great fish reduced to a skeleton. He is still sleeping on his face, and the boy is sitting by him watching him. The old man is dreaming about the lions. The Canary Islands, as part of that dream geography, are thus present even in the final moment of the narrative, a testament to the enduring power of memory and the human spirit.

Narrative Significance

The Canary Islands function as a key element in Santiago's inner life, a private landscape of hope and renewal that contrasts with the public humiliation of his long run of bad luck. They are part of the "strange old man" he claims to be, a man whose eyes are still good despite years of turtle-ing off the Mosquito Coast, a man who has seen the lions and the harbours of the Canary Islands. The islands are never mentioned in the context of the present action; they exist only in memory and dream, making them a pure symbol of the past that sustains the present. They are also linked to the theme of the brotherhood of the sea, as the lions he loved on the beaches are part of the same natural world that includes the fish he calls his brother and the porpoises he calls his brothers. The Canary Islands, in this sense, are not just a place but a state of being, a connection to a larger, more meaningful existence beyond the immediate struggle for survival.