The Killing of the Marlin

The Killing of the Marlin is the pivotal event of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, the moment toward which Santiago's entire ordeal has been building. After two days and nights of being towed far out into the Gulf Stream by the largest fish he has ever seen or heard of, the old man finally brings the marlin alongside his skiff and, with a single, desperate thrust of his harpoon, kills it. This act is the culmination of his professional skill, his physical endurance, and his spiritual identification with his opponent; it is also the event that, by releasing a cloud of blood into the water, guarantees the shark attacks that will strip the carcass to a skeleton before he can bring it home. The killing is both a triumph and the beginning of the story's tragic turn.

The Approach and the Final Circles

After the marlin begins to circle, Santiago, exhausted and seeing black spots before his eyes, works the line with a pivoting, weaving motion, gaining a little on each turn. The fish comes to the surface only thirty yards away, and the old man sees its huge bulk, its purple stripes, its great scythe-like tail, and the two gray sucking fish that swim around it. He knows he must get the fish close, close, close, and aim for the heart, not the head. On each calm, placid turn he gains more line, but the fish repeatedly rights itself and swims away. Santiago feels himself going, his hands mushy, his vision flashing, yet he promises himself he will try it once more. He takes all his pain and what is left of his strength and his long-gone pride and puts it against the fish's agony. The marlin comes over onto its side, swimming gently, its bill almost touching the planking of the skiff, and begins to pass the boat—long, deep, wide, silver and barred with purple and interminable in the water.

The Harpoon Strike

Santiago drops the line, puts his foot on it, and lifts the harpoon as high as he can. He drives it down with all his strength, and with more strength he has just summoned, into the fish's side just behind the great chest fin that rises high in the air to the altitude of the man's chest. He feels the iron go in, leans on it, drives it further, and pushes all his weight after it. The fish comes alive with its death in him, rising high out of the water and showing all its great length and width and all its power and its beauty. It seems to hang in the air above the old man in the skiff before falling into the water with a crash that sends spray over the old man and over all of the skiff. Santiago feels faint and sick and cannot see well, but he clears the harpoon line and lets it run slowly through his raw hands. When he can see, the fish is on its back with its silver belly up, the shaft of the harpoon projecting at an angle from its shoulder, and the sea is discoloring with the red of the blood from its heart—first dark as a shoal in the blue water more than a mile deep, then spreading like a cloud.

The Aftermath and Lashing the Fish

Santiago takes two turns of the harpoon line around the bitt in the bow and hides his head on his hands. He tells himself to keep his head clear, that he is a tired old man but has killed this fish which is his brother, and now he must do the slave work. He pulls the fish alongside, passes a line through its gills and out its mouth, makes a turn around its sword, and knots the double rope fast to the bitt. He cuts the rope and goes astern to noose the tail. The fish has turned silver from its original purple and silver, and its stripes show the same pale violet color as its tail. Santiago estimates it weighs over fifteen hundred pounds. He makes the fish fast to bow and stern and to the middle thwart, so big it is like lashing a much bigger skiff alongside. He cuts a piece of line and ties the fish's lower jaw against its bill so its mouth will not open, then steps the mast, rigs the boom, and sets the patched sail. The boat begins to move, and half lying in the stern, he sails southwest, feeling the trade wind and the drawing of the sail. He knows the great DiMaggio would be proud of him today, and he thinks that he had no bone spurs, but the hands and the back hurt truly.

Thematic Significance and Consequences

The killing of the marlin is the moment in which Santiago's identity as a fisherman is both fulfilled and undone. He has done what he was born to do, proving what a man can endure and what a man can do, but the act itself is an act of love and destruction simultaneously. He has called the fish his brother, said he loved and respected it, and yet he has killed it. The blood from the heart, spreading like a cloud in the mile-deep water, becomes a highway for the sharks that will follow. The old man's triumph is immediately shadowed by the knowledge that the bad time is coming. The fish, which he had hoped would bring him fortune and prove his worth, is reduced to a mutilated carcass, and finally to a skeleton measured at eighteen feet from nose to tail, which a tourist mistakes for a shark's. The killing, therefore, is not an ending but a hinge: it completes the old man's quest and simultaneously initiates the destruction that leaves him beaten, yet not defeated, sleeping in his shack and dreaming of the lions on the beach.