the sharks as enemies

The sharks in The Old Man and the Sea are the primary antagonists Santiago faces after he has killed the great marlin, representing the cruel, predatory, and ultimately insurmountable forces of nature that destroy his prize and test his endurance to its limits. They are not a single enemy but a series of distinct threats, each with its own character and method of attack, escalating from a single, noble predator to a pack of scavengers that leaves Santiago beaten but not defeated.

The Mako Shark: A Noble but Deadly Enemy

The first shark to attack is a very big Mako shark, built to swim as fast as the fastest fish in the sea. Everything about him is beautiful except his jaws, which contain eight rows of teeth shaped like a man's fingers crisped like claws, nearly as long as the old man's fingers and razor-sharp on both sides. This is a fish built to feed on all the fishes in the sea, so fast and strong and well armed that they have no other enemy. The old man recognizes him as a dentuso, a shark that has no fear at all and will do exactly what he wishes. Santiago hits him with the harpoon at the spot where the line between his eyes intersects with the line running straight back from his nose, driving the harpoon with all his strength, without hope but with resolution and complete malignancy. The shark, wrapping himself in two loops of the rope, plows over the water like a speedboat before the rope snaps and he sinks slowly. The old man estimates the shark took about forty pounds of the marlin's meat, along with his harpoon and all the rope. He reflects that the dentuso is cruel and able and strong and intelligent, but that he was more intelligent, or perhaps only better armed. He also acknowledges that he enjoyed killing this shark, as it lives on live fish like he does and is beautiful, noble, and knows no fear of anything.

The Galanos: Scavengers and Killers

The second wave of sharks are galanos, shovel-nosed sharks that are hateful, bad-smelling scavengers as well as killers. They are identified by their brown, triangular fins and the sweeping movements of their tails. Santiago notes that when hungry, they will bite at an oar or the rudder of a boat, and they will cut the legs and flippers off sleeping turtles or even hit a man in the water. The first two galanos attack together. One goes under the skiff, shaking it as he jerks and pulls on the fish, while the other comes in fast with his half-circle of jaws wide to hit the fish where it has already been bitten. Santiago drives the knife lashed to an oar into the juncture of the brain and spinal cord of one, then stabs the other in his left eye and finally drives the blade between the vertebrae and the brain. He estimates they have taken a quarter of the marlin, and of the best meat. A single shovel-nose shark then comes like a pig to a trough, and Santiago drives the knife into its brain, but the knife blade snaps as the shark jerks backwards. The old man is now left with only the gaff, two oars, the tiller, and a short club.

The Pack Attack: The Final Destruction

Just before sunset, two more galanos come, swimming side by side and headed straight for the skiff. Santiago uses the club, an oar handle sawed off to about two and a half feet in length, to strike them. He hits one on the top of the broad head and then across the point of the nose, and the other on the head as well, feeling the rubbery solidity and the rigidity of bone. He hurts them both badly, but half of the marlin has been destroyed. By midnight, the sharks come in a pack. Santiago can only see the lines in the water that their fins make and their phosphorescence as they throw themselves on the fish. He clubs at heads, hears the jaws chop and the shaking of the skiff. The club is seized and gone. He jerks the tiller free from the rudder and beats and chops with it, driving it down again and again. One shark comes against the head itself, and Santiago swings the tiller across its head until the tiller breaks, then lunges with the splintered butt. The shark lets go and rolls away. This is the last shark of the pack; there is nothing more for them to eat. The old man knows he is beaten now finally and without remedy. In the night, more sharks hit the carcass as someone might pick up crumbs from the table, but Santiago pays no attention to them, only steering. The skiff sails lightly now without the great weight beside her.

The Aftermath: A Skeleton and a Symbol

When Santiago finally reaches the harbor, the great fish is reduced to a skeleton. The next morning, fishermen gather around the skiff, and one measures the skeleton from nose to tail at eighteen feet. The boy, Manolin, sees the old man's hands and cries. The marlin's remains are now just garbage, waiting to go out with the tide. A party of tourists at the Terrace sees the long white spine with the huge tail and, misunderstanding, asks what it is. The waiter answers "Tiburon" (shark), but the tourists remark on the handsome, beautifully formed tail, never grasping the story of the struggle. The old man, sleeping in his shack, dreams of the lions. The sharks, as enemies, have not only destroyed the physical prize but have also transformed Santiago's triumph into a spectacle of loss, yet they have not defeated his spirit. He tells the boy, "They beat me, Manolin. They truly beat me," but the boy insists, "He didn't beat you. Not the fish." The sharks are the agents of destruction that make Santiago's victory incomplete, but they also become the final test of his philosophy that "a man can be destroyed but not defeated."