Killing the Marlin

The Killing of the Marlin is the central, decisive event of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, the moment toward which Santiago's entire three-day ordeal has been building. After hours of circling, during which the old man has been pushed to the absolute limits of his physical and mental endurance, he finally drives his harpoon into the great fish's heart. This act of killing is both a triumphant victory and the beginning of a profound loss, for the blood that spills into the sea summons the sharks that will strip the marlin to a skeleton before Santiago can reach the harbor.

The Final Circle and the Harpoon Strike

After the marlin has been circling the skiff for hours, Santiago, exhausted and seeing black spots before his eyes, knows he must make his final play. He has rigged his harpoon, its coil of light rope made fast to the bitt in the bow. On the third turn, he sees the fish for the first time as a dark shadow passing under the boat, its length so great he cannot believe it. When the marlin surfaces only thirty yards away, Santiago sees its huge bulk, its purple stripes, and its tail, which is higher than a big scythe blade. On each calm, placid turn, the old man gains line, and he is sure that in two more turns he will have a chance. He pulls with all his strength, and for a moment the fish turns on its side, then rights itself and swims away. Santiago speaks to the fish, calling it "brother," and acknowledges that it is killing him, but he also declares that he does not care who kills who. Twice more the same thing happens, and each time Santiago feels himself going. With his hands now mushy and his vision only clear in flashes, he promises himself he will try it once again. Taking all his pain, what is left of his strength, and his long-gone pride, he 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. 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 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 then pushes all his weight after it.

The Fish's Death and Santiago's Response

The fish comes alive with its death in it, rising high out of the water and showing all its great length, width, power, and 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 Santiago and the entire skiff. The old man 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, he observes the fish on its back with its silver belly up, the shaft of the harpoon projecting at an angle from its shoulder, and the sea discoloring with the red of the blood from its heart. The blood first appears dark as a shoal in the blue water, then spreads like a cloud. The fish is silvery and still, floating with the waves. Santiago looks carefully, takes two turns of the harpoon line around the bitt in the bow, and hides his head on his hands. He speaks against the wood of the bow, telling himself to keep his head clear, acknowledging that he is a tired old man but has killed this fish which is his brother, and that now he must do the "slave work" of lashing it to the skiff for the journey home.

Lashing the Fish and Sailing Home

Santiago begins the laborious process of securing the enormous marlin to his small skiff. He pulls the fish alongside and passes a line through its gills and out its jaws, making it fast to the bitt in the bow. He then goes astern to noose the tail. The fish, which had been purple and silver, has now turned silver, with its stripes showing the same pale violet color as its tail. Santiago estimates the fish weighs over fifteen hundred pounds, and he thinks that the great DiMaggio would be proud of him today. He makes the fish fast to the bow, stern, and middle thwart, and ties its lower jaw against its bill so its mouth will not open. He then steps the mast, rigs the boom, and the patched sail draws. Half lying in the stern, he sails southwest, needing no compass, only the feel of the trade wind and the drawing of the sail. He eats a few small shrimps he shakes from a patch of Gulf weed, and he has two drinks of water left in his bottle. The skiff sails well, and Santiago knows that this has truly happened and is not a dream. He thinks of the fish and himself sailing together like brothers, lashed side by side, and he reflects that he is only better than the fish through trickery, and that the fish meant him no harm.

Thematic Significance: Triumph and Loss

The killing of the marlin is the story's pivotal value shift, the moment of Santiago's greatest triumph that immediately precipitates his greatest loss. It is the fulfillment of his purpose as a fisherman, the proof of his skill and endurance, and the act that earns him the right to call himself a master of his craft. Yet the very act of killing, which he performs with love and respect, calling the fish his brother, unleashes the chain of destruction that will reduce his prize to a skeleton. The blood from the heart, spreading like a cloud in the mile-deep water, becomes a trail for the sharks. Santiago's victory is thus inseparable from his defeat; the moment he proves what a man can do and endure is also the moment he sets in motion the forces that will take everything from him. This paradox—that the greatest achievement of his life is also the cause of its destruction—is the core of the story's tragic power. The old man's subsequent regret, his wish that it had been a dream and that he had never hooked the fish, underscores the profound cost of his triumph. The killing is not a simple act of conquest but a complex, painful, and ultimately doomed assertion of human will against the vast, indifferent, and beautiful forces of the natural world.