the sharks

In Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, the sharks are the agents of destruction that systematically dismantle Santiago's hard-won prize, turning his solitary triumph over the great marlin into a prolonged, losing battle. They arrive not as a single enemy but in waves—a Mako shark, then shovel-nosed galanos, then another lone galano, and finally a midnight pack—each attack stripping more flesh from the marlin's carcass until only the skeleton remains. The sharks force Santiago to confront the limits of his endurance and the inevitability of loss, and his response to them crystallizes the novel's central assertion that a man can be destroyed but not defeated.

Identity and Nature of the Sharks

The sharks are not a uniform species but are distinguished by their behavior, appearance, and the degree of respect Santiago grants them. The first attacker is a very big Mako shark, called a dentuso, built to swim as fast as the fastest fish in the sea. Everything about him is beautiful except his jaws: his back is as blue as a swordfish's, his belly silver, and his hide smooth and handsome. Inside his closed double lip are eight rows of teeth shaped like a man's fingers crisped like claws, nearly as long as Santiago's own fingers, with razor-sharp cutting edges 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 it has no other enemy. Santiago recognizes that this shark has no fear at all and will do exactly what he wishes. The later sharks are galanos, shovel-nosed sharks identified by their brown, triangular fins and sweeping tail movements. They are hateful sharks, bad-smelling scavengers as well as killers, the kind that will cut the legs and flippers off sleeping turtles and will hit a man in the water if they are hungry, even without the smell of fish blood. Santiago distinguishes between the noble, fearless dentuso and the contemptible, scavenging galanos, a moral hierarchy that shapes his emotional response to each attack.

The Mako Shark Attack

The first shark hits the marlin an hour after Santiago has lashed the fish alongside the skiff and set sail for home. The shark has come up from deep down in the water as the dark cloud of blood from the marlin's heart has settled and dispersed in the mile-deep sea. He comes up so fast and absolutely without caution that he breaks the surface of the blue water and is in the sun. Santiago sees him coming and knows that this is a shark that has no fear at all. He prepares the harpoon and makes the rope fast, though the rope is short because he has cut away what he needed to lash the fish. His head is clear and good now, full of resolution but with little hope. "It was too good to last," he thinks. The shark closes fast astern and hits the fish just above the tail. Santiago drives the harpoon down onto the shark's head at the spot where the line between his eyes intersects with the line running straight back from his nose—the location of the brain. He hits it with his blood-mushed hands, driving a good harpoon with all his strength, without hope but with resolution and complete malignancy. The shark swings over, wrapping himself in two loops of the rope, and though dead, he will not accept it. On his back, with his tail lashing and his jaws clicking, he plows over the water like a speedboat until the rope comes taut, shivers, and snaps. The shark lies quietly for a little while on the surface, then goes down very slowly. Santiago estimates that the shark has taken about forty pounds of meat, and with him the harpoon and all the rope. Now the fish bleeds again, and there will be others.

The Galanos Attacks

Two hours later, Santiago sees the first of the two shovel-nosed sharks. He identifies them by their brown, triangular fins and the sweeping movements of their tails. They have the scent and are excited; in the stupidity of their great hunger, they are losing and finding the scent in their excitement, but they are closing all the time. Santiago makes the sheet fast, jams the tiller, and takes up the oar with the knife lashed to it. He watches them come, seeing their wide, flattened, shovel-pointed heads and their white-tipped wide pectoral fins. One turns and goes out of sight under the skiff, and Santiago can feel the skiff shake as he jerks and pulls on the fish. The other watches Santiago with his slitted yellow eyes and comes in fast with his half-circle of jaws wide to hit the fish where it has already been bitten. Santiago drives the knife on the oar into the juncture where the brain joins the spinal cord, withdraws it, and drives it in again into the shark's yellow cat-like eyes. The shark lets go and slides down, swallowing what he has taken as he dies. The skiff is still shaking with the destruction the other shark is doing to the fish. Santiago lets go the sheet so the skiff swings broadside, bringing the shark out from under. He leans over the side and punches at him, hitting only meat and the hard hide, barely getting the knife in. The blow hurts not only his hands but his shoulder too. The shark comes up fast with his head out, and Santiago hits him squarely in the center of his flat-topped head as his nose comes out of water and lies against the fish. He withdraws the blade and punches the shark in the same spot again. The shark still hangs to the fish with his jaws hooked, and Santiago stabs him in his left eye. Still the shark hangs there. Santiago drives the blade between the vertebrae and the brain, an easy shot now, and feels the cartilage sever. He reverses the oar and puts the blade between the shark's jaws to open them, twists the blade, and the shark slides loose. "Go on, galano," Santiago says. "Slide down a mile deep. Go see your friend, or maybe it's your mother." He estimates that the two galanos have taken a quarter of the fish, and of the best meat.

The Single Shovel-Nose and the Midnight Pack

The next shark that comes is a single shovel-nose. He comes like a pig to the trough, if a pig had a mouth so wide that you could put your head in it. Santiago lets him hit the fish and then drives the knife on the oar down into his brain. But the shark jerks backward as he rolls, and the knife blade snaps. Santiago now has only the gaff, the two oars, the tiller, and a short club—a sawed-off oar handle about two and a half feet long. "Now they have beaten me," he thinks. "I am too old to club sharks to death. But I will try it as long as I have the oars and the short club and the tiller." The sharks do not hit again until just before sunset. Santiago sees the brown fins coming along the wide trail the fish must make in the water, swimming side by side. He jams the tiller, makes the sheet fast, and reaches under the stern for the club. The two galanos close together. As the nearest one opens his jaws and sinks them into the silver side of the fish, Santiago raises the club high and brings it down heavy and slamming onto the top of the shark's broad head. He feels the rubbery solidity and the rigidity of bone, and strikes the shark once more hard across the point of the nose as he slides down. The other shark comes in again with his jaws wide, and Santiago can see pieces of the meat of the fish spilling white from the corner of his jaws. He swings at him and hits only the head; the shark wrenches the meat loose. Santiago swings the club down on him again as he slips away to swallow, hitting only the heavy solid rubberiness. The shark comes in a rush, and Santiago hits him as he shuts his jaws, hitting solidly from as high up as he can raise the club. This time he feels the bone at the base of the brain and hits him again in the same place while the shark tears the meat loose sluggishly and slides down. Neither shark shows again. Santiago knows that half of the fish 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 as they take hold below. He clubs desperately at what he can only feel and hear, and then something seizes the club and it is gone. He jerks the tiller free from the rudder and beats and chops with it, holding it in both hands and driving it down again and again. But they are up to the bow now, driving in one after the other and together, tearing off pieces of meat that show glowing below the sea as they turn to come once more. One comes finally against the head itself, and Santiago knows it is over. He swings the tiller across the shark's head where the jaws are caught in the heaviness of the fish's head, which will not tear. He swings it once, twice, and again. He hears the tiller break and lunges at the shark with the splintered butt, feeling it go in and driving it in again. The shark lets go and rolls away. That is the last shark of the pack. There is nothing more for them to eat. Santiago can hardly breathe now and feels a strange, coppery, sweet taste in his mouth. He spits into the ocean and says, "Eat that, galanos. And make a dream you've killed a man."

Consequences and Thematic Significance

The sharks reduce Santiago's magnificent marlin to a skeleton—an eighteen-foot-long white spine with a huge tail, lashed to the skiff. When Santiago sails into the little harbour, he sees in the reflection from the street light the great tail standing up well behind the skiff's stern, the white naked line of the backbone, the dark mass of the head with the projecting bill, and all the nakedness between. The next morning, a party of tourists at the Terrace looks down in the water among the empty beer cans and dead barracudas, and a woman sees the great long white spine with the huge tail. She asks a waiter what it is, and he says, "Tiburon. Shark." She replies, "I didn't know sharks had such handsome, beautifully formed tails." The skeleton, which Santiago had fought so hard to protect, becomes meaningless garbage to outsiders. The sharks thus serve as the instrument of Santiago's physical defeat, but they also clarify the nature of his victory. He tells the boy, "They beat me, Manolin. They truly beat me," and the boy answers, "He didn't beat you. Not the fish." Santiago agrees: "No. Truly. It was afterwards." The sharks, not the marlin, have beaten him. Yet in fighting them, Santiago has enacted his own creed: "A man can be destroyed but not defeated." He has been destroyed physically, his hands cut and his body exhausted, but his will has never surrendered. The sharks are the force of entropy and consumption that no human effort can permanently overcome, and Santiago's acceptance of this—"I went out too far"—is not an admission of failure but a recognition of the terms on which the struggle was always fought.