How far does Santiago fit as
Hemingway’s Code Hero in The Old Man and The Sea?
The Old Man and the Sea ranks among the great works in
English language. Hemingway created an outstanding figure that has come to be
known as the “code hero”. The code hero is sharply distinguished from the hero.
The function of the code hero is to balance the hero’s deficiencies, and to
correct the hero’s stance. We call him the code hero because he represents a
code. The code hero thus offers and exemplifies certain principles of honour,
courage and endurance which in a life of tension and pain make a man a man, and
enable him to conduct himself well in the losing battle, i.e. life. He shows,
in the author’s famous phrase for it, “grace under pressure”.
In The Old Man and the Sea, we see the code hero at his
best. He is Santiago
who brings us the message that, while a man may grow old and win a victory by
the very manner of his losing. After Santiago
has caught a huge marlin, the sharks come and eat it up. But Santiago did catch the marlin, he did fight
well, he did all he could and it was a let and the end he is happy. The great
thing is not victory but the struggle.
Now what stuff is there in the character of the code hero?
The basic qualities of the old man’s character – his humanity, his simple and
pagan reverence for the conditions and processes of life , and his capacity for
suffering – serve to transform his defeat into a triumph as much as the
divinity of Christ transforms the terror and sorrow of the crucifixion into the
promise of life.
