“Out Too Far”: Half-Fish, Beaten Men, and the Tenor of Masculine Grace in The Old Man and the Sea

Hemingway used The Old Man and the Sea as a means of revising his code of “grace under pressure” to consider how a man manifests this grace when facing defeat or old age. Drawing on post-humanist scholarship and rhetorical criticism, the essay argues that Hemingway articulated an ethic of heroic humility in The Old Man and the Sea. Exploration takes place in three registers: 1) Santiago’s dependence on the boy Manolin, 2) Feminizing the sea and a respectful engagement with a feminine presence, and 3) Interspecies kinship—brotherhood between man and animals, as well as with nature.