“I Knew That Underneath Mr. H and I Were Really a Lot Alike”: Reading Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea with Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish”

Elizabeth Bishop’s sense that “underneath” she and Ernest Hemingway were “really a lot alike” seems at first improbable, but close examination reveals that her observation was an acute one. The crucial texts for such an examination are “The Fish,” which Hemingway praised highly, and his corresponding text, The Old Man and the Sea. These works share basic similarities of subject and style; looking at both from a Jungian perspective reveals a resonance at a deeper level.