The Spacious Foreground: Interpreting Simplicity and Ecocritical Ethics in The Old Man and the Sea

By proposing a new narratological category of "spaciousness," this article articulates how open spaces in The Old Man and the Sea—simply described, visually accessible settings—expose the possibility of our imaginative limitations as readers. The analysis further examines how the contemplation of vast and simple space occasions Santiago's transition from an anthropocentric to a biocentric ethic and how that ethic comes into being for both Santiago and the reader through an interpretive process exposing the inevitability of appropriation in the text and the world beyond. Simplicity becomes a means to help us negotitate that inevitability through moments of self-consciousness.