Question about The old man and the sea

[Plan B]

I read The old man and the sea when I was a kid and it was just a nice story. Years later I heard something about it being a metaphor for something and it made a lot of sense to me.

Now I just can't remember what the metaphor was. Couldn't get anywhere by searching the web. In fact I found a quote where EH said something like: The man is a man. The boat is a boat......

Can anyone help me out with this one? Any ideas?

[Askance]

Google found this pretty quickly for me.

[Plan B]

Thanks

[Diceman]

Back in high school in my Lit class, one of my friends told the teacher that if he ever wrote a story that became famous, he was going to include the following foreword:

Literature teachers everywhere, please take note: This story does not have any hidden meanings. Nothing in this story is a metaphor for anything else. It's just an interesting story, and any deep or profound meanings you find are purely your own invention.

We all had a good laugh. Including the teacher.

[Ezekiel25:17]

Thats pretty close to the narrator's disclaimer in Moby Dick:

"... they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory"

[Peter Morris]

I prefer Mark Twain's version

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author.

[Quercus]

Not as good as Twain's formulation, but for the record

Originally written by J.R.R. Tolkien in the foreword to LOTR:
I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence