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?
Google found this pretty quickly for me.
Thanks
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.
Thats pretty close to the narrator’s disclaimer in Moby Dick:
I prefer Mark Twain’s version
Not as good as Twain’s formulation, but for the record