There isn't any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.


Ernest Hemingway - (1899-1961), U.S. author. Letter, 13 Sept. 1952, to the critic Bernard Berenson (published in Selected Letters, ed. by Carlos Baker, 1981), of The Old Man and the Sea, published that year.