An allegory? A Moby Dick imitation? A morality tale? A (semi-)autobiographical account? How should Ernest Hemingway’s signature work The Old Man and the Sea (1952) be read? One fact is carved in stone. The work has a gargantuan reputation, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1953, and reminding the Nobel Prize committee that acknowledgement of Hemingway’s genius had been long overdue. Readers come to the novella with certain expectations, and usually leave slightly puzzled, unsure of its “message” and yet utterly convinced of the power of its composition. The novella showcases Hemingway’s laconic prose style at its most sophisticated. It contains only bare bones, devoid of longwinded character and setting descriptions. The reader is given little, and must therefore work twice as hard to steer through Hemingway’s “cruel sea.” Ostensibly, the novella is about an aged, down-and-out fisherman who has to fish alone and finds himself entangled in a body and mind battle with a giant marli...