the old man essay

The Old Man and the Sea

By ernest hemingway.

'The Old Man and the Sea' is often considered to be Ernest Hemingway's finest work and one of the most important books of 20th century American literature.

Article written by Emma Baldwin

B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.

Hemingway’s unique style of writing is exemplified through short, concise sentences and a factual approach to the events he portrays. Within the novella, a reader will come across complex themes of strength and perseverance, as well as symbols of perfection and age which are all addressed directly.

The Old Man and the Sea Themes

Hardship and perseverance.

Of the variety of themes to be found in The Old Man and the Sea hardship and the perseverance needed to surmount those hardships is one of the most prominent. The majority of the novel, whether Santiago is onshore or at sea, is punctuated by struggle. It’s clear through context clues, as well as Manolin’s desire to care for the old man, that Santiago is very poor. He suffers without complaint in his poverty. It’s seen through his small shack, the bed he sleeps on, his lack of food, and in the eyes of the other fishermen.

Once he gets to sea his suffering only increases. He bears the weight of the fish as it pulls his skiff along . The line cuts into his hands and his back. His body, which was not in a good state, to begin with, is forced to contend with three days at sea without real rest or respite from the pressures the hooked marlin imposes on his body.

Suffering, at least in the snapshot the reader gets of the old man’s life, seems central. But, so is perseverance. These two themes are linked because Santiago’s perseverance is the reason he continues to wake up every day, go out to sea, and return empty-handed. Only to do it all again during his eighty-four days of bad luck. His ability to withstand pain and hardship, while keeping in mind his end goal of killing the fish, is remarkable and is one of the defining features of his personality. Plus, there is the suffering at the end of the story, after the sharks eat the much labored for marlin to contend with as well. These moments can also be connected to another theme, man vs. nature.

Another prominent theme, friendship, between human beings and amongst the wider non-human animal world spans the length of the novella. The most important human relationship is that between Santiago and his young pupil and fellow fisherman, Manolin . The boy cares deeply for Santiago, often berating himself for not doing more to take care of him. They share a passion for baseball, something that helps sustain Santiago while he’s at sea.

A reader must also consider the relationship between humans and animals. Santiago spends a great deal of time while sailing thinking about the relationship between himself and the marlin. He feels as though they are brothers, connected by their mutual existence on earth and desire to survive. In fact, the old man feels as though he is the brother of every living thing on the planet and shows the utmost respect for the lives he encounters.

Memory, and the power it has over the present and future, is important in The Old Man and the Sea . While Santiago navigates the Gulf of Mexico he often becomes distracted by thoughts of the past. He can recall the strong young man he used to be and believes that some of that strength should still exist inside him. There are moving moments in the novella when Santiago thinks back to one specific memory that doesn’t seem to fade. He recalls the time he spent on a turtle fishing boat along the coast of Africa. While there, he saw lions playing on the beach. He isn’t sure why, but this image continues to come to mind. In fact, it ends the novel.

Analysis of Key Moments in The Old Man and the Sea

• The novel opens, the reader learns that Santiago hasn’t caught a fish in eighty-four days.
• Santiago spends time with Manolin, their relationship is defined.
• He heads out to fish the next morning, prepared to go to a distant spot.
• The old man considers his relationship with the natural world and thinks about the past.
• He gets a fish on his line but isn’t sure how large it is.
• Santiago commits to catching this fish, coming to the understanding that it’s enormous. He wills it to jump and show itself.
• The old man catches a dolphin and eats.
• After a prolonged battle, he kills the fish with his harpoon and ties it to the side of the skiff.
• Sharks descend on the vessel, he kills some but they take the majority of the fish.
• He returns to land, collapses in exhaustion, and everyone marvels over the fish’s remains.
• The novel ends with Santiago dreaming about the lions once again.

Style, Tone, and Figurative Language

Hemingway was known for his concise, to-the-point style of writing. His syntax is straightforward and simple. This is mostly due to the time he spent working as a journalist. Throughout this novella, he doesn’t employ complicated metaphors or refer to things far outside the average reader’s understanding of Cuba, fishing, and the battle between life and death. He is best known for his “iceberg theory” . When reading, there is a little information on the surface, but a breadth of detail to explore beneath the waves. Hemingway described it as “seven-eighths” of the story existing below the surface.

In regards to mood, it is quite depressing and solemn. Throughout much of the novel, the frailty of life is exemplified through a very human struggle for survival that ends in defeat. The tone is less emotional. Through Hemingway’s style of writing, it comes across as factual and at times sympathetic and hopeful.

Hemingway makes use of multiple narrative perspectives in The Old Man and the Sea. The story begins with a third-person, omniscient narrator that doesn’t have access to Santiago’s thoughts. But, as the story progresses, the reader receives a third-person narration of Santiago’s state of mind and musings on the past and present. He speaks to himself, creating the majority of the dialogue in the novella.

The most prominent uses of figurative language include personification, hyperbole, as well as metaphors, and similes in which two unlike things are compared with or without using like/as. Personification occurs when a poet imbues a non-human creature or object with human characteristics. This is obvious through the way Hemingway treats the depictions of the marlin, as well as other fish and the birds in the sky. Hyperbole is an intentionally exaggerated description, comparison or exclamation meant to further the writer’s important themes, or make a specific impact on a reader.

Analysis of Symbols

The lions on the beach are a mysterious symbol in The Old Man and the Sea. Hemingway does not reveal what exactly they represent but the reader can come to a few conclusions. They seem to be symbols of the past, dreams, other worlds, and harmony in nature. Santiago’s mind returns unbidden again and again to the African seashore as a place of respite. The lions represent a perfectly functioning world Santiago would like to return to.

The most obvious symbol in The Old Man and the Sea, the marlin represents the unattainable. It is Santiago’s ideal foe, one against whom he can measure himself. The fish is magnificent, enormous and seemingly one of a kind. It also represents the past and an attempt to return to previous ways of being as Santiago seeks to regain the strength of his youth.

Santiago’s left hand

His hand is a less obvious symbol, but one that connects to the larger struggle in The Old Man and the Sea. His left hand, which Santiago believes he didn’t “train” properly, “betrays” him throughout the novella. It cramps up when he needs to use it, and only comes to his aid, seemingly, when it chooses. As it weakens, along with the rest of Santiago’s body, he becomes angry, punishing it with harder tasks. It represents the fragility of old age and foreshadows disappointment and defeat.

Join Our Community for Free!

Exclusive to Members

Create Your Personal Profile

Engage in Forums

Join or Create Groups

Save your favorites, beta access.

About Emma Baldwin

Emma Baldwin, a graduate of East Carolina University, has a deep-rooted passion for literature. She serves as a key contributor to the Book Analysis team with years of experience.

About the Book

Discover literature and connect with others just like yourself!

Start the Conversation. Join the Chat.

There was a problem reporting this post.

Block Member?

Please confirm you want to block this member.

You will no longer be able to:

• See blocked member's posts
• Mention this member in posts
• Invite this member to groups

Please allow a few minutes for this process to complete.

The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest hemingway, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Resistance to Defeat

As a fisherman who has caught nothing for the last 84 days, Santiago is a man fighting against defeat. Yet Santiago never gives in to defeat: he sails further into the ocean than he ever has before in hopes of landing a fish, struggles with the marlin for three days and nights despite immense physical pain and exhaustion, and, after catching the marlin, fights off the sharks even when it's clear that the battle against…

Pride is often depicted as negative attribute that causes people to reach for too much and, as a result, suffer a terrible fall. After he kills the first shark , Santiago , who knows he killed the marlin "for pride," wonders if the sin of pride was responsible for the shark attack because pride caused him to go out into the ocean beyond the usual boundaries that fishermen observe. Santiago immediately dismisses the idea, however…

The friendship between Santiago and Manolin plays a critical part in Santiago's victory over the marlin . In return for Santiago's mentorship and company, Manolin provides physical support to Santiago in the village, bringing him food and clothing and helping him load his skiff. He also provides emotional support, encouraging Santiago throughout his unlucky streak. Although Santiago's "hope and confidence had never gone," when Manolin was present, "they were freshening as when the breeze rises."…

Youth and Age

The title of the novella, The Old Man and the Sea , suggests the critical thematic role that age plays in the story. The book's two principal characters, Santiago and Manolin , represent the old and the young, and a beautiful harmony develops between them. What one lacks, the other provides. Manolin, for example, has energy and enthusiasm. He finds food and clothing for Santiago, and encourages him despite his bad luck. Santiago, in turn…

Man and Nature

Since The Old Man and the Sea is the story of a man's struggle against a marlin , it is tempting to see the novella as depicting man's struggle against nature. In fact, through Santiago , the novella explores man's relationship with nature. He thinks of the flying fish as his friends, and speaks with a warbler to pass the time. The sea is dangerous, with its sharks and potentially treacherous weather, but it also…

Christian Allegory

The Old Man and the Sea is full of Christian imagery. Over the course of his struggles at sea, Santiago emerges as a Christ figure. For instance: Santiago's injured hands recall Christ's stigmata (the wounds in his palms); when the sharks attack, Santiago makes a sound like a man being crucified; when Santiago returns to shore he carries his mast up to his shack on his shoulder, just as Christ was forced to bear his…

The Old Man and the Sea

By ernest hemingway, the old man and the sea essay questions.

Describe Hemingway's portrayal of Santiago's relationship with the sea.

Hemingway focuses on the connections between Santiago and his natural environment: the fish, birds, and stars are all his brothers or friends; he has the heart of a turtle, eats turtle eggs for strength; anddrinks shark liver oil for health. This connection with the sea and its creatures helps Santiago in the midst of his great tragedy. For Santiago, success and failure are two equal facets of the same existence. They are transitory forms which capriciously arrive and depart without affecting the underlying unity between himself and nature. As long as he focuses on this unity and sees himself as part of nature rather than as an external antagonist competing with it, he cannot be defeated by whatever misfortunes befall him.

Is Santiago a prideful man? Why or why not?

Hemingway's treatment of pride in The Old Man and the Sea is ambivalent. A heroic man like Santiago should have pride in his actions, and as Santiago shows us, "humility was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride" (14). At the same time, though, it is apparently Santiago's pride which presses him to travel dangerously far out into the sea, "beyond all people in the world," to catch the marlin (50). While he loved the marlin and called him brother, Santiago admits to killing it for pride, his blood stirred by battle with such a noble and worthy antagonist. Some have interpreted the loss of the marlin as the price Santiago had to pay for his pride in traveling out so far in search of such a catch. Contrarily, one could argue that this pride was beneficial as it allowed Santiago an edifying challenge worthy of his heroism. In the end, Hemingway suggests that pride in a job well done, even if pride drew one unnecessarily into the situation, is a positive trait.

How does Santiago embody Hemingway's ideals for manhood?

Hemingway's ideal of manhood is nearly inseparable from the ideal of heroism. To be a man is to behave with honor and dignity: to not succumb to suffering, to accept one's duty without complaint and, most importantly, to display a maximum of self-control. The representation of femininity, the sea, is characterized expressly by its caprice and lack of self-control; "if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them" (30). The representation of masculinity, the marlin, is described as 'great,' 'beautiful,' 'calm,' and 'noble,' and Santiago steels him against his pain by telling himself, "suffer like a man. Or a fish," referring to the marlin (92). In Hemingway's ethical universe, Santiago shows us not only how to live life heroically but in a way befitting a man.

In your opinion, is Santiago successful as a fisherman? Why or why not?

Hemingway draws a distinction between two different types of success: outer, material success and inner, spiritual success. While Santiago clearly lacks the former, the import of this lack is eclipsed by his possession of the later. One way to describe Santiago's story is as a triumph of indefatigable spirit over exhaustible material resources. As noted above, the characteristics of such a spirit are those of heroism and manhood. That Santiago can end the novella undefeated after steadily losing his hard-earned, most valuable possession is a testament to the privileging of inner success over outer success.

Discuss Santiago's obsession with being a worthy adversary for the marlin.

Being heroic and manly are not merely qualities of character which one possesses or does not. One must constantly demonstrate one's heroism and manliness through actions conducted with dignity. Interestingly, worthiness cannot be conferred upon oneself. Santiago is obsessed with proving his worthiness to those around him. He had to prove himself to the boy: "the thousand times he had proved it mean nothing. Now he was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it" (66). And he had to prove himself to the marlin: "I'll kill him....in all his greatness and glory. Although it is unjust. But I will show him what a man can do and what a man endures" (66). A heroic and manly life is not, then, one of inner peace and self-sufficiency; it requires constant demonstration of one's worthiness through noble action.

How does Hemingway imply that Santiago is a Christ-like figure?

Manolin has an almost religious devotion to Santiago, underscored when Manolin begs Santiago's pardon for his not fishing with the old man anymore. Manolin says, "It was Papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him," to which Santiago replies, "I know... It is quite normal. He hasn't much faith" (10). Manolin's father forced his son to switch to a more successful boat after 40 days had passed without a catch for Santiago; this is the amount of time Jesus wandered in the desert, tempted by Satan. Just as Christ resisted the temptation of the devil, Santiago resists the temptation of giving in to his exhaustion as he battles the marlin. "It was a great temptation to rest in the bow and let the fish make one circle by himself without recovering any line." But he is committed to beating the fish, to proving his strength is more steadfast, thinking, "He'll be up soon and I can last. You have to last. Don't even speak of it."

What is Santiago's view of his own sinfulness?

Throughout this final section, Santiago repeatedly apologizes to the marlin in a way that provides another way to read Santiago's sin. He says, "Half fish... Fish that you were. I am sorry that I went out so far. I ruined us both" (115). Santiago's transgression is no longer his killing of the fish, but going out too far in the ocean, "beyond all people in the world" (50). While the former sin helped account for the inescapable misery of the human condition, the latter focuses instead on avoidable misery brought about by intentional action. Santiago chose to go out so far; he did not need to do so, but in doing so he must surrender his prize, the marlin, to the jealous sea.

This understanding of Santiago's sin is strange because it seems to separate man from nature in a way which contradicts the rest of the novella. Going out too far is an affront against nature similar to the hubristic folly of Greek tragedy; he has courted disaster through his own pride. Nowhere previously in the novel was this apparent, though. The sea seemed to welcome him, providing him company and food for his expedition. There was no resistance from nature to his activities, except perhaps the sharks, but these were never made to be nature's avengers. This reading of Santiago's sin thus seems very problematic.

Describe the important aspects of Santiago's relationship with Manolin.

The relationship between Santiago and Manolin can be summed up in one sentence: "The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him" (10). Manolin is Santiago's apprentice, but their relationship is not restricted to business alone. Manolin idolizes Santiago but the object of this idolization is not only the once great though presently failed fisherman; it is an idolization of ideals. This helps explain Manolin's unique, almost religious, devotion to the old man, underscored when Manolin begs Santiago's pardon for his not fishing with the old man anymore. Manolin says, "It was Papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him," to which Santiago replies, "I know... It is quite normal. He hasn't much faith" (10).

Despite the clear hierarchy of this teacher/student relationship, Santiago does stress his equality with the boy. When Manolin asks to buy the old man a beer, Santiago replies, "Why not?... Between fisherman" (11). And when Manolin asks to help Santiago with his fishing, Santiago replies, "You are already a man" (12). By demonstrating that Santiago has little more to teach the boy, this equality foreshadows the impending separation of the two friends, and also indicates that this will not be a story about a young boy learning from an old man, but a story of an old man learning the unique lessons of the autumn of life.

Discuss the importance of the sense of sight to the characters in the novella.

Hemingway peppers the novella with numerous references to sight. We are told, for instance, that Santiago has uncannily good eyesight for a man of his age and experience, while Manolin's new employer is nearly blind. When Manolin notices this, Santiago replies simply, "I am a strange old man" (14). Given the analogy between Santiago's eyes and the sea, one suspects that his strangeness in this regard has something to do with his relationship to the sea. This connection, though, is somewhat problematic as it might suggest that Santiago would have success as a fisherman.

Santiago's statement that his eyes adjust to the sun during different parts of the day furnishes another example of the importance of sight and visual imagery in the novella. Santiago says, "All my life the early sun has hurt my eyes, he thought. Yet they are still good. In the evening I can look straight into it without getting the blackness. It has more force in the evening too. But in the morning it is just painful" (33). Given the likening of natural time cycles to human age, e.g. September as the autumn of life, it is plausible to read this passage as a statement of the edifying power of age. While it is difficult to find one's way in the morning of youth, this task becomes easier when done by those who have lived through the day into the evening of life.

How is the figure of Joe DiMaggio used to emphasize Santiago's respect for nature?

As he struggles against the marlin despite the pain he suffers, Santiago recalls the figure of Joe DiMaggio, identified at the beginning of the novella as a heroic paragon. "I must have confidence," thought Santiago, "and I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel" (68). It is strange, though, that immediately after valorizing DiMaggio, Santiago immediately diminishes the baseball player's greatness by thinking that the pain of a bone spur could not be as bad as the pain of the spur of a fighting cock. He even concludes that "man is not much beside the great birds and beasts. Still I would rather be that beast down there in the darkness of the sea" (68). Nature, and the marlin especially, is privileged above even the greatest exemplars of human endurance.

The Old Man and the Sea Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Old Man and the Sea is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

The Old Man and the Sea, Part 2

Worthiness is an important themes in the second part of the story, Being heroic and manly are not merely qualities of character which one possesses or does not. One must constantly demonstrate one's heroism and manliness through actions conducted...

Describe santiago

Santiago is the protagonist of the novella. He is an old fisherman in Cuba who, at the beginning of the book, has not caught anything for eighty-four days. The novella follows Santiago's quest for the great catch that will save his career....

Who is manolin

Manolin is Santiago's only friend and companion. Santiago taught Manolin to fish, and the boy used to go out to sea with the old man until his parents objected to Santiago's bad luck. Manolin still helps Santiago pull in his boat in the evenings...

Study Guide for The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea study guide contains a biography of Ernest Hemingway, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Old Man and the Sea
• The Old Man and the Sea Summary
• Character List

Essays for The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.

• Hemingway’s Fight with Old Age
• A Different Outlook on Christian Symbolism in Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea
• Santiago: Transcending Heroism
• Chasing Fish: Comparing The Ultimate Goals Found in "The Old Man and The Sea" And "Dances with Wolves"
• Hemingway the Absurdist

Lesson Plan for The Old Man and the Sea

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to The Old Man and the Sea
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• The Old Man and the Sea Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for The Old Man and the Sea

• Introduction
• Background and publication
• Reception and legacy
• Critical analysis

The Old Man and The Sea‎

Introduction the old man and the sea  ‎.

The Old Man and The Sea is a short and terse novelette by the world- famous American author, Ernest Hemingway . He wrote during his stay in Cuba in 1951. A year later, the novel was published in America , bringing a sort of revolution in the field of fiction writing. The novel comprises an aging Cuban professional fisherman who fails to fish due to his age for 84 days. However, in his last attempt, he hooks rather a giant marlin which tests his strength, resilience, expertise, and perseverance beyond his natural abilities. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize that year but went on to bring the Nobel Prize for Hemingway in 1954.

Summary of The Old Man and The Sea  ‎

The Old Man and The Sea is a heart-touching story of an experienced old angler, Santiago, who is dubbed as an unfortunate man on the Terrace where he used to stay when returned his fishing trips. It was the first time during his 84 days record of having arrived without any fish, he has been finally termed “salao” the most unlucky person. However, he is not disappointed with the fact that a young boy, Manolin, is always there to boost up his confidence who’d always say that Santiago is the best fisherman in the world. They also share their interests in baseball and the best players such as DiMaggio’s memories with each other.

On the 85 th day that Santiago leaves quite early in the morning after setting fishing gear in his skiff and goes long and deep into the Gulf Stream for fishing. After setting up various lines with proper baits, he waits for the fishes to come. By afternoon, he catches a giant marlin after seeing which he feels that it is going to test his fishing skill, stamina, and perseverance. By the evening the old man is exhausted, as the marlin does not appear on the surface. Both are hidden from each other, testing each other and trying to free from each other. Santiago believes that fate has something else for them in-store. For two days and nights , the old man continues struggling to kill the fish to haul him around to lash beside his skiff. However, he does not succeed, neither the marlin succeeds in breaking his resolve. On the final day, the marlin starts circling around the skiff after coming to the surface at which the old man becomes quite happy but is exhausted to the point of madness. He starts using his fishing tactics and finally succeeds in placing the harpoon in the heart of the marlin. However, he soon faces the dilemma of confronting the sharks, thinking they will come running amuck toward his skiff on account of the blood trail the dead marlin is leaving behind in the water.

His worst fear comes to pass as the first wave of attack comes from the mako sharks. He also sharpens his weapons and starts using a harpoon to kill them. Soon he succeeds in slashing five of them but many others are on the way. The fight continues until the sharks have devoured almost half of the marlin but the old man does not lose his heart and strength. He continues fighting until he reaches the shore. However, when he reaches the coast, he sees that only the skeleton of the marlin with its head and tail. Santiago, however, has uttered the most memorable sentences during his fight that a man can be defeated but not destroyed and he has shown it through his stamina and prolonged fight with such a giant marlin. Soon he falls upon his bed after reaching his hut and goes to sleep.

When the day breaks, other fishermen gather around his boat to see the giant skeleton. At first, they do not believe Santiago would have caught. Pedrico, a local, gets the head of the fish, while other fishermen feel sorry for the old man for having lost such a great prize. However, the boy only cries for the old man for having exhausted himself without getting that prize home. Finally, Santiago dreams of baseball as well as African beaches with lions while he is asleep in his hut.

Major Themes in The Old Man and The Sea  ‎

• Perseverance: Perseverance is the major theme of the novel. In spite of the old age, Santiago prepares to fight the giant marlin. He eventually succeeds in catching the fish and also kills and hauls it to the seashore. Above all, he shows his perseverance against the heavy odds of the sharks among which he kills many while they tear most of the marlin’s flesh. Despite this, he continues fighting them until he brings the skeleton of the marlin to the shore.
• Suffering: The Old Man and the Sea story also shows the sufferings a man can go through. Santiago couldn’t keep himself awake for three days and three nights and then continue fighting a giant fish. He proved that he could suffer without regret for that great prize. The sufferings of Santiago show his power of endurance and his perseverance, the reason that it is the central idea of the novel.
• Strength and Skill: The story encourages the readers to be courageous through the character of Santiago and Manolin. Strength is not enough for fishing but one must be skillful. Any other person having less experience than the old man in the face of such a giant marlin would have cut down his line to let the fish go. However, the old man has skills as Manolin testifies that other fishermen have guts and strength but not the required skills.
• Pride: The novel shows pride through the old man, Santiago. However, it does not stay until a backup is there, which in the case of Santiago is the boy, Manolin. He constantly reminds Santiago that he is the best fisherman in the world in terms of skills, and he feels pride at it. Therefore, when he comes to the shore even with a skeleton, he is proud that his teacher has demonstrated excellence in his skills.
• Memory and Past: Memory and past stayed fresh with Santiago. He has a picture of his wife in his shack that is a relic of the past. He also remembers his exploits of the past in the hand-fighting game and fishing including his visits to the African beaches. These memories of the past continue to rejuvenate his spirits during his tough times with the marlin.
• Defeat: Defeat is another theme of the novel. The character of Santiago experiences defeated in form of delay and also loss of his prized hunt, marlin. However, the defeat only leads to hope and determination. The old man refuses to accept defeat as he demonstrates in the face of the marlin, saying that a man can be destroyed but not defeated.
• Respect: The old man, Santiago, comes to know through fishing in the expanse of the sea that if there is respect in profession and skill, then its execution becomes an enjoyment as well as satisfaction. The old man clearly states that he respects the fish but he will have to kill it as it is his profession.
• Luck: The novel shows the role of luck in a person’s life. However, the old man, Santiago, defies the traditional notions about luck, saying that it is better to be exact then lucky, for when luck comes, a person is ready to grab it at that moment.
• Friendship: The novel also shows the theme of friendship through Manolin and Santiago, as other fishermen only talk about the old man and his bad luck. It shows that he has not a permanent friend which often happens in the case of professionals.

Major Characters in The Old Man and The Sea  ‎

• Santiago : Santiago is the main character of The Old Man and the Sea. He is quite an old man, having no living family members. There is only a picture of his wife in his shack that he keeps recalling his past. The old man only depends on the boy, Manolin, for his little needs. When he is unable to catch a fish for 84 days, the other fishermen terms him a “salao.” However, he does not lose heart, as his only disciple has a blind trust in his fishing skills which proves true when he hooks a giant marlin and brings its skeleton to the seashore after spending three days in the sea. This battle with the marlin in the open sea for three days tests the old man, his mettle, his perseverance, his stamina, and also his attitude and sanity in the solitude.
• Manolin: He is a young boy from the same village. He has been going fishing and other errands with Santiago since he was five. Therefore, his association and love for the old man are genuine, for he is his disciple having blind faith in his skills and abilities. Although his parents have asked him to go with other fishermen, he still comes to Santiago to boost him up and help him in setting up his mast and baits.
• Martin: Martin is the owner of the place where the Terrace is located. The fishermen stay on this Terrace and take food and drink from his shop. The old man also gets things from his shop, as Manolin brings him a coffee at the end.
• Rogelio : Although he does not formally appear in the novel, Santiago and Manolin often discuss him with reference to his fishing net.
• Perico: He also does not formally appear in the novel, nor does he talk to the old man. However, Manolin talks about him that he can bring a newspaper from Perico for Santiago. Therefore, his role is limited to facilitating the old man.
• Marlin: This giant fish is another active character of the novel that he appears at the point where the old man is about to lose his heart. He proves that the old man is not only lucky but also exact and that he has also faith in his abilities. He also tests the old man beyond his endurance, making him almost dead tired by the end of the exhaustive three-day long struggle. In the end, he is only reduced to a skeleton by the sharks. However, he redeems the old man’s reputation at the Terrace and in the community .
• Mako Sharks: These are a type of shark. They are important in that they appear in hordes and prove voracious when it comes to taking a bite of the marlin. Although Santiago kills many of them, they take away the major chunk of its meat, leaving only the skeleton for the old man.
• Galanos: These are also sharks, but different from Mako, though, they also demonstrate the same ferocity when attacking the marlin.
• Pedrico: Pedrico is the colleague of Santiago. He takes care of his gear and fishing net during his absence.
• The Tourists: They appear by the end of the novel where they come to see the skeleton of the marlin. They are amazed to see such a huge marlin when a person tells them about having seen this size for the first time.

Writing Style of The Old Man and The Sea  ‎ ‎

Ernest Hemingway ’s writing style in The Old Man and the Sea is direct and concise. He has given a realistic description of the old man, Santiago, and his three-day struggle against the marlin in the vast Gulf of Mexico. Using less figurative language to save words to show the real face of the old man, Hemingway captures the essence of struggles and presents them to the reader. In fact, this simple writing technique shows minimum details of the characters and their achievements, but it is very deceptive in hiding the actual meanings. It does not appear ironizing characters, places, fate, or even the divine power, yet it says many things all together.

Analysis of Literary Devices in The Old Man and The Sea  ‎

• Action: The main action of the novel comprises the old man, the demonstration of his fishing skills, his perseverance, his endurance, and his ethos in the face of his enemy as well as his friend, the marlin. The rising action occurs when Santiago succeeds in hooking the fish and killing it, but the falling action occurs when the sharks attack and the old man loses most of the marlin’s flesh.
• Allegory : The Old Man and the Sea is an allegorical novel that shows the morality and religiosity of the ideas through the character of Santiago, who undergoes suffering to achieve his goal of catching a fish. Although the goal is lost, the moral reverberates in it that a man must not face or embrace defeat even if he faces elimination, as the old man says, “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
• Antagonist : Although it seems that the marlin is the main antagonist of The Old Man and the Sea, as the old man and the marlin are pitted against each other, yet the old man calls him a friend. Therefore, sharks are the main antagonists as they block the old man and robs him of his prize catch after 3 days’ fight.
• Allusion : There are various examples of allusions given in the novel, The Old Man and the Sea . Santiago alludes to the figure of Jesus when he erupts the world “ay” which has no translation in emotional language. The second allusion is to DiMaggio, the baseball player, who suffers from bone spurs and has been battling this in the field. The old man thinks that he is a la the Great DiMaggio as both are nearing retirement and both have handicaps.
• Conflict : There are two major conflicts in the novel, The Old Man The Sea . The first one is the external conflict between Santiago and the marlin. The internal conflict goes in Santiago’s mind about his perseverance and his past.
• Characters: The Old Man and the Sea presents both static as well as dynamic characters. The old man, Santiago, is a dynamic character . He not only sees the marlin as a friend but also as a foe. He goes through a struggle of catching the fish and mental conflict of thinking that he is standing on the higher ground than the marlin, for he can think and is determined to do, while the marlin cannot think. The marlin is also a static character that makes the old man reflect about it, about self, and about nature.
• Climax : The climatic takes place when the marlin circles the skiff, making the old man think that as he is already exhausted, he musters up the last iota of his left strength and stabs the fish with his harpoon, leading to the anti- climax of his struggle to save the prize from the sharks.
• Foreshadowing : The first example of foreshadowing in the novel occurs when Santiago demonstrates his resolve that he is not going to stop fishing come what may and second that he is sailing out to the parts of the gulf other fishermen never dared to. This foreshadows that he is going to do some unusual and different.
• Hyperbole : Hyperbole or exaggeration occurs when Manolin makes the old man feel that he is the greatest fisherman, though, there is no evidence that Santiago is the greatest fisherman in that area, yet he says that “the best fisherman is you.” This is a good use of hyperbole .

i. The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert. ii. “I can remember the tail slapping and banging and the thwart breaking and the noise of the clubbing. I can remember you throwing me into the bow where the wet coiled lines were and feeling the whole boat shiver and the noise of you clubbing him like chopping a tree down and the sweet blood smell all over me.”

In the first example, the old man has been shown through the images of sight and touch, while the second paragraph displays the use of the senses of hearing, smell, and touch.

i. The Gulf Stream and the sea are the metaphor of natural aspects of man’s life. ii. The lions that the old man sees on the African beaches are the metaphors of vigor and vitality. iii. DiMaggio is the metaphor of victory and retirement.

• Mood : The novel, The Old Man and the Sea, shows a serious mood in the beginning but it suddenly charges up when the old man catches the marlin and continues to be fast until the old man kills the marlin and fights the invading sharks. When the last shark is killed and the old man reaches the seashore, the mood shifts to calm and peace.
• Motif : Most important motifs of the novel, The Old Man and The Sea, are life and death and the religious allegorical symbols such as the crucifixion imagery .
• Narrator : The novel, The Old Man and The Sea, is narrated by a third-person narrator . It is also called an omniscient narrator who happens to be the author himself as he can see things from all perspectives . Here, Hemingway is the narrator.
• Personification : Personification means to attribute human acts and emotions to non-living objects such as Santiago talks about the Sargasso island where there is weed “that heaved and swung in ‎the light sea as though the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket.” It shows that the sea and the weed have human emotions.
• Protagonist : Santiago is the protagonist of the novel. He starts the novel and captures the interest of the readers until the last page. Santiago heads to a life-challenging quest after 84 days of no success. He catches a marlin in a great battle and for 3 days, he struggles to get the great fish to the shore. Sadly, the sharks eat marlin’s flesh. He returns with the skeleton but earns the respect, he thought he lost, in his community.
• Paradox : The Old Man and the Sea shows the use of paradox in its most famous sentence of the old man when he says, “Fishing kills as if keeps me alive.” The statement shows that keeping alive and killing are two contradictory ideas put into the same statement. Fishing is going to kill him as it is quite hard at this age and it is going to keep him alive as he has no other means of livelihood.

i. Where did you wash? the boy thought. The village water supply was two streets down the road. I must have water here for him, the boy thought, and soap and a good towel. Why am I so thoughtless?

This example shows the use of two rhetorical questions posed by Manolin. He himself is supposed to answer these questions.

• Theme : A theme is a central idea that the novelist or the writer wants to stress upon. The novel, The Old Man and The Sea , not only shows man’s love for nature, but also his endurance, his perseverance and his steadfastness against odds.
• Setting : The setting of the novel, The Old Man and the Sea , is the sea and the coastal area along with the Terrace where all the fishermen of the area have their coffees and meals.

i. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat. ii. The old man “had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.” iii. The clouds over the land now rose like mountains and the coast was only a long green line with the gray blue hills behind it.

The first simile compares the sail to a patchwork, the second man’s creases to a desert, and the third is the clouds to mountains.

• Symbol : The Old Man and The Sean shows that the marlin is the symbol of one’s passion for achieving a goal, while lions are the symbol of strength. On the other hand, sharks demonstrate the destructive laws of nature.

i. “What’s that?” she asked a waiter and pointed to the long backbone of the great fish that was now just garbage waiting to go out with the tide. ii. “Tiburon,” the waiter said. “Shark.” He was meaning to explain what had happened.

The passage shows the irony that what others are thinking the great feat is actually nothing as Santiago has to go fishing the next day, the same ordinary routine of fishing every day for livelihood.

Related posts:

• Ernest Hemingway
• A Farewell to Arms
• The Sun Also Rises
• Literary Writing Style of Ernest Hemingway

Post navigation

78 The Old Man and the Sea Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best the old man and the sea topic ideas & essay examples, 📌 most interesting the old man and the sea topics to write about, 👍 good research topics about the old man and the sea, ❓ old man and the sea essay questions.

• Hemingway’s Code Hero in The Old Man and the Sea. Traits & Definition To solve the misconception, Hemingway sets in with his The Old Man and the Sea, featuring Santiago, an aged angler and an epitome of code heroes.
• The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway In The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway reveals his conception of heroism not as a measure of the glory and recognition his character receives, but instead in the determination of the struggle.
• Friendship in The Old Man and The Sea The book was the last published during the author’s lifetime, and some critics believe that it was his reflection on the topics of death and the meaning of life.
• Human Victory in “The Old Man and the Sea” by Hemingway “[…] he wrote about pity: about something somewhere that made them all: the old man who had to catch the fish and then lose it, the fish that had to be caught and then lost, […]
• The Old Man and the Sea It can also be stated that the novel itself has distinct religious overtones as evidenced by Santiago’s reference to the crucifixion in the scene where the sharks came to eat the body of the marlin.
• “The Old Man and the Sea”: Unlucky but Undefeated The main character of Hemingway’s book The Old Man and the Sea is a person with great experience in life and in his work but he does not seem to be lucky; this is where […]
• Don Quixote Comparison to Movie “The Old Man and the Sea” Both stories, The Old Man and the Sea and Don Quixote have a number of common features as they are based on all those characteristics inherent to men who are challenged the world they live […]
• The Need of Being Versed in Country Things and “The Old Man and the Sea”
• The Representation of Individuality in “The Old Man and the Sea”
• The Portrayal of Love and Friendship in Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”
• The Internal and External Conflict of Santiago in “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
• Losing Faith in “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
• The Use of the Iceberg Principle in “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
• An Evaluation of the Hero in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”
• The Struggles of Man and Nature in “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
• The Symbolic Use of Christianity in “The Old Man and the Sea”
• The Effective Use of Imagery in Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”
• The Analysis of the Narrative Point of View in “The Old Man and the Sea”
• The Story of Santiago in “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
• The Journey in “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
• Solitude and Its Language Manifestation in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”
• “The Old Man and the Sea”: The Old Fisherman as a Hemingway Code Hero
• Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” Characters Transposed in “The Old Man and the Sea”
• An Interpretation of Key Symbols in “The Old Man and the Sea”
• The Theme of Isolation in “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
• The Symbiotic Relationship Between Lennie and George in “Of Mice and Men” and Santiago and Manolin in “The Old Man and the Sea”
• Inner Happiness in Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”
• The Narrative Techniques and Style of the Language in Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”
• The Resilience of the Human Spirit in “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
• Historical Context of “The Old Man and the Sea”
• Santiago’s Battle Against Nature and the Sea in “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
• The Hero in “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
• Structural Techniques and Language Style in “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
• The Route in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”
• The Similarities and Differences of the Old Man, the Boy, and the Sea in in “The Old Man and the Sea”
• the Theme of Pride in “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
• Santiago as a Man Defeated in “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
• Religious Symbolism in “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
• The Luck in “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
• Final Impression of Triumph and Despair in “The Old Man and the Sea”
• Moving Past Triumphs and Tragedies in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”
• The Concept of Man in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”
• Theme of Heroism in “The Old Man and the Sea”
• The Character Santiago in Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”
• Comparison of Tom in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and Santiago in “The Old Man and the Sea”
• The Different Perspectives on “The Old Man and the Sea”
• The Dangerous Yet Rewarding Road to Success as a Fisherman in “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
• How Does “The Old Man and the Sea” Prompt the Audience to View the Human Condition?
• How Is Luck Important to Santiago and Manolin in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• What Does Hemingway Convey About Success in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• Why Did Santiago Loose the Prize He Was After in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• How Are the Nightly Precautions Santiago Takes With His Fishing Equipment Both Realistic and Optimistic in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• Is Santiago a Prideful Man in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• How Does Santiago Embody Hemingway’s Ideals for Manhood in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• What Is the Main Conflict in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• Is Santiago Successful as a Fisherman in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• Why Won’t Santiago Borrow Money in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• How Does Hemingway Imply That Santiago Is a Christ-Like Figure in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• What Is Santiago’s View of His Sinfulness in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• How Is the Figure of Joe Dimaggio Used to Emphasize Santiago’s Respect for Nature in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• Is the Old Man Right to Kill the Marlin in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• What Significance Do the Lions on the Beach Have for the Old Man in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• How Is Santiago Characterized Early in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• What Is the Relationship Between Santiago and Manolin in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• How Is Santiago Separated From or Different From the Other Fishermen in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• What Do Santiago and Manolin Pretend in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• How Is Santiago’s House Described in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• What Are Santiago’s Feelings for Creatures of the Sea Including the Birds in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• Why Does Santiago Call the Sea “La Mar” in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• Why Doesn’t Santiago Worry About Talking to Himself in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• Is the Ending of “The Old Man and the Sea” Hopeful or Discouraging?
• In What Ways Are the Fish and Santiago Alike in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• What Do the Sharks in “The Old Man and the Sea” Symbolize?
• Why Does Santiago Say the Fish Is More Noble Than He in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• How Does Santiago Feel About the Marlin in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• How Does Hemingway Stress the Endurance of Santiago in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• What Does Santiago Conclude Even When Things Are Hopeless in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• Brave New World Paper Topics
• Night by Elie Wiesel Essay Topics
• 1984 Essay Titles
• Call of the Wild Questions
• The Things They Carried Questions
• A Good Man is Hard to Find Essay Ideas
• Grapes of Wrath Ideas
• Catcher in the Rye Topics
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, December 14). 78 The Old Man and the Sea Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/the-old-man-and-the-sea-essay-examples/

"78 The Old Man and the Sea Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." IvyPanda , 14 Dec. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/the-old-man-and-the-sea-essay-examples/.

IvyPanda . (2023) '78 The Old Man and the Sea Essay Topic Ideas & Examples'. 14 December.

IvyPanda . 2023. "78 The Old Man and the Sea Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." December 14, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/the-old-man-and-the-sea-essay-examples/.

1. IvyPanda . "78 The Old Man and the Sea Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." December 14, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/the-old-man-and-the-sea-essay-examples/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "78 The Old Man and the Sea Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." December 14, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/the-old-man-and-the-sea-essay-examples/.

Find anything you save across the site in your account

This Old Man

By Roger Angell

Check me out. The top two knuckles of my left hand look as if I’d been worked over by the K.G.B. No, it’s more as if I’d been a catcher for the Hall of Fame pitcher Candy Cummings, the inventor of the curveball, who retired from the game in 1877. To put this another way, if I pointed that hand at you like a pistol and fired at your nose, the bullet would nail you in the left knee. Arthritis.

Now, still facing you, if I cover my left, or better, eye with one hand, what I see is a blurry encircling version of the ceiling and floor and walls or windows to our right and left but no sign of your face or head: nothing in the middle. But cheer up: if I reverse things and cover my right eye, there you are, back again. If I take my hand away and look at you with both eyes, the empty hole disappears and you’re in 3-D, and actually looking pretty terrific today. Macular degeneration.

I’m ninety-three, and I’m feeling great. Well, pretty great, unless I’ve forgotten to take a couple of Tylenols in the past four or five hours, in which case I’ve begun to feel some jagged little pains shooting down my left forearm and into the base of the thumb. Shingles, in 1996, with resultant nerve damage.

Like many men and women my age, I get around with a couple of arterial stents that keep my heart chunking. I also sport a minute plastic seashell that clamps shut a congenital hole in my heart, discovered in my early eighties. The surgeon at Mass General who fixed up this PFO (a patent foramen ovale—I love to say it) was a Mexican-born character actor in beads and clogs, and a fervent admirer of Derek Jeter. Counting this procedure and the stents, plus a passing balloon angioplasty and two or three false alarms, I’ve become sort of a table potato, unalarmed by the X-ray cameras swooping eerily about just above my naked body in a darkened and icy operating room; there’s also a little TV screen up there that presents my heart as a pendant ragbag attached to tacky ribbons of veins and arteries. But never mind. Nowadays, I pop a pink beta-blocker and a white statin at breakfast, along with several lesser pills, and head off to my human-wreckage gym, and it’s been a couple of years since the last showing.

My left knee is thicker but shakier than my right. I messed it up playing football, eons ago, but can’t remember what went wrong there more recently. I had a date to have the joint replaced by a famous knee man (he’s listed in the Metropolitan Opera program as a major supporter) but changed course at the last moment, opting elsewhere for injections of synthetic frog hair or rooster combs or something, which magically took away the pain. I walk around with a cane now when outdoors—“Stop brandishing! ” I hear my wife, Carol, admonishing—which gives me a nice little edge when hailing cabs.

The lower-middle sector of my spine twists and jogs like a Connecticut county road, thanks to a herniated disk seven or eight years ago. This has cost me two or three inches of height, transforming me from Gary Cooper to Geppetto. After days spent groaning on the floor, I received a blessed epidural, ending the ordeal. “You can sit up now,” the doctor said, whisking off his shower cap. “Listen, do you know who Dominic Chianese is?”

“Isn’t that Uncle Junior?” I said, confused. “You know—from ‘The Sopranos’?”

“Yes,” he said. “He and I play in a mandolin quartet every Wednesday night at the Hotel Edison. Do you think you could help us get a listing in the front of The New Yorker ?”

I’ve endured a few knocks but missed worse. I know how lucky I am, and secretly tap wood, greet the day, and grab a sneaky pleasure from my survival at long odds. The pains and insults are bearable. My conversation may be full of holes and pauses, but I’ve learned to dispatch a private Apache scout ahead into the next sentence, the one coming up, to see if there are any vacant names or verbs in the landscape up there. If he sends back a warning, I’ll pause meaningfully, duh, until something else comes to mind.

On the other hand, I’ve not yet forgotten Keats or Dick Cheney or what’s waiting for me at the dry cleaner’s today. As of right now, I’m not Christopher Hitchens or Tony Judt or Nora Ephron; I’m not dead and not yet mindless in a reliable upstate facility. Decline and disaster impend, but my thoughts don’t linger there. It shouldn’t surprise me if at this time next week I’m surrounded by family, gathered on short notice—they’re sad and shocked but also a little pissed off to be here—to help decide, after what’s happened, what’s to be done with me now. It must be this hovering knowledge, that two-ton safe swaying on a frayed rope just over my head, that makes everyone so glad to see me again. “How great you’re looking! Wow, tell me your secret!” they kindly cry when they happen upon me crossing the street or exiting a dinghy or departing an X-ray room, while the little balloon over their heads reads, “Holy shit—he’s still vertical!”

Let’s move on. A smooth fox terrier of ours named Harry was full of surprises. Wildly sociable, like others of his breed, he grew a fraction more reserved in maturity, and learned to cultivate a separate wagging acquaintance with each fresh visitor or old pal he came upon in the living room. If friends had come for dinner, he’d arise from an evening nap and leisurely tour the table in imitation of a three-star headwaiter: Everything O.K. here? Is there anything we could bring you? How was the crème brûlée? Terriers aren’t water dogs, but Harry enjoyed kayaking in Maine, sitting like a figurehead between my knees for an hour or more and scoping out the passing cormorant or yachtsman. Back in the city, he established his personality and dashing good looks on the neighborhood to the extent that a local artist executed a striking head-on portrait in pointillist oils, based on a snapshot of him she’d sneaked in Central Park. Harry took his leave (another surprise) on a June afternoon three years ago, a few days after his eighth birthday. Alone in our fifth-floor apartment, as was usual during working hours, he became unhinged by a noisy thunderstorm and went out a front window left a quarter open on a muggy day. I knew him well and could summon up his feelings during the brief moments of that leap: the welcome coolness of rain on his muzzle and shoulders, the excitement of air and space around his outstretched body.

Here in my tenth decade, I can testify that the downside of great age is the room it provides for rotten news. Living long means enough already. When Harry died, Carol and I couldn’t stop weeping; we sat in the bathroom with his retrieved body on a mat between us, the light-brown patches on his back and the near-black of his ears still darkened by the rain, and passed a Kleenex box back and forth between us. Not all the tears were for him. Two months earlier, a beautiful daughter of mine, my oldest child, had ended her life, and the oceanic force and mystery of that event had not left full space for tears. Now we could cry without reserve, weep together for Harry and Callie and ourselves. Harry cut us loose.

A few notes about age is my aim here, but a little more about loss is inevitable. “Most of the people my age is dead. You could look it up” was the way Casey Stengel put it. He was seventy-five at the time, and contemporary social scientists might prefer Casey’s line delivered at eighty-five now, for accuracy, but the point remains. We geezers carry about a bulging directory of dead husbands or wives, children, parents, lovers, brothers and sisters, dentists and shrinks, office sidekicks, summer neighbors, classmates, and bosses, all once entirely familiar to us and seen as part of the safe landscape of the day. It’s no wonder we’re a bit bent. The surprise, for me, is that the accruing weight of these departures doesn’t bury us, and that even the pain of an almost unbearable loss gives way quite quickly to something more distant but still stubbornly gleaming. The dead have departed, but gestures and glances and tones of voice of theirs, even scraps of clothing—that pale-yellow Saks scarf—reappear unexpectedly, along with accompanying touches of sweetness or irritation.

Our dead are almost beyond counting and we want to herd them along, pen them up somewhere in order to keep them straight. I like to think of mine as fellow-voyagers crowded aboard the Île de France (the idea is swiped from “Outward Bound”). Here’s my father, still handsome in his tuxedo, lighting a Lucky Strike. There’s Ted Smith, about to name-drop his Gloucester home town again. Here comes Slim Aarons. Here’s Esther Mae Counts, from fourth grade: hi, Esther Mae. There’s Gardner—with Cecille Shawn, for some reason. Here’s Ted Yates. Anna Hamburger. Colba F. Gucker, better known as Chief. Bob Ascheim. Victor Pritchett—and Dorothy. Henry Allen. Bart Giamatti. My elder old-maid cousin Jean Webster and her unexpected, late-arriving Brit husband, Capel Hanbury. Kitty Stableford. Dan Quisenberry. Nancy Field. Freddy Alexandre. I look around for others and at times can almost produce someone at will. Callie returns, via a phone call. “Dad?” It’s her, all right, her voice affectionately rising at the end—“Da-ad?”—but sounding a bit impatient this time. She’s in a hurry. And now Harold Eads. Toni Robin. Dick Salmon, his face bright red with laughter. Edith Oliver. Sue Dawson. Herb Mitgang. Coop. Tudie. Elwood Carter.

These names are best kept in mind rather than boxed and put away somewhere. Old letters are engrossing but feel historic in numbers, photo albums delightful but with a glum after-kick like a chocolate caramel. Home movies are killers: Zeke, a long-gone Lab, alive again, rushing from right to left with a tennis ball in his mouth; my sister Nancy, stunning at seventeen, smoking a lipstick-stained cigarette aboard Astrid, with the breeze stirring her tied-up brown hair; my mother laughing and ducking out of the picture again, waving her hands in front of her face in embarrassment—she’s about thirty-five. Me sitting cross-legged under a Ping-Pong table, at eleven. Take us away.

My list of names is banal but astounding, and it’s barely a fraction, the ones that slip into view in the first minute or two. Anyone over sixty knows this; my list is only longer. I don’t go there often, but, once I start, the battalion of the dead is on duty, alertly waiting. Why do they sustain me so, cheer me up, remind me of life? I don’t understand this. Why am I not endlessly grieving?

What I’ve come to count on is the white-coated attendant of memory, silently here again to deliver dabs from the laboratory dish of me. In the days before Carol died, twenty months ago, she lay semiconscious in bed at home, alternating periods of faint or imperceptible breathing with deep, shuddering catch-up breaths. Then, in a delicate gesture, she would run the pointed tip of her tongue lightly around the upper curve of her teeth. She repeated this pattern again and again. I’ve forgotten, perhaps mercifully, much of what happened in that last week and the weeks after, but this recurs.

Carol is around still, but less reliably. For almost a year, I would wake up from another late-afternoon mini-nap in the same living-room chair, and, in the instants before clarity, would sense her sitting in her own chair, just opposite. Not a ghost but a presence, alive as before and in the same instant gone again. This happened often, and I almost came to count on it, knowing that it wouldn’t last. Then it stopped.

People my age and younger friends as well seem able to recall entire tapestries of childhood, and swatches from their children’s early lives as well: conversations, exact meals, birthday parties, illnesses, picnics, vacation B. and B.s, trips to the ballet, the time when . . . I can’t do this and it eats at me, but then, without announcement or connection, something turns up. I am walking on Ludlow Lane, in Snedens, with my two young daughters, years ago on a summer morning. I’m in my late thirties; they’re about nine and six, and I’m complaining about the steep little stretch of road between us and our house, just up the hill. Maybe I’m getting old, I offer. Then I say that one day I’ll be really old and they’ll have to hold me up. I imitate an old man mumbling nonsense and start to walk with wobbly legs. Callie and Alice scream with laughter and hold me up, one on each side. When I stop, they ask for more, and we do this over and over.

I’m leaving out a lot, I see. My work— I’m still working, or sort of. Reading. The collapsing, grossly insistent world. Stuff I get excited about or depressed about all the time. Dailiness—but how can I explain this one? Perhaps with a blog recently posted on Facebook by a woman I know who lives in Australia. “Good Lord, we’ve run out of nutmeg!” it began. “How in the world did that ever happen?” Dozens of days are like that with me lately.

Intimates and my family—mine not very near me now but always on call, always with me. My children Alice and John Henry and my daughter-in-law Alice—yes, another one—and my granddaughters Laura and Lily and Clara, who together and separately were as steely and resplendent as a company of Marines on the day we buried Carol. And on other days and in other ways as well. Laura, for example, who will appear almost overnight, on demand, to drive me and my dog and my stuff five hundred miles Down East, then does it again, backward, later in the summer. Hours of talk and sleep (mine, not hers) and renewal—the abandoned mills at Lawrence, Mass., Cat Mousam Road, the Narramissic River still there—plus a couple of nights together, with the summer candles again.

Link copied

Friends in great numbers now, taking me to dinner or cooking in for me. (One afternoon, I found a freshly roasted chicken sitting outside my front door; two hours later, another one appeared in the same spot.) Friends inviting me to the opera, or to Fairway on Sunday morning, or to dine with their kids at the East Side Deli, or to a wedding at the Rockbound Chapel, or bringing in ice cream to share at my place while we catch another Yankees game. They saved my life. In the first summer after Carol had gone, a man I’d known slightly and pleasantly for decades listened while I talked about my changed routines and my doctors and dog walkers and the magazine. I paused for a moment, and he said, “Plus you have us.”

Another message—also brief, also breathtaking—came on an earlier afternoon at my longtime therapist’s, at a time when I felt I’d lost almost everything. “I don’t know how I’m going to get through this,” I said at last.

A silence, then: “Neither do I. But you will.”

I am a world-class complainer but find palpable joy arriving with my evening Dewar’s, from Robinson Cano between pitches, from the first pages once again of “Appointment in Samarra” or the last lines of the Elizabeth Bishop poem called “Poem.” From the briefest strains of Handel or Roy Orbison, or Dennis Brain playing the early bars of his stunning Mozart horn concertos. (This Angel recording may have been one of the first things Carol and I acquired just after our marriage, and I hear it playing on a sunny Saturday morning in our Ninety-fourth Street walkup.) Also the recalled faces and then the names of Jean Dixon or Roscoe Karns or Porter Hall or Brad Dourif in another Netflix rerun. Chloë Sevigny in “Trees Lounge.” Gail Collins on a good day. Family ice-skating up near Harlem in the nineteen-eighties, with the Park employees, high on youth or weed, looping past us backward to show their smiles.

Recent and not so recent surveys (including the six-decades-long Grant Study of the lives of some nineteen-forties Harvard graduates) confirm that a majority of us people over seventy-five keep surprising ourselves with happiness. Put me on that list. Our children are adults now and mostly gone off, and let’s hope full of their own lives. We’ve outgrown our ambitions. If our wives or husbands are still with us, we sense a trickle of contentment flowing from the reliable springs of routine, affection in long silences, calm within the light boredom of well-worn friends, retold stories, and mossy opinions. Also the distant whoosh of a surfaced porpoise outside our night windows.

We elders—what kind of a handle is this, anyway, halfway between a tree and an eel?—we elders have learned a thing or two, including invisibility. Here I am in a conversation with some trusty friends—old friends but actually not all that old: they’re in their sixties—and we’re finishing the wine and in serious converse about global warming in Nyack or Virginia Woolf the cross-dresser. There’s a pause, and I chime in with a couple of sentences. The others look at me politely, then resume the talk exactly at the point where they’ve just left it. What? Hello? Didn’t I just say something? Have I left the room? Have I experienced what neurologists call a TIA—a transient ischemic attack? I didn’t expect to take over the chat but did await a word or two of response. Not tonight, though. (Women I know say that this began to happen to them when they passed fifty.) When I mention the phenomenon to anyone around my age, I get back nods and smiles. Yes, we’re invisible. Honored, respected, even loved, but not quite worth listening to anymore. You’ve had your turn, Pops; now it’s ours.

I’ve been asking myself why I don’t think about my approaching visitor, death. He was often on my mind thirty or forty years ago, I believe, though more of a stranger. Death terrified me then, because I had so many engagements. The enforced opposite—no dinner dates or coming attractions, no urgent business, no fun, no calls, no errands, no returned words or touches—left a blank that I could not light or furnish: a condition I recognized from childhood bad dreams and sudden awakenings. Well, not yet, not soon, or probably not, I would console myself, and that welcome but then tediously repeated postponement felt in time less like a threat than like a family obligation—tea with Aunt Molly in Montclair, someday soon but not now. Death, meanwhile, was constantly onstage or changing costume for his next engagement—as Bergman’s thick-faced chess player; as the medieval night-rider in a hoodie; as Woody Allen’s awkward visitor half-falling into the room as he enters through the window; as W. C. Fields’s man in the bright nightgown—and in my mind had gone from spectre to a waiting second-level celebrity on the Letterman show. Or almost. Some people I knew seemed to have lost all fear when dying and awaited the end with a certain impatience. “I’m tired of lying here,” said one. “Why is this taking so long?” asked another. Death will get it on with me eventually, and stay much too long, and though I’m in no hurry about the meeting, I feel I know him almost too well by now.

A weariness about death exists in me and in us all in another way, as well, though we scarcely notice it. We have become tireless voyeurs of death: he is on the morning news and the evening news and on the breaking, middle-of–the-day news as well—not the celebrity death, I mean, but the everyone-else death. A roadside-accident figure, covered with a sheet. A dead family, removed from a ramshackle faraway building pocked and torn by bullets. The transportation dead. The dead in floods and hurricanes and tsunamis, in numbers called “tolls.” The military dead, presented in silence on your home screen, looking youthful and well combed. The enemy war dead or rediscovered war dead, in higher figures. Appalling and dulling totals not just from this year’s war but from the ones before that, and the ones way back that some of us still around may have also attended. All the dead from wars and natural events and school shootings and street crimes and domestic crimes that each of us has once again escaped and felt terrible about and plans to go and leave wreaths or paper flowers at the site of. There’s never anything new about death, to be sure, except its improved publicity. At second hand, we have become death’s expert witnesses; we know more about death than morticians, feel as much at home with it as those poor bygone schlunks trying to survive a continent-ravaging, low-digit-century epidemic. Death sucks but, enh—click the channel.

I get along. Now and then it comes to me that I appear to have more energy and hope than some of my coevals, but I take no credit for this. I don’t belong to a book club or a bridge club; I’m not taking up Mandarin or practicing the viola. In a sporadic effort to keep my brain from moldering, I’ve begun to memorize shorter poems—by Auden, Donne, Ogden Nash, and more—which I recite to myself some nights while walking my dog, Harry’s successor fox terrier, Andy. I’ve also become a blogger, and enjoy the ease and freedom of the form: it’s a bit like making a paper airplane and then watching it take wing below your window. But shouldn’t I have something more scholarly or complex than this put away by now—late paragraphs of accomplishments, good works, some weightier op cits? I’m afraid not. The thoughts of age are short, short thoughts. I don’t read Scripture and cling to no life precepts, except perhaps to Walter Cronkite’s rules for old men, which he did not deliver over the air: Never trust a fart. Never pass up a drink. Never ignore an erection.

I count on jokes, even jokes about death.

T EACHER : Good morning, class. This is the first day of school and we’re going to introduce ourselves. I’ll call on you, one by one, and you can tell us your name and maybe what your dad or your mom does for a living. You, please, over at this end.

S MALL B OY : My name is Irving and my dad is a mechanic.

T EACHER : A mechanic! Thank you, Irving. Next?

S MALL G IRL : My name is Emma and my mom is a lawyer.

T EACHER : How nice for you, Emma! Next?

S ECOND S MALL B OY : My name is Luke and my dad is dead.

T EACHER : Oh, Luke, how sad for you. We’re all very sorry about that, aren’t we, class? Luke, do you think you could tell us what Dad did before he died?

L UKE ( seizes his throat ): He went “ N’gungghhh! ”

Not bad—I’m told that fourth graders really go for this one. Let’s try another.

A man and his wife tried and tried to have a baby, but without success. Years went by and they went on trying, but no luck. They liked each other, so the work was always a pleasure, but they grew a bit sad along the way. Finally, she got pregnant, was very careful, and gave birth to a beautiful eight-pound-two-ounce baby boy. The couple were beside themselves with happiness. At the hospital that night, she told her husband to stop by the local newspaper and arrange for a birth announcement, to tell all their friends the good news. First thing next morning, she asked if he’d done the errand.

“Yes, I did,” he said, “but I had no idea those little notices in the paper were so expensive.”

“Expensive?” she said. “How much was it?”

“It was eight hundred and thirty-seven dollars. I have the receipt.”

“Eight hundred and thirty-seven dollars!” she cried. “But that’s impossible. You must have made some mistake. Tell me exactly what happened.”

“There was a young lady behind a counter at the paper, who gave me the form to fill out,” he said. “I put in your name and my name and little Teddy’s name and weight, and when we’d be home again and, you know, ready to see friends. I handed it back to her and she counted up the words and said, ‘How many insertions?’ I said twice a week for fourteen years, and she gave me the bill. O.K.?”

I heard this tale more than fifty years ago, when my first wife, Evelyn, and I were invited to tea by a rather elegant older couple who were new to our little Rockland County community. They were in their seventies, at least, and very welcoming, and it was just the four of us. We barely knew them and I was surprised when he turned and asked her to tell us the joke about the couple trying to have a baby. “Oh, no,” she said, “they wouldn’t want to hear that.”

“Oh, come on, dear—they’ll love it,” he said, smiling at her. I groaned inwardly and was preparing a forced smile while she started off shyly, but then, of course, the four of us fell over laughing together.

That night, Evelyn said, “Did you see Keith’s face while Edie was telling that story? Did you see hers? Do you think it’s possible that they’re still—you know, still doing it?”

“Yes, I did—yes, I do,” I said. “I was thinking exactly the same thing. They’re amazing.”

This was news back then, but probably shouldn’t be by now. I remember a passage I came upon years later, in an Op-Ed piece in the Times , written by a man who’d just lost his wife. “We slept naked in the same bed for forty years,” it went. There was also my splendid colleague Bob Bingham, dying in his late fifties, who was asked by a friend what he’d missed or would do differently if given the chance. He thought for an instant, and said, “More venery.”

More venery. More love; more closeness; more sex and romance. Bring it back, no matter what, no matter how old we are. This fervent cry of ours has been certified by Simone de Beauvoir and Alice Munro and Laurence Olivier and any number of remarried or recoupled ancient classmates of ours. Laurence Olivier? I’m thinking of what he says somewhere in an interview: “Inside, we’re all seventeen, with red lips.”

This is a dodgy subject, coming as it does here from a recent widower, and I will risk a further breach of code and add that this was something that Carol and I now and then idly discussed. We didn’t quite see the point of memorial fidelity. In our view, the departed spouse—we always thought it would be me—wouldn’t be around anymore but knew or had known that he or she was loved forever. Please go ahead, then, sweetheart—don’t miss a moment. Carol said this last: “If you haven’t found someone else by a year after I’m gone I’ll come back and haunt you.”

Getting old is the second-biggest surprise of my life, but the first, by a mile, is our unceasing need for deep attachment and intimate love. We oldies yearn daily and hourly for conversation and a renewed domesticity, for company at the movies or while visiting a museum, for someone close by in the car when coming home at night. This is why we throng Match.com and OkCupid in such numbers—but not just for this, surely. Rowing in Eden (in Emily Dickinson’s words: “Rowing in Eden— / Ah—the sea”) isn’t reserved for the lithe and young, the dating or the hooked-up or the just lavishly married, or even for couples in the middle-aged mixed-doubles semifinals, thank God. No personal confession or revelation impends here, but these feelings in old folks are widely treated like a raunchy secret. The invisibility factor—you’ve had your turn—is back at it again. But I believe that everyone in the world wants to be with someone else tonight, together in the dark, with the sweet warmth of a hip or a foot or a bare expanse of shoulder within reach. Those of us who have lost that, whatever our age, never lose the longing: just look at our faces. If it returns, we seize upon it avidly, stunned and altered again.

Nothing is easy at this age, and first meetings for old lovers can be a high-risk venture. Reticence and awkwardness slip into the room. Also happiness. A wealthy old widower I knew married a nurse he met while in the hospital, but had trouble remembering her name afterward. He called her “kid.” An eighty-plus, twice-widowed lady I’d once known found still another love, a frail but vibrant Midwest professor, now close to ninety, and the pair got in two or three happy years together before he died as well. When she called his children and arranged to pick up her things at his house, she found every possession of hers lined up outside the front door.

But to hell with them and with all that, O.K.? Here’s to you, old dears. You got this right, every one of you. Hook, line, and sinker; never mind the why or wherefore; somewhere in the night; love me forever, or at least until next week. For us and for anyone this unsettles, anyone who’s younger and still squirms at the vision of an old couple embracing, I’d offer John Updike’s “Sex or death: you take your pick”—a line that appears (in a slightly different form) in a late story of his, “Playing with Dynamite.”

This is a great question, an excellent insurance-plan choice, I mean. I think it’s in the Affordable Care Act somewhere. Take it from us, who know about the emptiness of loss, and are still cruising along here feeling lucky and not yet entirely alone. ♦

New Yorker Favorites

They thought that they’d found the perfect apartment. They weren’t alone .

After high-school football stars were accused of rape, online vigilantes demanded that justice be served .

The world’s oldest temple and the dawn of civilization .

What happened to the whale from “Free Willy.”

It was one of the oldest buildings left downtown. Why not try to save it ?

The religious right’s leading ghostwriter .

A comic strip by Alison Bechdel: the seven-minute semi-sadistic workout .

Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker .

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By Richard Brody

By Simon Rich

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Morgan Spurlock, Documentarian Known for ‘Super Size Me,’ Dies at 53

His 2004 film followed Mr. Spurlock as he ate nothing but McDonald’s for a month. It was nominated for an Oscar, but it later came in for criticism.

By Clay Risen and Remy Tumin

Morgan Spurlock, a documentary filmmaker who gained fame with his Oscar-nominated 2004 film “ Super Size Me ,” which followed him as he ate nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days — but later stepped back from the public eye after admitting to sexual misconduct — died on Thursday in New York City. He was 53.

His brother Craig Spurlock said the cause was complications of cancer.

A self-described attention hound with a keen eye for the absurd, Mr. Spurlock was a playwright and television producer when he rocketed to global attention with “Super Size Me,” an early entry into the genre of gonzo participatory filmmaking that borrowed heavily from the confrontational style of Michael Moore and the up-close-and-personal influences of reality TV, which was then just emerging as a genre.

The film’s approach was straightforward: Mr. Spurlock would eat nothing but McDonald’s food for a month, and if a server at the restaurant offered to “supersize” the meal — that is, to give him the largest portion available for each item — he would accept.

The movie then follows Mr. Spurlock and his ever-patient girlfriend through his 30-day odyssey, splicing in interviews with health experts and visits to his increasingly disturbed physician. At the end of the month, he was 25 pounds heavier, depressed, puffy-faced and experiencing liver dysfunction.

The film, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, grossed over $22 million, made Mr. Spurlock a household name, earned him an Academy Award nomination for best documentary and helped spur a sweeping backlash against the fast-food industry — though only temporarily ; today, McDonald’s has 42,000 locations worldwide, its stock is near an all-time high, and 36 percent of Americans eat fast food on any given day.

“His movie,” the critic A.O. Scott wrote in The New York Times , “goes down easy and takes a while to digest, but its message is certainly worth the loss of your appetite.”

The film became a touchstone in American culture. By making himself a part of the story, Mr. Spurlock could be considered a forerunner of TikTok influencers and citizen-journalist YouTubers.

And even after the backlash against fast food subsided, “Super Size Me” remained a staple in high school health classes and a reference point for taking personal responsibility for one’s own diet.

But the film also came in for subsequent criticism. Some people pointed out that Mr. Spurlock refused to release the daily logs tracking his food intake. Health researchers were unable to replicate his results in controlled studies.

And in 2017, he admitted that he had not been sober for more than a week at a time in 30 years — meaning that, in addition to his “McDonald’s only” diet, he was drinking, a fact that he concealed from his doctors and the audience, and that most likely skewed his results.

The admission came in a statement in which he also revealed multiple incidents of sexual misconduct, including an encounter in college that he described as rape, as well as repeated infidelity and the sexual harassment of an assistant at his production company, Warrior Poets.

The statement, which Mr. Spurlock posted on Twitter in 2017, came as he was gearing up for the release of a sequel to the film, “ Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! ” on YouTube Red.

He stepped down from his production company, and YouTube dropped the film; it was instead released in 2019 by Samuel Goldwyn Films.

Morgan Valentine Spurlock was born on Nov. 7, 1970, in Parkersburg, W.Va., and grew up in Beckley, W.Va. His father, Ben, owned and operated an auto-repair shop, and his mother, Phyllis (Valentine) Spurlock, was a junior high school and high school guidance counselor.

He later said he grew up as a fan of 1970s and ’80s British comedies like “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and “Blackadder.”

“I was doing funny walks round the house at 6 or 7,” he told The Independent in 2012 .

He studied film at New York University and received a bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1993, then began his career as a production assistant on film projects around New York City, beginning with Luc Besson’s “Léon: The Professional” (1994).

He also began writing plays, including “The Phoenix,” which won an award at the 1999 New York International Fringe Festival.

Mr. Spurlock’s first foray onto the screen was a proto-reality show called “I Bet You Will,” which was also one of the first web-only programs. In five-minute segments, he would dare people to do something gross, or humiliating, or both — eating a “worm burrito,” for example — in exchange for a wad of cash.

The show drew millions of viewers, as well as the interest of MTV, which bought the program a few months after it debuted.

During a Thanksgiving visit to his parents in 2002, Mr. Spurlock saw a TV news story about two women who had sued McDonald’s, claiming that the chain had misled them about the nutritional value of its hamburgers, fries and sodas and caused them to gain significant weight.

“A spokesman for McDonald’s came on and said, you can’t link their obesity to our food — our food is healthy, it’s nutritious,” he told The New York Times in 2004 . “I thought, ‘If it’s so good for me, I should be able to eat it every day, right?’”

And thus, “Super Size Me” was born.

Mr. Spurlock took to fame eagerly, and, with his wide smile and handlebar mustache, was hard to miss. He became an unofficial spokesman for the wellness movement, hobnobbed with celebrity chefs — and scrambled to find a new project.

He did not want to lose the momentum generated by “Super Size Me,” nor did he want to go down in history only as the guy who ate a lot of Big Macs.

“I’ll be that guy till I die,” he told The Independent.

A follow-up film, “Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?” (2008), was not nearly as well received. Critics assailed him for making light of an international terrorist and for oversimplifying complicated global politics. More bricks were thrown when it emerged that he had put himself at significant personal risk while in Pakistan while his wife was at home with their newborn son.

Eventually, he did get somewhat past the shadow of “Super Size Me”: He teamed up with the actors Jason Bateman and Will Arnett to explore the male grooming industry in “Mansome” (2012) and followed the band One Direction around, resulting in the film “One Direction: This Is Us” (2013).

He produced films by other documentarians, including “The Other F Word” (2011), directed by Andrea Blaugrund Nevins, about punk rockers who became fathers, and “A Brony Tale” (2014), directed by Brent Hodge, about the subculture known as Bronies — adults, mostly men, who love the animated series “My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.”

And he continued to make projects that leaned on the participatory style of “Super Size Me.” He created and starred in a series called “30 Days” for FX, in which a person, often Mr. Spurlock himself, would spend about a month embedded in a community much different from his own. One episode saw him spend 25 days in a Virginia jail.

Mr. Spurlock was married three times, to Priscilla Sommer, Alexandra Jamieson and Sara Bernstein; all three marriages ended in divorce. Along with his brother Craig, he is survived by another brother, Barry; his parents; and his sons, Laken and Kallen.

His decision to discuss his sexual past, which came at the height of the #Metoo movement, was met with a mix of praise and criticism. Though many people lauded him for coming forward, critics suggested that he was trying to get ahead of a story that was going to emerge anyway.

All agreed, though, that the decision came with consequences: “Career death,” The Washington Post declared it in 2022 , noting that the once-ubiquitous Mr. Spurlock had largely disappeared.

Clay Risen is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk. More about Clay Risen

Remy Tumin is a reporter for The Times covering breaking news and other topics. More about Remy Tumin