A literary and visual arts magazine concerned with Michigan’s natural environments and experiences outdoors.
HOLY WATER
MITCHELL CARTER
Photography and Collage After “The Old Man and the Sea,” Ernest Hemingway
I never had to read The Old Man and The Sea in high school. I got around to it later, and found that Old Man Santiago’s instinctual use of tools, thrill-seeking competition with the marlin, and conversations with nature resonated well with my shared experiences on the water. Christian symbolism is heavy handed throughout the novella: Santiago is a Job or Christ-like figure, suffering at the hands of a higher force. The sharks rip away the marlin like the flock that was taken from Job, a final stroke of his “salao.” The old man, exhausted, bears the mast up a hill. Going through photos from my time on the water, many of the symbols in the novel stuck out to me. A consequence of the lasting geometry of sailboats, these pictures capture my experience on our holy waters.
“He unstepped the mast and furled the sail and tied it. Then he shouldered the mast and started to climb. It was then he knew the depths of his tiredness. He stopped for a moment and looked back and saw in the reflection from the street light the great tail of the fish standing up well behind the skiff’s stern.”
“He unstepped the mast and furled the sail and tied it. Then he shouldered the mast and started to climb. It was then he knew the depths of his tiredness. He stopped for a moment and looked back and saw in the reflection from the street light the great tail of the fish standing up well behind the skiff’s stern.”
Mitchell Carter is a student at the University of Michigan, a photographer, and a member of the crew of Autumn Wind, a sailboat docked at North Cape Yacht Club.
