The Old Man and the Sea met with popular acclaim. In the three weeks after publication, Hemingway received more than eighty letters a day from well-wishers, and Life received many more. Religious figures began to cite the book's themes in their sermons.[17] Critical reception was initially equally positive, placing the novella as superior in quality to Across the River and equal to Hemingway's earliest works. With Time magazine labelling it a "masterpiece", Cyril Connolly praised "the best story Hemingway has ever written" and Mark Schorer noted that Hemingway's "incomparable" work set him apart as "the greatest craftsman in the American novel in this century".[18] Many reviewers, seeing it as "the apex of the Hemingway canon", termed it a "classic".[19] Hemingway's favourite review was from the art historian Bernard Berenson, who wrote that The Old Man and the Sea was superior to Herman Melville's Moby-Dick and equal in many ways to the Homeric epics.[20]
After the early adulation faded, less positive reviews began to appear. Delmore Schwartz believed that the initial reviewers had prejudiced public opinion in their relief that the novella was not as bad as Across the River. Seymour Krim wrote that The Old Man and the Sea was "only more of the same", while John W. Aldridge felt himself "unable to share in the prevailing wild enthusiasm" for the novella.[21] Years later, Jeffrey Meyers called it Hemingway's "most overrated work", a "mock-serious fable" with "radical weaknesses".[22] Despite the cooling critical outlook, The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction on May 4, 1953—this was the first time Hemingway had received the award, having been overlooked previously for A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls.[23] He also accepted a Medal of Honor from Fulgencio Batista's newly-established Cuban dictatorship, despite personally disapproving of the new regime.[24] The Old Man and the Sea's highest recognition came on October 28, 1954, as the only work of Hemingway's mentioned by the Swedish Academy when awarding him the Nobel Prize in Literature; they praised its "powerful, style-making mastery of the art of modern narration".[25]
The Old Man and the Sea has been the subject of a significant amount of critical commentary. Wirt Williams noted that early scholarship focused upon "the naturalistic tragedy, the Christian tragedy, the parable of art and the artist, and even the autobiographical mode".[26] Analysis of these themes continued into the 1960s, during which John Killinger connected the novella with Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Friedrich Nietzsche, and Richard Hovey linked its themes to the Oedipus complex. However, Philip Young's republication of Ernest Hemingway: A Reconsideration in 1966 was much less positive than the original edition in 1952, setting the disinterested scholarly tone that would dominate the next decades. Analysis only restarted in earnest with the publication of Gerry Brenner's hyper-critical The Old Man and the Sea: The Story of a Common Man in 1991, and has continued unabated since.[27]
Writing in 1985, Meyers noted that The Old Man and the Sea was used in English lessons in schools worldwide and continued to earn $100,000 per year in royalties.[28] According to the CIA, it was a favourite book of Saddam Hussein, who saw himself, like Santiago, as "struggl[ing] against overwhelming odds with courage, perseverance, and dignity".[29] The Big Read, a 2003 survey of the United Kingdom's 200 "best-loved novels" conducted by the BBC, listed The Old Man and the Sea at number 173.[30] Hemingway was directly involved in making a 1958 film adaptation starring Spencer Tracy. Production was marred by numerous difficulties and although the film soundtrack, composed by Dimitri Tiomkin, won the Academy Award for Best Original Score, Hemingway heartily disliked the final film.[31] Two more adaptations have been produced: a 1990 television film starring Anthony Quinn,[32] and a 1999 production by Aleksandr Petrov which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.[33]
