Although Ernest Hemingway’s novella The Old
Man and the Sea seems to purport the patriarchal ideals of a
male-dominated world by weaving an archetypal quest for the male protagonist
to fulfill, the discourse evolves into feminist writing. Even without a trace of a female character’s voice, and for
that matter a female character, the quivering between masculine and
feminine
discourse of the old man’s voice, subverts the former and reveals
the latter. The old man, Santiago,
goes out “beyond all people in the world” (50) to regain his masculinity that society and
time has stolen away from him and discovers, in brief
epiphanies, that the quest and its sufferings are fruitless.