play a role in his ordeal with the great marlin (13). God is sometimes prayed to by the Hemingway hero in a time of crisis, but He is never depended upon (Waldmeir 29). When Santiago says his prayers, he also says, “I am not religious,” even as he says his prayer (29). After forty-five hours of struggle have passed, Santiago says, “I’ll say a hundred Our Fathers and a hundred Hail Mary’s. But I cannot say them now.” (Waldmeir 29-30) For those who see this as evidence of Santiago’s Christ symbolism, one must suggest that his not saying the promised prayer provide contradiction to that interpretation (Wagner117). It is difficult to disentangle Santiago and Hemingway, and it can render a reader quite uncomfortable (Bloom 2). Hemingway, like Santiago, denies his religious values (Linck 1). Hemingway, however, did not turn religious to write The Old Man and the Sea (Waldmeir 33). He has always been religious, although his religion is not of the orthodox variety (33). He celebrates, and always has celebrated, the Religion of Man (33). Along with the Christian symbols woven throughout the novella, numerology also adds to the religious symbols in the book (Waldmeir 28). As the story opens, we are told that Santiago had gone eighty-four days without catching a fish (Wilson 119). If we add this to the three days covered by the book’s action, we get a span of eighty-seven days. Shortly after, the boy recalls, “…remember how you went eighty-seven days without fish and then we caught big ones every day for three weeks.”(119) “In this way, Hemingway establishes two separate time spans of eighty-seven days that are important in the old man’s life.” (119) There is also a more intricate form of numerology in the novella (Waldmeir 28). Three, seven, and forty are key numbers in the Old and New Testaments of theBible (28). As the story ope...
