Santiago’s “eyes the same color as the sea” (10) mark his otherness in a conspicuous and unchangeable way, setting him apart from the impoverished mulatto fishing community, and linking him to European exploitation of the island nation. This origin, with its attendant national and cultural differences, makes Santiago an outsider in the Cuban fishing village of Cojímar and is a principal motivation in his actions. As the author explains in a letter to Lillian Ross,“The Old Man was born a catholic in the island of Lanza Rota in the Canary Islands” (SL 807). In The Old Man and the Sea (1952), Hemingway employs the perspective of a Spaniard in Cuba to broaden the scope of the narrative. In several of ernest hemingway’s novels, the main character’s expatriation is a principal rhetorical device and a theme which critics often neglect. Through scrutiny on Hemingway’s cultural forays into Spanish society-in language and toreo rituals, in particular-this article also aims to reveal a crucial but often neglected aspect of Hemingway’s relationship with the Spanish people. José Castillo-Puche, friend and biographer of Hemingway, said that by the end of his life, “Ernesto was no longer a fascinating figure to people in Spain he had become a sort of joke, in fact” (20). While it is clear Hemingway had a close devotion to things Spanish throughout his life, a pattern of behavior that we might interpret as a test in transnationalization, he was at times ridiculed by Spaniards for pretensions of insider status with bullfighting circles and for what some believed was a poor ability to speak Spanish. Upon close review of the man’s journalism, letters, and fiction, we find a different milieu-one that is not always a romantic fiesta but a discourse sometimes wrought with rejection, contempt, even mockery. Literary scholars (and tourism boards) have a tendency to foster an idealistic image of “Ernest Hemingway in Spain,” a lens which sometimes causes reflections on the topic to be celebratory in nature and eminently positive in tone.
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