As we noted in our previous post, Ernest Hemingway’s masterpiece “The Old Man and the Sea” has been visualized by artists all over the world in a wide variety of media. To begin with, the initial publication of Hemingway’s novella in Life magazine was illustrated by Noel Douglas Sickles, a North American cartoonist and illustrator who created 18 two-tone drawings for Hemingway’s novella based on photos shot by Alfred Eisenstaedt. Here is a comprehensive listing of Noel Sickles’s drawings—all page references are to the September 1, 1952 edition of Life:

• Santiago and Manolin walking toward the shore (pp. 36-37) (pictured below)
• Santiago dreaming of lions (p. 38)
• A bird flying through the sky (p. 39)
• Santiago aboard the skiff (p. 40)
• Three flying fish (p. 41)
• A small bird perched on Santiago’s fishing line (p. 42)
• Santiago and the great marlin (p. 43)
• Arm wrestling flashback (p. 44)
• Two fish (p. 45)
• A close-up of Santiago’s hands (pp. 46-47)
• A close-up of Santiago’s harpoon (p. 48)
• Santiago battling the great marlin (p. 49)
• The first shark (p. 50)
• Santiago battling the sharks (p. 51)
• A close-up of the point of Santiago’s spear (p. 51)
• Two sharks (p. 52)
• The carcass of Santiago’s marlin (p. 53)
• Santiago carrying the mast of his skiff on his back (p. 54)

In short, Hemingway used words to tell his fable of the old Cuban fisherman and his heroic ordeal, but his timeless story can also be told in pictures. We shall see many more visualizations of the characters, scenes, and events in Hemingway’s novella in our next few posts.