Story

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Prof. Susana Bunster H.
Contemporary Narrative ILI1748
3 May 2007
A Taoist Reading of The Old Man and The Sea
The Tao, the path, is shared by all beings. We all live our lives in order to learn through our experience and senses. The Tao thinking seeks to go beyond what is perceivable by the senses, it explores the essence of things and our path, or Tao, has the purpose oflooking for that essence.
Santiago has his own Tao, he acknowledges his own essence by sharing an important experience in his life, and this experience is what happens between him and the Marlin. In the Taoist approach we get to know that the opposites seek balance and Santiago and the Marlin are balanced in terms of their importance and the relationship between them. Santiago perhaps is seen as adefeated man because he finally brings the sole skeleton of the fish, but in the context of a Taoist interpretation, this very fact is irrelevant.
It is very hard for westerners to understand the Taoist approach, and what Taoism represents in itself, since everything we are told teaches the opposite. The Judeo-Christian tradition has indeed a very strong spiritual connotation, but in a differentway if we compare it to the Taoist idea. Whilst the Christian tradition teaches to be sympathetic with others, to be generous, to “make treasures in heaven”; the Taoist approach goes beyond that and looks for the essence of things, it shows that our experience and learning about our own essence (not ourselves) is the most important


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aspect in every being. Everything else istrivial, so the Christian practices can be labeled as shallow by the Taoists.
The Taoist reading of The Old Man and The Sea is very appropriate, since it shows aspects that we see as opposed, yet the Taoist view unites them in balance. As Taoism seeks balance and its goal is centredness, there is some resemblance between this view and the one from the Structuralist theory. Structuralism is built upona "centre" (which is arbitrary- along with binary oppositions that are joined together by that centre).
Going back Saussure's definition of Langue (the system of language) and Parole (speech as such) or the relationship between the significant and signifier of a given lexeme, we know that “Saussure's structuralism considers language as a multitude of signs, where each sign links a phonic sound(the signifier) with an idea (the signified)” (Pursey, 1). Under that premise we can say that, the signifier and the signified need one another to exist, yet there is arbitrariness in their relationship because they are bound together as the inseparable elements of the whole of a word. Here seems to be a common ground with Taoists who see Body and Mind as a whole, they do not separate them.Even though Structuralism and Taoism share that common ground, Taoism is far more applicable to everyday life and it represents that which is unsayable (the Tao in itself is unsayable, it cannot be explained). Oppositely, Structuralism seeks to identify parts of the structure of a given work of art and not meant to be interpreted (an example of that could be Genette's method).
Another importantaspect that Waggoner adds is that of the I Ching, it defines the Tao as continually evolving -eternal flux-, indefinable, looking for equilibrium and

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not opposition –as represented in the ying-yang symbol (Waggoner, 89). Here is another difference between this oriental world view and Structuralism. However, there are some clues that can indicate that they are similar in terms of whatthey state. As the Taoist approach hints that the Tao in itself is undefinable; the Structuralist view does not state which its centre is either.
In terms of Taoism there are some related elements (or oppositions in Structuralist terms) in The Old Man and The Sea, which are balanced and they need one another to survive; they do not have to be binarily opposed, but rather differentiated. They...