A deep blue sea blends seamlessly into an equally blue sky, with clouds drifting swiftly overhead. From the water, a marlin’s skeleton emerges behind an old, white-haired man—any well-read viewer will immediately recognize this as Hemingway’s ‘The Old Man and the Sea.’ “Marlin’s Fate” transforms Hemingway’s classic tale into a contemporary environmental allegory. By rendering everything in ocean blues and merging sea and sky, I’ve created an all-encompassing aquatic world that emphasizes how oceans dominate our planet while remaining vulnerable to human impact. The skeletal marlin takes on new meaning. In Hemingway’s original, Santiago’s epic struggle with the marlin represents nobility in both victory and defeat. Here, the skeleton becomes something more ominous—evidence of humanity’s pyrrhic victories over nature. The white-haired figure appears wise but is anything but: we possess the knowledge and capability to destroy, yet lack the wisdom to refrain. The pristine water surface is deceptive, concealing the pollution beneath: microplastics, sewage, toxic waste, and the devastation of overfishing. Together, they build a damning case that our “victories” over nature are ultimately self-defeating.

With the exception of the marlin, every other image element was created using generative AI before the elements were combined into an overall composition. The marlin skeleton is a freely available image from the worldwide web.