Struggle for Survival: A Comparative Study of the Bridge of Beyond and the Old Man and the Sea

Résumé

This article examines the theme of struggle for survival as a defining feature of American baroque culture through a comparative study of The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart and The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. Situated within the broader framework of transatlantic literary studies, the paper interrogates how distinct cultural contexts—Francophone Caribbean and Anglo-American— converge in their representation of survival as both a material necessity and an existential condition. Drawing on Alejo Carpentier’s theory of the marvelous real and psychoanalytic criticism, the study argues that survival in American literature emerges from a complex interplay between historical trauma, cultural hybridity, and individual resilience. The marvelous real, as conceptualized by Carpentier, reveals the extraordinary within lived reality, particularly in culturally syncretic spaces such as the Americas, where myth, history, and lived experience are inseparable. This study demonstrates that survival is not merely a thematic concern but a structural and aesthetic principle embedded in the narrative fabric of both texts. Using documentary and comparative methods, the analysis shows that the struggle for survival is articulated through baroque traits such as freedom, fantasy, extravagance, subversion, and oddity—features that reflect the instability and dynamism of American cultural formations. Furthermore, the paper foregrounds the role of dualism as a literary and philosophical mechanism that juxtaposes opposing forces—life and death, hope and despair, strength and vulnerability—to dramatize the human condition. In both novels, survival is constructed through tensions between the individual and nature, the self and society, as well as the visible and invisible worlds. By bringing together these two seemingly disparate texts, the study fills a critical gap in comparative transatlantic literary scholarship, which has often treated Francophone Caribbean and Anglo-American literatures in isolation. Ultimately, the article concludes that both novels exemplify how American literature fundamentally aligns with the aesthetics of the marvelous real, where survival becomes an enduring narrative of resistance, adaptation, and transformation within historically and culturally layered realities.