This third, brief part of the novella completes the cycle of Santiago's journey from the land to the sea and back to the land again. The narrative returns to the third-person, omniscient narration of the first part (which also takes places on land), pulling back from previous explorations of Santiago's thoughts. For example, the narrative simply reports that Santiago knows "the depth of his tiredness" and objectively describes what Santiago sees when he looks back at the marlin's skeleton beside the beached skiff, without moving into his thoughts. Just as the earlier transition into his thoughts when he is alone at sea is intuitive and logical, the depth of Santiago's exhaustion helps smooth this shift back to the earlier narrative mode.
The story benefits from this controlled reporting and psychic distance because all the earlier preparations and foreshadowing assure that the emotional impact of Santiago's tragedy is not lost on readers, but instead resonates within them without melodrama (that is, without unearned sensationalism and extravagant emotional appeal). Santiago has been wholly beaten by the scavenger sharks — those swimming appetites and natural scavengers that Hemingway equates with the pragmatic fishermen and the new materialism, as well as with the inevitable destruction inherent in nature's order and the natural cycle of life. The marlin has been picked clean of all practical and material value, and its earlier association with the crucified Christ (a non-Christian representation of suffering, defeat, and the endurance through which one redeems an individual life within nature's tragic cycle) has been fully conveyed to Santiago.
