The Old Man and the Sea

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The Old Man and the Sea



The Old Man and the Sea is a famous novella by Ernest Hemingway. It was after its publication that Heminway awarded the Nobel Prize in154. And the author said it had been the best work in his life.

Hemingway(18--161 ),was born in Oak Park, Illinois, a prosperous suburb of Chicago. His father, a physician, was an enthusiastic hunter and fisherman who taught his son to handle a rod and a gun. Hemingway¡¯s respect for these skills and his love of the open air run through his writing.




In school he was a good student with a wide range of interests beyond the classroom. When he graduated from high school in 117, World War I was still being fought. After a few months as a reporter on the Kansas City Star, he sailed for Europe in May, 118, as a volunteer ambulance driver and later transferred to the Italian infantry. Two weeks before his 1 birthday a leg wound brought him close to death. War and death have been recurrent themes in his writing.

The next stage of Hemingway¡¯s life was spent in writing. He saw the genuine artists as a lonely figure, whose time and energy could not be dissipated in an aimless night life. He met and talked with a number of people who took writing seriously. Perhaps as result of those discussions he decided to give up his newspaper work and devote himself to what considered true writing, not merely reporting but creating. His creative forms have been the short story and the novel. He has used the truth of personal experience as the starting point, selecting from it, combining it with other materials, transmuting it with careful craftsmanship into the form of art. We can see World War I and its aftermath in A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises, bullfighting in Death in the Afternoon, hunting in Green hills of Africa, the Spanish Civil War in For Whom the Bell Tolls, World War II in Across the River and into the Trees, and fishing in the Caribbean in The Old Man and The Sea.

The story is very simple In a small fishing village in Cuba, an old fisherman, Santiago, has just gone 84 days without catching a fish. For years, he has been fishing with a young boy named Manolin. He likes the boy¡¯s second father and has taught the young boy everything about fishing. Manolin is extremely loyal to Santiago and makes sure that the old man is always safe, fed and healthy. The boy ¡®s parents, however, force him to leave Santiago and fish on a more lucrative fishing boat. But Santiago doesn¡¯t loose heart. He feels the 85th day will be lucky for him and decides to head out on his old, rickety, skiff along.

Finally, a huge marlin has found Santiago¡¯s bait and sets off a long struggle between the two. The marlin is so huge that it drags Santiago beyond all other boats and people. Santiago respects and loves the marlin and admires its beauty and greatness. He sees it as his brother. But after an intense struggle in witch the fish drags the skiff around in circles, Santiago harpoons the very large fish and hangs it on the side of the boat. After enjoying a few moments of pride, a pack of sharks detects the blood in the water and follow the trail to Santiago¡¯s skiff. They take huge bites out of the marlin, but the old man fends them off, and himself bruised.

At last, he sails back to shore with the carcass of his marlin. The next morning the boy finds his mentor and cries when he looks at Santiago¡¯s bruised hands. He promised he would reject his parents¡¯ wishes and vows to fish with Santiago again.

Santiago suffers terribly throughout The Old Man and the Sea. In my opinion, he is a hero, but not a tragic hero. From the very first paragraph, Santiago is characterized as someone struggling against defeat. He has gone 84 days without catching a fish and has become the laughingstock of his small village. He then endures a long and grueling struggle with the marlin only to see his trophy catch destroyed by sharks. But the old man refuses defeat at every turn His commitment to sailing out farther than any fisherman has before, to where the big fish promise to be, testifies to the depth of his pride. Yet, it also shows his determination to change his luck; He lands the marlin, after a brutal -day fight, and he continues to ward off sharks from stealing his prey, even though he knows the battle is useless.

The novella is the story of mans place within nature. Both Santiago and the marlin display qualities of pride, honor, and bravery, and both are subject to the same eternal law they must kill or be killed. As Santiago reflects, the world is filled with predators, and no living thing can escape the inevitable struggle that will lead to its death. Santiago lives according to his own observation man is not made for defeat ¡­man can be destroyed but not defeated. In Hemingways portrait of the world, death is inevitable, but the best men (and animals) will choose endurance until destruction.

The novel also suggests that it is possible to transcend this natural law. It is precisely through the effort to battle the inevitable that a man can prove himself. Indeed, a man can prove this determination over and over through the worthiness of the opponents he chooses to face. Santiago finds the marlin worthy of a fight, just as he once found the great Negro of Cienfugos worthy. His admiration for these opponents brings love and respect into an equation with death, as their destruction becomes a point of honor and bravery that confirms Santiagos heroic qualities. One might characterize the equation as the working out of the statement Because I love you, I have to kill you.

Santiago, though destroyed at the end of the novella, is never defeated. Instead, he emerges as a hero. His pride enables him to achieve his most true and complete self. Furthermore, it helps him earn the deeper respect of the village fisherman and secures him the prized companionship of the boy. After all he¡¯s an old man whose physical existence is almost over, but he¡¯ll persist though Manolin, who awaits the old man¡¯s teachings and will make use of those lessons long after his teacher¡¯s death. Thus Santiago, perhaps, finds a way to prolong his life after death.

Notes¢ÙThe Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (American). Publish authorized by

Heimingway Foreign Right Trust. Reprinted by World Publishing Corporation, Beijing.

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¢Úhttp//www.sparknotes.com/lit/oldman



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