The Old Man and the Sea

“The Old Man and the Sea”– by Ernest Hemingway

“The Old Man and the Sea” is a novel by Ernest Hemingway. It is about a fisherman named Santiago who has been fishing for 84 days now straight. For the first 40 days, his apprentice, Manolin has been accompaning him but now his parents have told him that he can no longer fish with him because of Santiago’s bad fortune. So Santiago is forced by the setting– 1940’s and barely any money to go deep sea fishing so he can catch a fish. He is going alone, only with some tools to catch the fish and his poorly built skiff. He goes out fishing for 5 days. On the first three days, he encounters with a big beautiful marlin but the marlin will not eat the bait. He is smarter. So the marlin is circling the boat until Santiago is able to catch it. Even though he had success the first 3 days, he encounters problems with some sharks and other negative circumstances as he’s coming back to the shore to his shack were he hopes to recover from all the exhaustion. The story seems to be a bit boring but once you’re done, you uncover the theme that Hemingway was trying to convey by his award winning work, “The Old Man and the Sea”.

The story has a very good theme: Man can be destroyed but not defeated. This theme, among many others, means the most to me because Hemingway is saying that the man can be destroyed but that only means that he can be destroyed externally through physical destruction but man cannot be defeated. Man is strong enough to resist defeat which is internal (mental) destruction. I love this quote found on page 112 of my book because it means a lot to what humans can overcome and even though we most of the time destroy eachother, we can be strong enough to over come what really matters which is your inside (all that counts). Other themes and messages in the story include to persevere, be strong and always be patient that good will happen to those who are good.

I give this book a ****/5! It’s a book which is very well written but in some parts, the reader gets lost. This could be because even though it’s only 127 pages, it’s quite a complicated novel to understand because rather than being a structured plot, there is more that just Santiago catching a fish, it’s his internal conflicts to succeed and rather than “Man vs. Nature”, it’s “Santiago vs. Himself”. Santiago does over come his conflict because he even though he well.

– Gabriela; Hour 2