Old_Man_and_the_Sea

The book Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway’s classics where an Old Man fights a Marlin for three days trying to regain his reputation as a fisherman in the village he lives. But, the book is about more than just fighting a marlin. Santiago has other struggles and obstacles that he must overcome to truly win again the respect of the villagers, and of himself. There is a much bigger foe that Santiago must overcome. Something bigger than any marlin or even another man. In a story in which man against nature is obviously the conflict to watch, Hemingway brings as much of nature as he can. Hemingway puts Santiago against an entire ocean. The title of the book is The Old Man and the Sea because it’s not the marlin, or the wild life, or the village that thinks lowly of him that is the main war he fights. They are little battles in the war; it’s the sea that gives him his challenge. The sea challenges him by the marlin, the climate, and the village, which make up the sea. Also Santiago had more trouble with the conditions of the sea - the sun, the salt, and the wild life. The sea is the three antagonists combined, otherwise Hemingway would have written three different books, one each about the Old Man and the marlin, the wild life, and the village. The Nature of the Sea was a huge part in the fight the Old Man fought. He was diseased by the sun, “the brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer” (Hemingway 9). He has eyes that are burned out from the sun, “all my life the early sun has hurt my eyes he thought” (33). His skin has wrinkles from the sea salt “reflection of the tropic sea on his cheeks” (10). The sharks that ate the Marlin “then came in fast with his half circle of jaws wide to hit the fish where he had already been bitten” (108). Through all the pain he endured when fighting the nature of the sea, it was only the first of three battles he would fight. He did not win this fight because he is diseased, he has bad eyes, or the sharks ate his Marlin. This loss did not kill him it made him realize he doesn’t have to win the fight he only has to live through it. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” (Nietzsche). The Marlin is a major battle in the war against the sea. The Old Man feels the marlin bite the bait and hopes the Marlin takes it. Then when the Marlin does, he is ready to give line if it is needed and this happens all day and night. “He’s taken it, he said. Now I’ll let him eat it well. He let the line slip through his fingers while he reached down with his left hand and made fast the free end of the two reserve coils to the loop of the two reserve coils of the next line in reserve. Now he was ready. He had three forty fathom coils of the line in reserve now, as well as the coil he was using. (44)” The Marlin pulled the boat along with it. “The boat began to move slowly off toward the north-west. The fished moved steadily and they traveled slowly on the calm water (45)”. The marlin was putting up a good fight and the Man wanted to give up but he didn’t. “He rested sitting on the un-stepped mast and sail and tried not to think but only to endure” (46). Santiago won the fight with the Marlin after coiling the line around his hands so much and brought the Marlin close enough to the boat and shot it with a harpoon and the Marlin jumped out of the water and died. “The Old Man dropped the line and put his foot on it and lifted the harpoon as high as he could and drove it down with all his strength, and the more strength he had just summoned, into the fish’s side just behind the great chest fine that rose high to the altitude of the man’s chest. He felt the iron go in and he leaned on it and drove it further and then pushed all his weight after it. Then the fish came alive, with his death in him, and rose high out of the water showing all his great length and width and all his power and his beauty. He seemed to hang in the air above the old man in the skiff. Then he fell into the water with a crash that sent spray over the old man and over all of the skiff (93-94).” After he catches the Marlin he has a great lead on his next battle against his village. “The boy’s parents had told him that the old man was salao” (9). This catch is important because Santiago has not caught any fish for many days. “He had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish” (9). He was given a boy by the village to train him to be a fisherman but because the old man had not caught a fish in so long he had lost his respect and the boy’s parents gave him to another boat. The boy was the only citizen of the village to respect the old man. “Can I offer you a beer on the Terrace and then we’ll take the stuff home. (11)” The boy also gives the old man two barrels of sardines for bait. After he returns with the carcass of the eighteen foot marlin all the fisherman stand around his boat. The skeleton is then placed in the café where two tourists mistake it for a shark. Maybe Santiago was mistaken as a shark when he was younger and now that he is older he cannot live up to these high expectations. But because Santiago wants to be the shark once again he catches the Marlin. Santiago still isn’t a shark because he is too old, so now he is regarded as a huge marlin (not the top dog but close to the top). So in the end, we shouldn’t judge people on what they did in the past, instead we should judge them as they are now. Even though he was old people expected Santiago to live up to his younger reputation. But, it was these high expectations that pushed him to achieve his goal to catch the marlin. So maybe people having high expectations of you makes you want to prove they are right, so you achieve an even higher goal.