The Old Man and the Sea Essay

The Old Man and the Sea


The Old Man and the Sea is one of Ernest Hemingway's most famous novels. The

story is set in a small village in Cuba not far from the Capital city, Havana, with a

fisherman named Santiago, who is down on his luck .On his eighty-fourth-day without

catching a fish, the old man hooks a giant marlin, but hooking the fish was only the

beginning of his battle. In this book we can see the refusal of Ernest Hemingway to see

old age in other terms but the values of will power, heroism, and Christianity.

“You’re feeling it now, fish,” he said. “ And so, God knows, am I”.(Hemingway,

73) This quote is an example for me of the effort that the old man was doing to catch the

fish. According to Cooperman, in The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway transform

man’s decaying age into an old man more strong, wise, and pure. In his article

Hemingway and Old Age: Santiago as Priest of Time he maintains that Hemingway fails

to view old age in any other terms but through the values of pride, sacrifice, and

endurance rather than a softening of qualities found in youth. I agree with Stanley

Cooperman. Ernest Hemingway wrote an story not of youthful disillusion, or youthful

frustration, but rather the story is about an aged fisherman for whom power of will has

replaced the power of flesh, and the wisdom of true pride and humility has replaced the

arrogance and the ambition found in the youth.  

In addition, in this story Hemingway struggles deciding what sort of heroism is

possible as a man gets older. Hemingway’s   hero virtues had always been virtues of the

young. For example, to kill and risk being killed, to drink manfully, to speak simply, to

love beautifully and briefly, and to avoid all responsibility or complexity. However, in

The Old Man and the Sea, he goes from a young soldier in the World War to a true

sacrificed, wise, old fisherman in complete harmony with the...