Old Man and the Sea themes
How is Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea not only a story about a man fishing, but also a story about life? Describe the narrative structure of the novel.
Famous American writer Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” is a short novel composed by him in 1951 and distributed in 1952. It was Hemingway’s last huge work of fiction distributed during his lifetime. One of his most famous pieces relates the tale of Santiago, a matured Cuban angler who fights with a monstrous marlin out of sight the Gulf Stream off the bank of Cuba.
Old Man and the Sea themes
The Old Man and the Sea is not only a story about a man fishing, but also a story about life. Where we learn about human honor, man courage, and endurance in the existence of misfortune, stress, pain, defeat, and even death.
At 85 days after Manolin left, he found a fish, and it was a huge fish. If there is any kind of bleeding in the sea, the smell of blood comes from the sharks around, but there is no exception. Santiago already knew the sharks would come running now.
Two sharks came running, he killed a shark with great difficulty with his fishing tool. Then the other shark left, but Santiago is an experienced sailor, so he understood the danger. He realized that many more sharks were coming.
Many sharks came after smelling the fish’s blood. So many sharks came together and he had nothing to fish for. The sharks ate the huge marlin in front of his eyes. The skeleton was left while eating. The next morning, he dragged such a large Marlin alone to the top of the sea because there was no more meat on Marlin’s body. He returned home with the skeleton.
Many people came to see it on the beach. Everyone was very surprised to see it. They did not understand whether it was actually a fish or a skeleton of a large fish. Because the people of this area have never seen such a big fish before. Even Santiago has never caught such a big fish in his fishing life. Santiago left it ashore, his body looked very tired. The struggle of about three months long. Now he needs a little peace and rest.
Meanwhile, we see above how an old man is showing his story of catching the biggest fish of his life. But that’s not really the case. We can see how we can show all the work overtime with a calm and long faith from the preparation for all kinds of activities of our life works.
We can see that old man Santiago shows everything in his life like a normal person, but the way we can learn is to never lose, to stand up for ourselves in all situations, to always be prepared for all situations, and to calm ourselves down after failure.
End
by Md. Rabby Sharif Ador
Also read: Oedipus the King summary
