The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway Response
Reading Old Man and the Sea was a meditative and interesting experience in a truly tranquil manner. Probably a large part of the reason that it was so unique is Hemingway’s focus not on breadth but depth, which you can see by the the incredible amount of detail that he dives into in Santiago’s (the main character of the Cuban fisherman) actions in catching the marlin. He makes the trivial and minute details of his fishing trip take on the utmost symbolic importance by painstakingly describing every detail with specifically chosen words to do the task. What it ends up being essentially is a symbolic meditation on a few different subjects and themes (one of them being Hemingway himself, specifically with the emphasis on the machismo spirit emphasized in the novella). I wouldn’t necessarily pick up these themes by myself, but with a little help from the great site Sparknotes I could look to some extent into Hemingway’s intentions for and thoughts on the piece. Because of all these things, reading the novella evoked a sense of patient wonderment in me.
Santiago is an enigmatic character that can be interpreted in a profusion of ways. There are some aspects of him that stick out. In many ways he is like a philosopher. His thoughts were often quite different and interesting and thus neat to listen in on. For an example of his different sort of thoughts, (the kind that shift paradigms to some extent) was when he was thinking about his morality in the sense of killing the fish (who he considered as kin) even though as a creature it was quite amazing. In response to this thought of his, he was considering himself lucky that life does not involve hunting anything so great as the stars or the moon. The writers at Sparknotes analyzes Santiago’s character quite well when they write
“Hemingway, feel that since death must come in the world, it is preferable that it come at the hands of a worthy opponent. The old man’s magnificence—the honor and humility with which he executes his task—elevates his struggle to a rarified, even transcendent level.”
Santiago is quite a weathered character and also is in some ways like a Roman Stoic philosopher. The reason I am saying this is because he seems to regard parts of his life such as his health, the need for his hunger to be satiated, whether he catches the marlin or not as indifferents. He is able to endure and find hope despite his less-than ideal circumstances being pulled around in the ocean by the fish. This is just the tip of the iceberg so to speak, Santiago’s character can be looked at in many different ways. Hemingway makes some very clear connections with Santiago’s (and the marlin’s) sufferings at sea to the suffering of Christ. The ability of Santiago to find hope and endurance despite the pain he experiences also relate to the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche in how he emphasized how responding to suffering in a certain way can produce good things.
The way Hemingway writes the novella made me feel like I was next to Santiago in his skiff breathing the ocean air and participating in his various profound thoughts including his compassion for the marlin he was intending to hook and sell. His thoughts tend to be very paradoxical. Hemingway’s poetic style of prose is quite engaging.
Overall I enjoyed reading Old Man and the Sea. It was refreshing in numerous ways.
Santiago is an enigmatic character that can be interpreted in a profusion of ways. There are some aspects of him that stick out. In many ways he is like a philosopher. His thoughts were often quite different and interesting and thus neat to listen in on. For an example of his different sort of thoughts, (the kind that shift paradigms to some extent) was when he was thinking about his morality in the sense of killing the fish (who he considered as kin) even though as a creature it was quite amazing. In response to this thought of his, he was considering himself lucky that life does not involve hunting anything so great as the stars or the moon. The writers at Sparknotes analyzes Santiago’s character quite well when they write
“Hemingway, feel that since death must come in the world, it is preferable that it come at the hands of a worthy opponent. The old man’s magnificence—the honor and humility with which he executes his task—elevates his struggle to a rarified, even transcendent level.”
Santiago is quite a weathered character and also is in some ways like a Roman Stoic philosopher. The reason I am saying this is because he seems to regard parts of his life such as his health, the need for his hunger to be satiated, whether he catches the marlin or not as indifferents. He is able to endure and find hope despite his less-than ideal circumstances being pulled around in the ocean by the fish. This is just the tip of the iceberg so to speak, Santiago’s character can be looked at in many different ways. Hemingway makes some very clear connections with Santiago’s (and the marlin’s) sufferings at sea to the suffering of Christ. The ability of Santiago to find hope and endurance despite the pain he experiences also relate to the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche in how he emphasized how responding to suffering in a certain way can produce good things.
The way Hemingway writes the novella made me feel like I was next to Santiago in his skiff breathing the ocean air and participating in his various profound thoughts including his compassion for the marlin he was intending to hook and sell. His thoughts tend to be very paradoxical. Hemingway’s poetic style of prose is quite engaging.
Overall I enjoyed reading Old Man and the Sea. It was refreshing in numerous ways.
posted by featheredtar at Monday, April 14, 2008
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