The Old Man And The Sea - 1246 Words

Ernest Hemmingway published The Old Man and the Sea in 1951. It was the last of his works published while he was still alive. Some of his other books include A Farewell to Arms (1929), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and many others. He was born in Chicago in 1899. He was a Red Cross ambulance driver in World War I, but was wounded badly while rescuing an injured soldier and returned home once he had recovered. Later he moved to Paris and wrote his first few books. He lived in many other places over the course of his life, and married no less then four times. He finally committed suicide with a shotgun in 1961. The Old Man and the Sea is set in a small village on the coast of Cuba. It focuses on Santiago, an old fisherman whose luck has†¦show more content†¦Then the old man leaves on a fishing voyage without the boy, hoping that he will finally catch a big fish. At around midday, the fish takes the old man’s bait, and begins pulling him out to sea. Slowly, over the co urse of three days, the old man brings it closer and closer, and also forms an odd emotional attachment to it. He eventually brings it up to his boat and kills it with his harpoon. As he returns home, sharks follow the blood from the fish and one at a time tearing away at it, despite the number of them killed by the old man. By the time he reaches shore, only the head is left, but the skeleton is marveled over by other fishermen. The main conflict is the struggle between man and nature, and our insignificance compared the entire planet, but that we are ourselves part of it, not by any means a separate organism. This first quote describes the old man’s thoughts on the ocean. It is from near the beginning of the story, when the old man sets off to catch a fish. â€Å"He always thought of the sea as la mar which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman. Some of t he younger fishermen, those who used buoys as floats for their lines and had motorboats, bought when the shark livers had brought much money, spoke of her as el mar which is masculine. They spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man always thought of her as