The Old Man and the Sea.docx - Michelle Lin Summer Reading...

Michelle Lin
Summer Reading
The Old Man and the Sea
In my opinion I think the sea is a character itself. She not only acts as an ally but also an
antagonist in this novel. She is a virtue asset to this story; she is somehow count as a main
character. The sea is something that’s important to the people living there because people need
the fishes in the sea to survive. In The Old Man and the Sea , nature plays an important part.
Ernest Hemingway made a deep connection between the old man and the nature. She is an ally in
the story by providing fish for the old man to survive and everyone else, but an antagonist
because she didn’t let the old man catch the big fish easily.
I think that the sea is a character itself. It serves as a point of interaction with the old man
during his struggles and is representative of the fisherman's entire life. After all, the most natural
relationship of a fisherman would be with a body of water. Ernest Hemingway also let us know
the important relationship and the sea’s significant in this novel by naming the title The Old Man
and the Sea .
In my opinion I think the sea is feminine. In a part of the story, Santiago calls the sea ‘La
Mar’, as do the other older fishermen. Also, the lack of a female presence in the story made it
even more likely that Ernest made the sea as a feminine part. The old man is essentially, a
masculine figure, so it made it more possible that the sea is a feminine figure as the author name
the novel, The Old Man and the Sea .
The marlin is more than a great fish locked in an evenly balanced and protracted battle
with an accomplished fisherman. It is also a creature onto whom Santiago projects the same

qualities that he possesses, admires, and hopes to pass on: nobility of spirit, greatness in living,
faithfulness to one's own identity and ways, endurance, beauty, and dignity. As Santiago and the
marlin remain locked in battle for three days, they become intimately connected. Santiago first
pities and admires the fish and then empathizes and identifies with it. He recognizes that just as
the marlin was born to be a fish, he was born to be a fisherman. They are brothers in the
inevitability of their circumstances, locked in the natural cycle of predator and prey.
The marlin's death represents Santiago's greatest victory and the promise of all those
intangibles he so desperately hopes for to redeem his individual existence. Yet, like the marlin,
Santiago also must inevitably lose and become the victim. After the mako shark's attack,
Santiago eats the marlin's flesh to sustain himself, completing the natural cycle in which the great
creature passes on something of itself to Santiago. Not only are all creature’s predator and prey,
but all also nourish one another. The marlin's brave and unavailing struggle to save its own life
becomes Santiago's brave an unavailing struggle to save the marlin from the scavenger sharks.