Old Man and the Sea

This being a research paper on the book written by Ernest Hemingway, the novel The Old man and the Sea. I am going to be reviewing articles on this book to come up with a comprehensive research paper that discusses the themes in this book and the characters in the book. In this research, I will use articles on this book as well as other books that talk about this book.

This book gives the struggling story between old fishermen with his hugest catch of his lifetime.

Santiago, a very old fisherman of Cuban origin has for 84 days gone to sea and returned with nothing. The old man seems so unlucky to an extent that Manolin, his current friend as well as a young trainee, is forcefully advised to quit the old mans teaching and join other prosperous fishermen by his parents.

Nonetheless, the young trainee surprisingly continues taking good care of the old man whenever he comes back from fishing each and every night. Manolin assist Santiago to carry his kit into his hut, gets food for him while the two talk together about many things, including the what is happening in the American Baseball and especially the trials of Joe Dimaggio who is Santiago`s hero. Santiago has not given up, he has confidence that he is not going to be unproductive in his fishing forever. The following day, he makes up his mind to sail in his boat farther into the sea than he has ever done before.Santiago does as he promised on the 85th day. He makes the lifetime attempt by sailing far away into the shallow water, up to the coast of the island until he arrives at the streams of Gulf.

He goes about his business as usual. He formulates the fishing lines and drops them into the waters. At around midnight, a big fish, a marlin, get caught by the hook when trying to take the bait pined by the old man below the water surface (Gurko,1955). Santiago hooks this fish with all the expertise he has gained during his time fishing but the trouble comes in that he is not able to pull this fish into the boat.

I turn out that the fish rules the situation and starts pulling the boat.The old man decided not to tie them onto the boat because out experience he fears that the big fish could spontaneous a taut line. In its place, the old man holds the line with his bare hand, straining his old body and he stays prepared in case the fish try??™s to make a run. The fish never give in instead it pulled the olds man boat all the day long and night and the following day and night as well. The fish at first swims at a steady motion heading to the northwest and as it get exhausted, it follows the current which follows to the east.

All this time, Santiago is forced to bear the pain that is being exerted on him by the fishing line (Hayen, 2007). Santiago is badly hurt by the cord every time the fish tries to free itself from the hook. Although Santiago is weary and wounded, he is deeply empathetic for the fish and he admires it a great deal. He now considers it as a brother of his in the suffering that they are both going through, resolve and strength.

The struggle continues until the third day when the fish gets tired and Santiago who is deprived of sleep and injured is now in a position to pull this fish near the boat close enough that he kills it using a harpoon with a few sticks on its head (Brenner, 1991). Santiago has never seen or fished a fish this big in his entire life as a fisherman. He pulls it into the boat. He then raises his boat``s mast and starts to sail towards his home. He feels so excited that he would earn enough money when he delivers the fish into the market, but he is not sure if the people who are to the fish if are worth his luck.

He believed that this catch would his worth by proving himself to his fellow fishermen who had doubts in him. This earns him the tragic hero title with a tragic imperfection unfortunately as Santiago sails with the dead fish, the blood of the dead fish leave a trail of blood behind. This attracts the sharks and puts him at the risk of being attacked the sharks. Santiago is attacked by many sharks which he fights off to the best of his ability. He stabs these vicious predators with a spear that he makes by the use of his knife and an oar. He also uses the boat`s tiller to club the sharks. Despite his attempt to kill several sharks in order to scare the rest, all is in vain and the sharks succeed to feed on the olds man price leaving him the bone leftovers (Morgan, 1962).

The old fisherman chastises himself because he went out too far and also because he sacrificed his catch. He manages to get hone before the crack of the dawn and stumbles to his hut where he falls deeply asleep.Early in the morning, lots of fishermen gather around the old mans boat surprised by the great number of sharks surrounding the boat. This is because of the remains of the Marlin, the tourist and the fishermen confuse remain of the Marlin with that of the sharks.

Mandolin has been deeply worried about the fact that Santiago has been absent. He sheds tears when he finds his old man safely sleeping on his bed. He makes some coffee for the old man and gets for him the newspaper of the day with the scores for baseball. He then watches him as he sleeps. After the old man has woken up from his sleep, they agree with Manolin that they should begin to fish together once again (Hemingway, 2007).

This did not only bring joy to the old man but he felt respected by the young boy. In his bed that evening, he finally dreams he had dreamt the long time ago, a lion playing on beaches of Africa.This book is authored by Ernest Hemingway whose writing career started in 1917 writing for the Kansas City Star. The Old Man and the Sea are the utmost widely held work of Ernest Hemingway. In the year 1953, the book won the great Pulitzer Prize and later on, in 1954, Ernest himself won the Nobel peace prize award of literature.

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