The Old Man and the Sea: Final Thoughts

That last blog post had at least two different points in it, so I think that that counts. Anyway, since now I have exhausted all of my significant points, the only logical post would be a conclusion one.

Overall, I liked this book. I thought the way that Hemingway wrote it and the way he presented the characters really helped the reader to understand what the book was really about. I liked how he would sometimes just blatantly state what the old man was thinking, instead of coding it into a parable and having the reader decipher the real meaning. That doesn’t mean that he did not use stories to present a point, like how the old man only dreams about the lions, but at least they were points worth figuring out, not just “The boy loved the old man” (Hemingway 14).

The only part that the old man does not give closure on is the ending. At first it seems that, “Oh, the old man just went to sleep and the boy cried and the people in the town were amazed at how big the fish was.” Then, I started to wonder, “Was the old man defeated?” It seems probable that he was both defeated and not defeated, but he cannot be both at the same time, so which one is he? I guess it is all in the way that the reader interprets “defeat”.

Some people may think that the old man was defeated because even though he ended up catching and bringing the fish back with him, the sharks ate the fish. The old man even said, “They beat me, Manolin, they truly beat me.” (Hemingway 91)

Another way to look at it though would be, “Is there a difference between beaten and defeated?” Personally, I think that the old man was not defeated because to me, defeat would mean a breaking of the spirit or the will of the old man. His will is clearly not broken, because he talks with the boy the day after he gets back about them fishing together soon, and all of the preparations that the boy needs to get done. I also don’t think that he was completely beaten because even though the fish was eaten by sharks before he could make it back to land, he still caught the fish, which I think is good enough to count as bringing it in, and that would mean his bad luck streak came to an end.

I guess it is also open for interpretation as to whether the old man dies after the end because he has been out at sea for over three days, and he is old, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he did die. Maybe that is why the boy was crying, because he knew the old man was dying. We will never know.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. New York: Scribner, 1980. Kindle. Web. 21 June 2011.