A Very Short The Old Man and the Sea Essay

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway is about an ancient mariner named

Santiago who has had no luck catching fish for over 80 days. Santiago is very poor in a small

Cuban fishing village so he decides to go for out to sea to try and catch so fish where no one else

will be to catch them before him. He gets a really big fish on the line which takes him three days

to finally kill and tie to his skiff so he can head back to shore. As he tries to reel in the fish

though he thinks a great deal—whether it be about the fish and how noble it is or about the rights

and wrongs of killing the fish or what might have been if he better planned for the unknown big

fish. The 18-foot-long fish attracts sharks and the whole fish except for the skeleton is eaten on

the sail back. The fish symbolizes wants and dreams of people and this symbol fits into the larger

allegory of the story being about man’s journey through life.

On the first day of Santiago’s fishing trip, he hooks a fish of unknown size and character.

He learns of the fish’s strength and wit as Santiago gets “towed by a fish” with Santiago as “the

towing bitt” (Hemingway 39). The fish also is smart and does not swim fast wasting its precious

energy, but Santiago is also smart and knows that at any moment the fish could go fast and break

the line. Santiago must hold the fish and “give him line when he must have it” to ensure the fish

does not escape (Hemingway 40). The fish, representing hopes and dreams, then means that as a

man sets out on their journey in life, they will be forced to battle an obstacle where they only

know its strength and intelligence and must match it in all areas. Along with that, they must be

prepared for any disruption to the current circumstances and to make sure that when a disruption

does happen, they are not caught off guard and their goal snaps their will power or their effort or

goal itself gone and they must start again hoping to get as good of a shot as they did. This
moment—this first day—is a treacherous time but the easiest to recover from; the later days will

be less forgiving.

On the second day the fish decides to jump out of the water revealing itself to Santiago.

The fish is a massive 18 feet long and worth thousands of dollars. Santiago spends the day

talking with the fish and thinking about the fish. Santiago tells the fish that he will “kill him

though … [in] all his greatness and his glory” (Hemingway 53). Santiago respects the fish’s will

to live but ultimately puts his own need to live above the fish’s need to live. The fish, now

desires and dreams, reveals itself to the man and in seeing its full form loves the dream he made

even more. His plan to obtain it is justified and bolstered and he grows to love the process

respecting the hard work needed to achieve that dream. He knows though that he has to catch the

dream possible at the expense of other whether directly or indirectly. Unbeknown to him the

dream once caught dies like a fish out of water.

On the final day Santiago catches his fish, the man his dream, but the sharks eat the fish

in its entirety before it gets to shore. Santiago ties the dead fish to the side of the skiff because

the fish’s size dictates it. The fish dead in the water attracts sharks who are hungry and like

Santiago and like the fish want to live. Santiago tries to defend the fish killing a few sharks in the

process, but he lost everything but the boat and mast itself in his defense of the fish. Once

Santiago gets to the shore and his village the fish is now a skeleton. The fish dead alongside the

dreams of old men. The fish’s life was taken, and the old man’s life spent on a dead dream with

nothing to show for it but the skeleton of effort. Santiago wonders what beat him, and Santiago

responds aloud with, “Nothing … I went out too far” (Hemingway 89). The risky plan was in the

end the downfall of the dream and there was no one else to blame for his own mistakes. Santiago

lives though to fish another day and old men live to dream once again—to dream about the lions.