Hemingway’ novel The Old Man and the Sea Essay
Hemingway’s late novel The Old Man and the Sea lends alone readily to allegorical and religious model; indeed, variety critical text messages exist wherein solutions for the novel’s comprehensive and haunting symbolism crowd the web pages until the reader begins to hesitation the efficacy of virtually any single model. The intricacy of Hemingway’s fish history demands since wide an appraisal as can be summoned by the reader and essenti, forfeiting promises to any solitary or final statement around the novel’s specific religious associations. Certainly, traditional aspects of Roman Catholicism (as very well as ancient pagan faith based imagery and themes) form a vibrant part of the novel’s motif.
For example , the concepts of sin (and original sin) rise while central towards the tension, uncertainty, and figure development of the novel. Santiago, the novel’s protagonist undergoes two apparently separate battles during the course of the novel: 1st against a gigantic marlin he hopes to capture while fishing alone, significantly at ocean; the second battle he pay against sharks whom steal his prize leads to a pyrrhic success. Along the way, the two external occasions blend with Santiago’s interior monologues, which in turn indicate a great inner, spiritual struggle, one which first intimates itself and after that clearly reveals itself to be universal, instead of personal, in nature.
By building a deeply sympathetic character throughout the first third of the novel, and extending this kind of reader-identification through the more morally ambiguous and treacherous elements of the story, Hemingway allows for general reader compassion. Santiago’s characterization is one among honor, courage, compassion, and humility. These types of aspects of his character line-up him having a state of purity or perhaps sinless-ness, as though his community mirrors that of the pre-fallen Eden.
After killing the truly great marlin after which losing this kind of trophy into a feeding craze of sharks, Santiago represents the original desprovisto of all guys, women and, actually Satan Himself, as defined by traditional Catholicism. The bad thing, stated simply is: pride. A far more complex meaning: that Santiago by touring far out to sea past where any other fisherman would go and in seeking to catch a greater fish than any fisher man can catch only, demonstrates Santiago’s will toward individualism and and so a will against his hitherto modest train station in life. When the fishes attack, Santiago construes all of them as a consequence for what he has done, by simply venturing away beyond all people. Beyond everyone in the world.
Through the first night of his fight with the marlin, Santiago begins to feel a sense of guilt for what he is undertaking. I i am only greater than him through trickery, he believes, and he meant myself no harm. Recently, Santiago believed that sportfishing for foodstuff was a respectable act, in sea, fighting the marlin, he starts to believe in another way. His self-directed comment about trickery parallels the idea of the Tree expertise and original sin.
Mankind’s pride in intelligence leads to senseless devastation, fueled not by want, but by vanity. Santiago’s predicament brings upon intense reader-sympathy and the inner-struggle described through Santiago’s monologues helps bring in and support the religious catharsis Santiago experiences, also in the reader. One interprets that an work of counter or pride carries deep repercussions regardless if it may seem insignificant: a fisherman who these people own in not for foodstuff but for fame will wound and destroy beauty.
At the end of the novel what stands of the wonderful fish can be described as skeleton washed away in the tide. Santiago’s sin is the fact he needs to have loved but not hunted and killed the fantastic marlin, but in falling victim to his vanity this individual enacted a universal, individual urge, which usually ultimately made tragedy and after that intelligence, rather than simple trickery.
