Ernest Hemingway

Title	Ernest Hemingway
# of Words	1378
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	5.51

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Chris Ivie American Literature Dr. Breeden 10/2/96

     Many of Ernest Hemingway's books have had different meaning and all
could be interpreted in different way, but there has never been so much written
about his other stories. Well the Old Man and the Sea had more written about it
than any of his other novels and there have never been so many different types
of interpretations about his other novels.  The Old Man and the Sea is a book in
which can be interpreted in many different ways.  Here you will read what many
critics have composed about the story of a great writer, Ernest Hemingway.
Many of the critics have the same outlook on the works of Hemingway.
Hemingway's work The Old man and the Sea can be looked at in many different
perspectives.  All the critics believed that his styling of writing was very
defined.

     In 1944 Ernest Hemingway went to Havana, Cuba and it was there he wrote
a letter to Maxwell Perkins which states he has a idea on a new novel called
The Old Man and the Sea ( Nelson and Jones 139). Hemingway first got his idea
for The Old Man and the Sea  from the stories that he had heard in the small
fish cities in Cuba by a man named Carlos Gutierrez.  He had known of this man
for about twenty years and the stories of the fighting marlins. It was then
that he imagined that man under the two circumstances and came up with the idea.
After about twenty years of pondering on the story , he decided that he would
start on the novel of The Old Man and the Sea.  The story The Old Man and the
Sea is about a old man named Santiago who has to over come the great forces of
nature.  Things seem to always go wrong for him because originally he started
out going to fish for some dinner, then he caught the biggest marlin ever and
it pulled him out in the bay of Cuba even more then he was.  After he was pulled
out, he hurt his hands and couldn't risk going to sleep because of the risk of
sharks. When the sharks finally attacked he lost the marlin which had become a
great part of him because he knew that no one would believe him when he told
them the size of the marlin. This has to be one of the most memorable fights in
a novel that I have ever seen, but I think that the way he put the novel
together was just as good as that of the fight.

     When he put them together it was then that he relized that what he was
actually writing about was a struggle of man vs. nature.  He liked the idea of
man vs. nature and decided to use it in the struggle scene with the marlin.
Magill wrote," the book can be seen as a fable of the unconquerable spirit of
man, a creature capable of snatching  spiritual victories from the
circumstances of disaster and material defeat" (Magill  4325). Also it is
said," the conflict is of  the strength of a ordinary man and the power of
nature"(Magill 4325).  I feel that Santiago plays a large role in the novel by
being able not to give in and prove to the element of nature that he would over
come them in the long run.

      Magill  wrote," The Old Man and the Sea is a direct descendant of Moby
Dick"(Magill 4326). He feels that  the struggle between Santiago and the
marlin is very much like that of the whale and the captain in Moby Dick. The
similarities between The Old Man and the Sea  and Moby Dick are extremely
noticeable after reading both of the stories back to back, but there are
differences in the story line. The main difference is that Santiago never comes
out with anything unlike the captain in Moby Dick. Santiago was left with just
a broken boat, a bad fishing pole, and the misery of defeat.

     The story could also be interpreted as being religious because of the
struggle that Santiago was put though. Also it is felt by some people to be
religious because of the way he only cut his palms( from the rope), his feet(
on the front of the boat) and his head(when the bow hit him in the head). It is
often portrayed as that of Jesus on the cross.  I don't know if I really agree
with this ...

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