Paper 10: The American Literature
Name:
Sagar B Vaghela
Semester:
3
Roll
No: 32
Enrollment
No: 2069108420180052
Paper
10: The American Literature
Topic:
Write a critical note on the character of the Old man.
Batch:
2017-19
Submitted
To: S.B.Gardi Department of English MKBU
Introduction
:
The
old man and the sea written by Earnest Hemingway. The old man is the main
character and the protogonist of this novel. The old man is very hard working
person .he is old but also he is very enthuastic person. He is also very brave
person because he live many day alone in the sea with lots of shark and other
dangerous sea creature.
The
Old Man and the Sea tells the story of a battle between an aging, experienced
fisherman, Santiago, and a large marlin. The story opens with Santiago having
gone 84 days without catching a fish, and now being seen as "salao",
the worst form of unluckiness. He is so unlucky that his young apprentice,
Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to sail with him and has been told
instead to fish with successful fishermen. The boy visits Santiago's shack each
night, hauling his fishing gear, preparing food, talking about American
baseball and his favorite player, Joe DiMaggio. Santiago tells Manolin that on
the next day, he will venture far out into the Gulf Stream, north of Cuba in
the Straits of Florida to fish, confident that his unlucky streak is near its
end.
On
the eighty-fifth day of his unlucky streak, Santiago takes his skiff into the
Gulf Stream, sets his lines and by noon, has his bait taken by a big fish that
he is sure is a marlin. Unable to haul in the great marlin, Santiago is instead
pulled by the marlin, and two days and nights pass with Santiago holding onto the
line. Though wounded by the struggle and in pain, Santiago expresses a
compassionate appreciation for his adversary, often referring to him as a
brother. He also determines that, because of the fish's great dignity, no one
shall deserve to eat the marlin.
On
the third day, the fish begins to circle the skiff. Santiago, worn out and
almost delirious, uses all his remaining strength to pull the fish onto its
side and stab the marlin with a harpoon. Santiago straps the marlin to the side
of his skiff and heads home, thinking about the high price the fish will bring
him at the market and how many people he will feed.
On
his way in to shore, sharks are attracted to the marlin's blood. Santiago kills
a great mako shark with his harpoon, but he loses the weapon. He makes a new
harpoon by strapping his knife to the end of an oar to help ward off the next
line of sharks; five sharks are slain and many others are driven away. But the
sharks keep coming, and by nightfall the sharks
have almost devoured the marlin's entire carcass, leaving a skeleton
consisting mostly of its backbone, its tail and its head. Santiago knows that
he is defeated and tells the sharks of how they have killed his dreams. Upon
reaching the shore before dawn on the next day, Santiago struggles to his
shack, carrying the heavy mast on his shoulder, leaving the fish head and the
bones on the shore. Once home, he slumps onto his bed and falls into a deep
sleep.
A
group of fishermen gather the next day around the boat where the fish's
skeleton is still attached. One of the fishermen measures it to be 18 feet (5.5
m) from nose to tail. Pedrico is given the head of the fish, and the other
fishermen tell Manolin to tell the old man how sorry they are. Tourists at the
nearby café mistakenly take it for a shark. The boy, worried about the old man,
cries upon finding him safe asleep and at his injured hands. Manolin brings him
newspapers and coffee. When the old man wakes, they promise to fish together
once again. Upon his return to sleep, Santiago dreams of his youth—of lions on
an African beach.
The
central character is an old Cuban fisherman named Santiago, who has not caught
a fish for 84 days. The family of his apprentice, Manolin, has forced the boy
to leave the old fisherman, though Manolin continues to support him with food
and bait. Santiago is a mentor to the boy, who cherishes the old man and the
life lessons he imparts. Convinced that his luck must change, Santiago takes
his skiff far out into the deep waters of the Gulf Stream, where he soon hooks
a giant marlin. With all his great experience and strength, he struggles with
the fish for three days, admiring its strength, dignity, and faithfulness to
its identity; its destiny is as true as Santiago’s as a fisherman. He finally
reels the marlin in and lashes it to his boat.
However,
Santiago’s exhausting effort goes for naught. Sharks are drawn to the tethered
marlin, and, although Santiago manages to kill a few, the sharks eat the fish,
leaving behind only its skeleton. After returning to the harbour, the
discouraged Santiago goes to his home to sleep. In the meantime, others see the
skeleton tied to his boat and are amazed. A concerned Manolin is relieved to
find Santiago alive, and the two agree to go fishing together.
The
Old Man and the Sea contains many of the themes that preoccupied Hemingway as a
writer and as a man. The routines of life in a Cuban fishing village are evoked
in the opening pages with a characteristic economy of language. The stripped-down
existence of the fisherman Santiago is crafted in a spare, elemental style that
is as eloquently dismissive as a shrug of the old man’s powerful shoulders.
With age and luck now against him, Santiago knows he must row out “beyond all
people,” away from land and into the Gulf Stream, where one last drama would be
played out, in an empty arena of sea and sky.
Hemingway
was famously fascinated with ideas of men proving their worth by facing and
overcoming the challenges of nature. When the old man hooks a marlin longer
than his boat, he is tested to the limits as he works the line with bleeding
hands in an effort to bring it close enough to harpoon. Through his struggle,
Santiago demonstrates the ability of the human spirit to endure hardship and suffering
in order to win. It is also his deep love and knowledge of the sea, in its
impassive cruelty and beneficence, that allows him to prevail. The essential
physicality of the story—the smells of tar and salt and fish blood, the cramp
and nausea and blind exhaustion of the old man, the terrifying death spasms of
the great fish—is set against the ethereal qualities of dazzling light and
water, isolation, and the swelling motion of the sea. And through it all, the
narrative is constantly tugging, unreeling a little more, and then pulling
again, all in tandem with the old man’s struggle. It is a story that demands to
be read in a single sitting.
The
Old Man and the Sea was an immediate success and came to be regarded as one of
Hemingway’s finest works. It was cited when he won the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1954. A hugely popular film adaptation starring Spencer Tracy was
released in 1958.
Manolin
arrives at the shack while Santiago is still asleep. The boy leaves quickly to
get some coffee for Santiago, crying on his way to the Terrace. Manolin sees
fisherman gathered around the skiff, measuring the marlin at eighteen feet
long. When Manolin returns to the shack, Santiago is awake. The two speak for a
while, and Manolin says, "Now we will fish together again," To which
Santiago replies, "No. I am not lucky. I am not lucky anymore".
Manolin objects, "The hell with luck....I'll bring the luck with me" .
Santiago acquiesces and Manolin leaves to fetch food and a shirt.
That
afternoon there are tourists on the Terrace. A female tourist sees the skeleton
of the marlin moving in the tide. Not recognizing the skeleton, she asks the
waiter what it is. He responds in broken English "eshark," thinking
she wants to know what happened. She comments to her partner that she didn't
know sharks had such beautiful tails. Meanwhile, back in Santiago's shack, the
old man "was still sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him
watching him. The old man was dreaming about lions".
Conclusion
:
The old man is the main character in this
novel. Tge old man is the protogonist of the play the old man and the sea. The
old man sea is the well known and famous play. The old man is very brave person
he fights again the sea creature and the last he achives his goal. Thus we can
say that old man is the vey brave and enthuastic person .
Work
cited:
Comments
Post a Comment