THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA

Ernest Hemingway

SHORT AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. His father Clarence Edmonds Hemingway was a physician, and his mother, Grace Hall-Hemingway, was a musician. Both were well-educated and well-respected in the conservative community of Oak Park, Illinois.

Hemingway attended Oak Park and River Forest High School from 1913 until 1917. He took part in a number of sports—boxing, track and field, water polo, and football—and had good grades in English classes.

Hemingway was a journalist before becoming a novelist; after leaving high school he went to work for The Kansas City Star as a cub reporter at the age of seventeen.

After the United States entered the First World War, he joined a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army. Serving at the front, he was wounded, was decorated by the Italian Government, and spent considerable time in hospitals. After his return to the United States, he became a reporter for Canadian and American newspapers and was soon sent back to Europe to cover such events as the Greek Revolution.

Hemingway used his experiences as a reporter during the civil war in Spain as the background for his most ambitious novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). Among his later works, the most outstanding is the short novel, The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the story of an old fisherman's journey, his long and lonely struggle with a fish and the sea, and his victory in defeat.Hemingway - himself a great sportsman - liked to portray soldiers, hunters, bullfighters - tough, at times primitive people whose courage and honesty are set against the brutal ways of modern society, and who in this confrontation lose hope and faith. His straightforward prose, his spare dialogue, and his predilection for understatement are particularly effective in his short stories.

Three months later, back in Ketchum, Mary (his wife) "found Hemingway holding a shotgun". His personal physician Dr. Saviers arrived, sedated him, and admitted him to the Sun Valley hospital; from there he was returned to the Mayo for more shock treatments. He was released in late June and arrived home in Ketchum on June 30.

Hemingway also suffered paranoia- a mental deterioration. Hemingway suffered from physical problems as well: his health declined and his eyesight was failing.

Two days later, in the early morning hours of July 2, 1961, Hemingway "quite deliberately" shot himself with his favourite shotgun. He unlocked the basement storeroom where his guns were kept, went upstairs to the front entrance foyer of their Ketchum home, and "pushed two shells into the twelve-gauge Boss shotgun ...put the end of the barrel into his mouth, pulled the trigger and blew out his brains."

Hemingway's chin, mouth, and lower cheeks were left, but the upper half of his head was blown away. Mary called the Sun Valley Hospital, and Dr. Scott Earle arrived at the house within "fifteen minutes". Despite his finding that Hemingway "had died of a self-inflicted wound to the head", the story told to the press was that the death had been "accidental".

Hemingway’s Literary works:"Indian Camp" (1926)The Sun Also Rises (1927)A Farewell to Arms (1929)"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (1935)For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)The Old Man and the Sea (1951)A Moveable Feast (1964, posthumous)True at First Light (1999)

Spouse(s)Elizabeth Hadley Richardson(1921–1927)Pauline Pfeiffer (1927–1940)Martha Gellhorn (1940–1945)Mary Welsh Hemingway (1946–1961)ChildrenJack Hemingway (1923–2000)Patrick Hemingway (1928–)Gregory Hemingway (1931–2001)

CHARACTERS:Santiago:

The old man who goes out to the sea farther than any other fishermen. He has gone 84 days without catching any fish at all. Once he get out there, he has an epic battle with nature.

Manolin: The old man’s apprentice. A young boy who has been forbidden

by his parents to sail with the old man and been ordered to fish with more successful fishermen. He is the boy who visits Santiago's shack each night, hauling back his fishing gear, feeding him and discussing American baseball—most notably Santiago's idol Joe DiMaggio.

The great Marlin: Is a "billfish" with an elongated body, a spear-like snout or

bill, and a long rigid dorsal fin, which extends forward to form a crest.

In the middle of the sea: where the man experienced a great struggle with the marlin. A battle in nature.

The Old Man and the Sea recounts an epic battle of wills between an old, experienced fisherman and a giant marlin said to be the largest catch of his life. It opens by explaining that the fisherman, who is named Santiago, has gone 84 days without catching any fish at all. He is apparently so unlucky that his young apprentice, Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to sail with the old man and been ordered to fish with more successful fishermen.

SETTINGS:

PLOT SUMMARY:

Still dedicated to the old man, however, the boy visits Santiago's shack each night, hauling back his fishing gear, feeding him and discussing American baseball—most notably Santiago's idol, Joe DiMaggio (an American baseball player for the New York Yankees). Santiago tells Manolin that on the next day, he will venture far out into the Gulf to fish, confident that his unlucky streak is near its end.

Thus on the eighty-fifth day, Santiago sets out alone, taking his skiff far onto the Gulf. He sets his lines and, by noon of the first day, a big fish that he is sure is a marlin takes his bait. Unable to pull in the great marlin, Santiago instead finds the fish pulling his skiff. Two days and two nights pass in this manner, during which the old man bears the tension of the line with his body.

Though he is 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 will be worthy of eating the marlin.

On the third day of the ordeal, the fish begins to circle the skiff, indicating his tiredness to the old man. Santiago, now completely worn out and almost in delirium, uses all the strength he has left in him to pull the fish onto its side and stab the marlin with a harpoon ending the long battle between the old man and the tenacious fish.

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.

While Santiago continues his journey back to the shore, sharks are attracted to the trail of blood left by the marlin in the water. The first, a great mako shark, Santiago kills with his harpoon, losing that weapon in the process. He makes a new harpoon by strapping his knife to the end of an oar to help ward off the next line of sharks; in total, 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.

Finally reaching the shore before dawn on the next day, he struggles on the way to his shack, carrying the heavy mast on his shoulder. 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. Tourists at the nearby café mistakenly take it for a shark.

Manolin, worried during the old man's endeavor, cries upon finding him safe asleep. The boy 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.

SOCIOLOGICAL UNDERPINNINGS

The story of the old man and the sea pertains to the heroic struggle of an aging man to catch a giant marlin far out at sea. It shows that there are something in life which we can’t be learned quickly, and time which is all we have must know how to used it properly. They are the very simple things and because it takes a man’s life to know them, the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage we can give to our future generations.

PSYCHOLOGICAL UNDERPINNINGS

The story wants to imply to us that in life, we should not limit ourselves to do something. We should learn how to accept possibilities. Don’t lose hope because life is a cycle. Sometimes we fail but there will be success in the end. Remember that life is like a road of continues journey.

THEMES:

SACRIFICE HOPE COURAGE DETERMINATION