Critique of Old Man in the Sea by Ernest Hemmingway

The Old Man and the Sea : Chasing and Being Chased

The Old Man and the Sea refers to those literary works of Ernest Hemingway , which give much space to interpretation due to their allegorical nature . Indeed , on the surface the plot is not very much overloaded by events , presenting a story of the old fisherman Santiago who hunts a great fish for a few days . For over eighty days he hasn 't caught a single fish and finally his young friend and pupil , the boy called Manolo , sees him off to have another

try . Santiago manages to get hold of a gigantic marlin which is so strong that it takes three days pursuit to exhaust and kill him . Meanwhile , the old man is hurt and weakened himself . However , sharks perceive the smell of the fish 's flesh and although Santiago uses all arms at hand against them , it is all in vain and eventually there is nothing left of the marlin but the skeleton . Under this plain canvass lies a complex intrinsic meaning which the current essay is going to be focused on . The main concepts , to which most critical research can be confined , are the interrelation between Man and Nature , Man and Faith and Man and Death . These points combined with the insight into Christian symbolism of the novel serve to be the key object of the current

One of the essential elements of any philosophical conception refers to the correlation between Man and Nature . There is no wonder that some researchers lay emphasis on this aspect when interpreting the novel That 's what Leo Gurko writes about it : One aspect of this universe familiar from the earlier works , is its changelessness . The round of Nature - which includes human nature - is not only eternal but eternally the same . The sun not only rises , it rises always , and sets and rises again without change of rhythm . The relationship of Nature to man proceeds through basic patterns that never vary . Therefore , despite the fact that a story by Hemingway is always full of action , the action takes place inside a world that is fundamentally static (Gurko , 1955 The organization of the Universe is not based on accidents , it is profoundly well-ed . Everyone has a special role he ought to play often the role of a hunter and the hunted . But the point is , despite the prescriptive character of these roles , the attitudes which they invoke can vary significantly . Then the relativity of being a hunter and being a victim is inevitable and it becomes evident that it is vital to feel like a part of nature 's wise mechanism , to feel affection for its creatures despite the role you play in relation to them . A sense of brotherhood and love , in a world in which everyone is killing or being killed , binds together the creatures of Nature , establishes between them a unity and an emotion which transcends the destructive pattern in which they are caught . In the eternal round , each...