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Loading... The Old Man and The Seaby Ernest Hemingway
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. I'm not sure what to say about this book. I confess: I read it because it was the shortest of Hemmingway's books I could find. Totally worth it, though. (  ) bluedream | Oct 27, 2009 |  I just don't know. Seriously, I can not tell how I feel about this book. On the one hand, it is such a simplistic story and told with such plain prose that it is not tremendously exciting or interesting. On the other hand, the story moved me. I felt for the old man; I admired his courage, I felt his pain as the fishing line cut his hands, and I mourned with him over his losses. So, because of my confusion, let's start with a list: What I Enjoyed The strength of character shown by Santiago The love between the young boy and Santiago Some of the descriptions of animals were rather poignant What I Didn't Care For My inability to truly picture what was happening The sadness inherent in the plotline and in the characters The ending Overall, I have to admit that I don't really see the major appeal of the book. I'm glad I read it...twice...but I don't ever think I'll have a burning desire to read it again. I would however, like it to be made into a movie, ala Cast Away, but I think this is just so I can have a clear visual. Memorable Scene: At one point, Santiago sees a bird circling a school of flying fish, but the flying fish are being chased by a school of dolphins. The way the scene is set up the reader relates to the bird who has no chance of catching his dinner with the dolphins so close. I couldn't stop thinking about the flying fish though who are being pursued to their deaths by two separate animals. They are not safe above or below the surface. Memorable Quote: "Do not think about sin, the thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it...and I am not sure that I believe in it. Perhaps it was a sin to kill the fish. I suppose it was even though I did it to keep me alive and feed many people. But then everything is a sin...You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved hime when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?" (  )1  EclecticEccentric | Oct 18, 2009 | There are enough reviews here that I don't need to repeat the story other than to say this is great classic literature. It's much more than a story of a man and a great fish. It's the story of life itself and the battle we all face. Hemingways prose wastes no words and the reader bonds with the old man and his struggle. I liken this story to Steinbecks The Pearl. A very good read for all ages. ( ) realbigcat | Oct 13, 2009 | My first Ernest Hemmingway book and I found his simple style refreshing. My favorite line: "Fish, I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends." The author endears you to the boy and the old man in many ways ie by the respect the boy carries for the old man, references to baseball and Joe DiMaggio. The heaviness of gulit the old man felt was a weight on myself as the reader. Hemmingway's characters emotion was very real to me. Why did the old man want the big fish so badly? I have many possible answers. Not a book just about an old man and a big fish or maybe... it was. ( ) BONS | Oct 8, 2009 | Those who have not seen the elephant and lack the courage to go looking for it have no right to criticize Ernest Hemingway, who set out as a young man to find the elephant and get a good long look at the Beast, and then describe it for the rest of us. As a young man he did not yet realize that few people are as brave and as honest as he. He went. He saw. He wrote. He told us all about it -- and scarcely anyone believes him. Those who don't tell the few who do that Papa was a fool and a bad man. So it is in life as it was in "The Old Man and the Sea." Now that the big fish is dead, little ones come to savage the corpse. Nobody who has the least thing to lose has a true friend in this life. Those who have nothing may yet find a friend. Papa knew. Not in the least intimidated by the physical and philosophical heft of 'Moby-Dick,' 'The Old Man and the Sea' stands next to Melville's triumphal door-stop and dares to ask which is the ultimate fish story. This writer, being a coward, chooses 'The Old Man and the Sea' on technical grounds: Moby-Dick was not a fish. Thus thoughtful readers are left to decide for themselves. (  ) dekesolomon | Oct 8, 2009 | 
 The Old Man and the Sea has almost none of the old Hemingway truculence, the hard-guy sentimentality that sometimes gives even his most devoted admirers twinges of discomfort. As a story, it is clean and straight. Those who admire craftsmanship will be right in calling it a masterpiece... it is a poem of action, praising a brave man, a magnificent fish and the sea, with perhaps a new underlying reverence for the Creator of such wonders.
Amazon.com (ISBN 0684801221, Paperback)Here, for a change, is a fish tale that actually does honor to the author. In fact The Old Man and the Sea revived Ernest Hemingway's career, which was foundering under the weight of such postwar stinkers as Across the River and into the Trees. It also led directly to his receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1954 (an award Hemingway gladly accepted, despite his earlier observation that "no son of a bitch that ever won the Nobel Prize ever wrote anything worth reading afterwards"). A half century later, it's still easy to see why. This tale of an aged Cuban fisherman going head-to-head (or hand-to-fin) with a magnificent marlin encapsulates Hemingway's favorite motifs of physical and moral challenge. Yet Santiago is too old and infirm to partake of the gun-toting machismo that disfigured much of the author's later work: "The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords." Hemingway's style, too, reverts to those superb snapshots of perception that won him his initial fame:Just before it was dark, as they passed a great island of Sargasso weed that heaved and swung in the light sea as though the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket, his small line was taken by a dolphin. He saw it first when it jumped in the air, true gold in the last of the sun and bending and flapping wildly in the air.If a younger Hemingway had written this novella, Santiago most likely would have towed the enormous fish back to port and posed for a triumphal photograph--just as the author delighted in doing, circa 1935. Instead his prize gets devoured by a school of sharks. Returning with little more than a skeleton, he takes to his bed and, in the very last line, cements his identification with his creator: "The old man was dreaming about the lions." Perhaps there's some allegory of art and experience floating around in there somewhere--but The Old Man and the Sea was, in any case, the last great catch of Hemingway's career. --James Marcus (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:16 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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