To catch the full weight of the emotional Which is too bad in a way, because younger people tend to find itĭull, repetitive and corny. Stream itself with hardly a comma to break the flow.Ĭonsidered Hemingway's masterpiece and is his one book that's taught in high Without noticing exactly when or how it happens, you're sucked into the

Packed into the seemingly simple ruminations of this seemingly simple guy. Old Man and the Sea is hardly even a novel. Way out in his little boat, catches the biggest fish he's ever seen. The plot is dirt simple: Old Cuban guy hasn'tĬaught a fish in a long time. He comes through an acknowledgment of his own ignorance and folly to an even greater acceptance of life's vicissitudes-what we might call wisdom. But he understands something of how things go that has little to do with book learning or sophistication. The old man is uneducated, has a limited experience of the world, and may not be all that smart. The Old Man and the Sea is his finest distillation of this attitude. It's not cynicism exactly, although he occasionally laps over into that, but an acceptance of the game of life which is stacked against us but which we must stoically and with bravado, if not bravery, engage in anyway. Or, as author, he brings them to this position that he presumably already occupies. His lead characters usually have a stillness about them, often contrasting with the more frantic efforts of those around them, as if they know more of the ways of the world than others and are just playing along.

But my own feeling is that what he really wanted was to be considered wise. CRITIQUE | THE TEXT | THE MOVIES A simple fish story?Ī lot has been said about Hemingway's ideals of courage, grace under pressure, and all that.

The old man and the sea story