"Old man and Young spirit" in " The Old Man and The Sea".

Assignment

Name: - Dave Nimesh B

M.A. Sem: - 3

Paper No :- 10 ( The American Literature)

Assignment Topic: "Old man and Young spirit" in " The Old Man and The Sea".

Academic Year :- 2015-16

Submitted To :- Department of English ( MKBU)

"Old man and Young spirit" in " The Old Man and The Sea".

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Preface:-

•  'The Old Man and the Sea' which  is undoubtedly  one of the true classics of our generation marks the triumph of Hemingway as a literary  artist. it is too short to be called a novel and too short to be called a story. it is in fact, a novelette, a straightforward tale with only one plot. the greatest quality of the book is that it cannot be vitiated by public distortion  in another medium for film purposes. the book which was brought out in 1952 was so widely read and talked But that it earned its author the Pulitzer prize the same year and was instrumental in winning him the Nobel prize two years later.

• Santiago

·         A paragon of precision and exactness:-

• A perfectionist:-
  
  
  
  
  
  

•   Santiago s the finest and best known of the code heroes of Hemingway. He is a perfectionist. A man believing in the observation of utmost exactness and precision in his appointed task . When he fights the prestigious battle with Marlin, he is in the full maturity of his life armed with all the tricks and skills of his profession.

• the chief point about him at this crucial juncture is that he behaves perfectly and honorably and with courage and utmost endurance.

• He neither wavers nor does he show any sign of any weakness anywhere. Because he has gleaned through trial and error  a sheaf of wisdom and cultivated an art of living in the world torn by violence and bloodshed.

• Hemingway’s admiration for such a perfectionist is brought for the pitch of religious fervor because the protagonist is not convincingly weak at any point. If he has the weakness of hand " it is an example of stylized human frailty  that he must overcome".

• A strange old man

• Santiago is the first of the Hemingway heroes to have grown old. He is a strange old Cuban fisherman.
• "Everything about him is old except his eyes", and they are the same color as the sea but they are cheerful and undefeated, which is very rare in the old  age.
• he is thin and gaunt  with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown patches of the skin cancer are seen on his cheeks and well down the sides of his face.

• his head is very old and with his eyes closed, there is no life in his face. His shoulders are very strong. Although they are very old, they are still very powerful. The neck too is very strong. That is why he tells Manolin that he is strong enough for a truly big fish and what is required in the  battle is not only strength but also tricks of the trade and that he has in abundance

• "I may not be as strong as I think but I know many tricks and I have resolution".

• "I had told the boy I was a strange old man. now is when I must prove it".

• It is in these rare moments of triumph that he wants to show the boy what man could do with his confidence, skill & tricks despite his  old age.

• A lonely Fisherman:-

Santiago is not only old but also companionless. he lost his wife several years ago. the only friend he has in the world is a tender hearted boy he, too, is restrained by his father from going to sea with him.

Though he is not able  to take any fish for 84 days, he goes alone to sea with the same SPIRIT, CONFIDENCE & HOPE thinking that

"EVERYDAY IS A NEW DAY FOR HIM".

    'Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it'.

when he is on the deep waters, he looks  all across the sea to learn how alone he is. he regrets saying, "No one should be alone in their old age.........". and wishes fondly to have the boy to help him and see him perform his avowed task  in the height of its excellence. he says aloud ' I wish I had the boy to help me and to see this.

but he soon experiences that there is some cosmic unity where  the sea, the fish, the birds, the moon, the sun, and the stars are inseparably joined.

An unbeaten hand fighter:-

Santiago is a formidable fighter whose best days are behind. years earlier, he had  hand match with a giant Negro . each one tried to force the others hand down on to the table. they struggled sleeplessly for twenty four hours.

At last, Santiago forced the hand of the Negro down until it rested on the wood. he could beat anyone in hand matches but ' it was bad for his right hand for fishing'.

he had tried a few practice matches with his left hand but it has always been a traitor and would not do what he called on it to do. he, therefore, did not trust it. his left hand is as great a handicap to him as the bone spurs to Di-Magglo. it is this that gets cramped when battling with the fish. he does not blame any other for it, he rather owes his own fault in ' not training one properly'. it is in the hour  of this weakness that he says , ' I wish the boy where here'.  the boy, in fact , is his left hand'.

★A humble man:-

Santiago is a man of humble birth. he liblves in a shack that is made of the tough bud shields of the royal palm. in it there is a bed, a table, a chair and a place on the dirt floor cook with charoal.

though he is a super fisher man and an unbeaten hand fighter, he  never puffs up his chest with pride. he rather treasures Christ like simplicity and humility and glorifies in supreme sacrifice.

• A highly considerate and grateful man:-

 he is very tolerant, considerate, thankful, graceful and courteous to theirs. when Manolin tells him that it " was papa made me leave", he does not mind it. he says, " I know. it s quite normal". if anybody does any act of kindness to him, he feels very much obliged to him and tries to repay him.

A wounded figure:-

Like earlier Hemingway heroes, he is also wounded figure. his hands have the deep creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. but none of these scars are fresh. they are as old as erosions in a fishless desert.

when Santiago struggles with the fish, his hands starts bleeding profusely. he washes them one by one and wipes them on his trousers. he knows that the battle is between fish and his hands, and his hands will cure quickly when the hands did their work, he bled them clean and the salt water would have then.

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• Santiago suffers terribly throughout The Old Man and the Sea. In the opening pages of the book, he has gone eighty-four days without catching a fish and has become the laughingstock of his small village. He then endures a long and grueling struggle with the marlin only to see his trophy catch destroyed by sharks. Yet, the destruction enables the old man to undergo a remarkable transformation, and he wrests triumph and renewed life from his seeming defeat. After all, Santiago is an old man whose physical existence is almost over, but the reader is assured that Santiago will persist through Manolin, who, like a disciple, awaits the old man’s teachings and will make use of those lessons long after his teacher has died. Thus, Santiago manages, perhaps, the most miraculous feat of all: he finds a way to prolong his life after death.
• Santiago’s commitment to sailing out farther than any fisherman has before, to where the big fish promise to be, testifies to the depth of his pride. Yet, it also shows his determination to change his luck. Later, after the sharks have destroyed his prize marlin, Santiago chastises himself for his hubris (exaggerated pride), claiming that it has ruined both the marlin and himself. True as this might be, it is only half the picture, for Santiago’s pride also enables him to achieve his most true and complete self. Furthermore, it helps him earn the deeper respect of the village fishermen and secures him the prized companionship of the boy—he knows that he will never have to endure such an epic struggle again. (Sparknote)

• Santiago’s pride is what enables him to endure, and it is perhaps endurance that matters most in Hemingway’s conception of the world—a world in which death and destruction, as part of the natural order of things, are unavoidable.

• Hemingway seems to believe that there are only two options: defeat or endurance until destruction; Santiago clearly chooses the latter. His stoic determination is mythic, nearly Christ- like in proportion. For three days, he holds fast to the line that links him to the fish, even though it cuts deeply into his palms, causes a crippling cramp in his left hand, and ruins his back.

• This physical pain allows Santiago to forge a connection with the marlin that goes beyond the literal link of the line: his bodily aches attest to the fact that he is well matched, that the fish is a worthy opponent, and that he himself, because he is able to fight so hard, is a worthy fisherman. This connectedness to the world around him eventually elevates Santiago beyond what would otherwise be his defeat. Like Christ, to whom Santiago is unashamedly compared at the end of the novella, the old man’s physical suffering leads to a more significant spiritual triumph

• Because Santiago is pitied against the creatures of the sea, some readers  choose to view the tale as a chronicle of man's battle against a natural world, but the novella is, more accurately, the story of man's place within nature. both Santiago. And the Marlin display qualities of pride, honor and bravery, and both are subject to the same eternal law. they must kill or be killed.

• As Santiago reflects when he watches the weary warbles fly towards the shore, where it will inevitably meet the hawk, the world is filled with predators, and no living thing can escape the inevitable struggle that lead to its death. Santiago lives according to his own  observation:

• "MAN IS NOT MADE FOR DEFEAT.........
• (A) MAN CAN BE DESTROYED BUT NOT DEFEATED."

• In Hemingway's portrait of the world, death is inevitable, but the best men will nonetheless refuse to give in to its power. Accordingly, man & fish will struggle to  death, just as hungry Sharks will lay waste to an old man's trophy catch.

• indeed a man can prove this determination over and over through the worthiness of the opponents he chooses to face. Santiago finds  the Marlin worthy of a fight, just as he once found . the great negro of Cienfuegos worthy. his admiration for these opponents bring love and respect into an equation with death, as their destruction became point of honor and bravery that confirms Santiago's heroic qualities.
• one might characterize the equation as the working out of the statement " BECAUSE I LOVE YOU, I HAVE TO KILL YOU". Alternately, one might draw the parallel to the poet  John Keats and his insistence that beauty can be only comprehended in the moment before death, as beauty bows to destruction.
• Santiago, though destroyed at the end of the novella, is never defeated. Instead, he emerges as a hero. Santiago's struggle does enable him to change man's place in the world. Rather, it enables him to meet his  most dignified destiny.
• He is a dynamic old man ready to fight against heavy odds.  He is a superb craftsman. In spite of feeling dizzy and weak with exhaustion, he continues his battle.

A Saint:-

• Santiago by the end of the novel is not what he is in the beginning. he is a man  completely transformed- a man spiritually re born. he is a saint, an enlightened one. he does not progress or change in ordinary sense. the development  in his character  that  does might be best compared to  a spiritual progress,  a saint might achieve as a result of an ordeal that  test character traits already achieved. (Singh)

• As a saint should , he lives and moves within medieval world of sorts, with a clearly defined chain of being.

• "never have I seen a greats of more beautiful or a calmer or more noble things than you brother"- Old man to Manolin.

• on the  words of Jackson j. Benson " Santiago's world is, to a large extent Aristotelian, in that it is one of order and degree of careful assigned natures and proper  spheres of balance and counter balance. Everything is  sharpened, properly placed and polished".

Conclusion:-

• Thus in Santiago, Hemingway projects the image of  man who can find contentment not in any philosophical doctrine but in the exact and excellence performance of his appointed task. A man who seeks brotherhood not only in the  human kingdom but also in  the kingdom of birds and animals and in the realm of stars far above him. a man who perceives one spiritual unity in the diversity of the universe & search non violence even in a violent act through detachment, compassion and selfless love. The story of Santiago is posed in terms of paradoxes central to relivious faith and the protagonist successfully practices fundamental natural principles of harmonious opposition, compassionate, violence and victorious defeat.

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Work Cited

Singh, R. N. Earnest Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers And Distributors, 1999.

Sparknote. 30 10 2015. 30 10 2015 <http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/oldman/characters.html>.