By Lorna M-R

Santiago, the old man from The Old Man and the Sea, faces many challenges over the course of the novella. Ernest Hemingway, the author, depicts Santiago as a strong old fisherman that does not give up on himself, even though he begins to crumble. The obstacles he is faced with push him to his limits, and even begin to slowly kill him. As he begins to overcome them, and he slowly builds his confidence, he realizes that even though he is an old man, he does have a chance to catch the fish. He struggles with his body, his conscience, and of course with the fish. In the end, the obstacles take a toll on his mental awareness. Still, endless determination helped him to be strong and keep chasing after the marlin until he caught it.

When Santiago’s body begins to fail him, he struggles and realizes his age and his famine. The old man had to always be alert of the fish, and his fishing line, but it was difficult while one of his hands was cramped and numb. “He woke with the jerk of his right fist coming up against his face and the line burning out through his right hand. He had no feeling of his left hand but he braked all he could with his right and the line rushed out” (82). Even when his hands were in pain, the old man continued to try to catch the fish. He was also forced to sleep with the fishing line on his back, which was just as painful as his cut-up and cramped hands.

During his journey, Santiago was famished without food or water. When people lack the natural resources they need to survive, sometimes it can alter their state of mind. When Santiago’s hand was hurting him, he started talking to it, and he talked to himself, even though a hand could obviously not talk back to him. “’You did not do so badly for something worthless,’ he said to his left hand. ‘But there was a moment when I could not find you’” (85). He was lonely, and his hand was one of the only things that were left for him to talk to.

While the old man was pursuing the fish, the marlin gave him many problems. The fishing line cut his hands when the fish circled around in the water, and the fish also never gave up. This meant that the old man had to struggle for many days to catch the fish. Even after he caught the fish, it still gave him trouble. Since the fish was so big, the old man had to tie it to the side of his boat, which attracted sharks. “The two sharks closed together and as he saw the one nearest him open his jaws and sink them into the silver side of the fish, he raised the club high and brought it down heavy and slamming onto the shark’s broad head” (113). The sharks ate the fish, and therefore made the old man’s journey practically pointless.

The old man is faced with struggles that compromise his self-esteem, confidence, and even his mental health, but he persevered through it all. He overcame everything that he was faced with, and he never lost his will to catch the fish. Even though he lost the fish in the end, he didn’t let the sharks ruin his journey. He was proud of himself, and he made the boy proud too.