The Old Man and the Sea: Thoughts - Part I

First of all, let me just say this was a good book. It was not as bad as I thought it might be. In fact, it was not bad at all. It told of a good plot line and a couple solid characters, not to mention, I really loved the length. I think it is the shortest of the books I am reading this summer. Santiago is a steadfast man of seemingly fair character despite his age. He is very old, and in my experience, old men are usually crochety and grouchy when it comes to kids, especially me. When I was younger, we had a neighbor who lived alone and enjoyed sitting outside on the porch in his rocker. I had a few friends who lived down the road, and they would walk down to my house, and we would play freeze tag or baseball or some other pick-up game. Unfortunately, we always had to set up crazy boundries because by no means at all could we even think of looking at the old man's yard. When a ball went in it, he literally sat there, looked at us momentarily, and busted out with a grand, gasping sort of laugh. Why is Santiago not like that? Is my memory not actually how all old men are? I suppose it is because Santiago is a fisherman, and there was not much fishing around where I lived. It must be the smells of the open seas that calm the senses of Santiago. But enough of that. I enjoyed reading The Old Man and the Sea because it also had a phenomenal, yet extremely predictable, ending. See, when a man goes out fishing and catches such an amazing feat, it is only inevitable that no one else actually gets to marvel at it. It would be too good to be true if the marlin was brought into shore intact, but instead, the only option is to have the marlin torn apart. Since the marlin would feed so many people, it could only happen in fairytales. I apologize Ernest Hemingway, but your story is ridiculously obvious. It really is not even funny.