By Nora M.

The Old Man and the Sea is a novella about an elderly man named Santiago and his struggles to catch a fish. Santiago was battling Mother Nature as he traveled way out into the ocean. Throughout the book, Hemingway describes all the obstacles Santiago faced while out at sea. These obstacles include things such as; shark attacks, dealing with a cramped hand, and fatigue because of the lack of food.

Santiago faced many dangers out at sea, one of them being multiple shark attacks. “When the old man saw him coming he knew that this was a shark that had no fear at all and would do exactly what he wished” (101). This is what the old man was thinking when he saw the first shark beginning to come closer. To this one he rammed the harpoon onto the shark’s head, in between his eyes. Though it seemed like the obvious solution, he actually lost his harpoon. He got creative though in finding other ways to kill the sharks, because unfortunately for him he encountered several more sharks. Unfortunately for him though he lost all the meat off of his fish before returning home.

Another challenge Santiago faced, was his cramped hand. As you know, your hands are an absolute necessity for fishing, so this cramp caused some problems for Santiago. “How do you feel, hand? he asked the cramped hand that was almost as stiff as rigor mortis” (58). Rigor Mortis is the stiffening of the body after death, so as you can imagine Santiago’s hand was very hard and rocklike. He thought the cramp was just going to be temporary. So he tried to just continue on with his regular routine. But it didn’t go away so he had to struggle with it the whole journey, but he didn’t let that stop him from catching a great fish and fighting off sharks.

As you can imagine, Santiago didn’t have much food to begin with. He was just relying on the fish he caught, but since he didn’t catch many, he struggled with fatigue. “Twice, though, he had felt faint and dizzy and that had worried him” (87). Not eating for a long time is harmful to anyone, but especially Santiago with his old age, and being out in the hot sun all day. Sometimes he would try to eat, but feel very nauseous. He did force himself to eat enough to keep going. And he would also force himself to sleep because he was having trouble functioning sometimes because he was so tired. Somehow though Santiago had enough strength to get home alive.

Hemingway did a great job of really using detail to describe the challenges Santiago faced. Though shark attacks, fatigue and a bad hand are very hard to deal with those are only a few of the struggles the old man dealt with. It really showed how much willpower Santiago had because he could have easily given up. He wanted to catch a fish so bad and bring it home to everyone. Santiago struggled so hard to catch that big fish, and then all his happiness vanished when the sharks ate all the meat off. He could have given up right here, he was tired, hungry and he had nothing to show for his long hard journey. But he didn’t stop, he kept going. Though he returned home with nothing, he still knew in his mind how much he accomplished at sea, and that’s all that mattered to him in the end.