Setting by Phil M.

In every book the setting plays an important role in the story. They are sometimes deadly and sometimes the setting might even save the characters life. In the Old Man and The Sea the setting does both. The setting, the ocean, saves the old man, Santiago, but at the same time it kills him. It saves him by feeding him, and giving him something to do, but it kills him because the sea is very dangerous and also the marlin nearly kills him.

The ocean saves Santiago’s life by letting him catch the fish and make money, also because he could eat the fish. Santiago could sell the fish for money but it could also give him money and something to eat. If he didn’t have the sea I think it is easy to say he would die. The ocean also saved him by letting him do something. I think that was the main reason for him to wake up every morning. He was an old man who couldn’t afford to retire and was forced to spend his days on the dangerous sea. He had no one to talk to: “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty- four days now without taking a fish” (1).

In the way the sea saved him it killed him. It’s very dangerous because of the sharks and the currents. You could be sent out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and you wouldn’t even know it. At one point Santiago couldn’t even see the land. He was moving closer and closer to his death. He wasn’t scared and didn’t even care at all. “The glow of Havana was not so strong, so that he knew the current must be carrying them eastward” (47). He said this with no emotion which shows that he was expecting it.

Another part of the sea that almost kills Santiago is the big fish. Being an older man he doesn’t have the kind of strength a younger man does. Also he doesn’t have good fishing gear; he is poor so he can only afford certain things. The marlin is a very big fish that was killing Santiago just as much as he was killing the marlin. “You are felling it now fish and god know that I am” (56). This shows how much he is fighting the fish and how the fish is killing him at the same time Santiago is killing the marlin. Santiago eventually kills the marlin but the sharks come from further out in the ocean and they eat the marlin. Santiago thinks he did all that work for nothing, so he thinks he was defeated.

Santiago all and all might have been defeated but that did not get him down. But it meant a lot to him because he caught the monster of a fish, and he had the bones to show for it. As they say you can win a battle but not the war. It is just the opposite for Santiago. The sea won the battle but Santiago won the war because he caught the huge fish that no one wanted him to and everyone thought he was great after that. He then went into a deep sleep and that is when the book ends.