The Old Man and the Sea Question 8

            I am answering the very last question of the eight questions. The question is “How accurately does this novel reflect events in history?”  To be honest, I do not know of any events in history reflected in The Old Man and the Sea.  The novel takes place in Cuba in the 1940s.  What I found in The Old Man and the Sea was an old man who loved to fish.  The only thing I read that was not something that Ernest Hemingway made up was the various things about Joe DiMaggio. 

“Think of the great DiMaggio” (Hemingway 17).  Santiago was talking to Manolin about baseball one day after coming in from fishing.  Baseball has been a popular sport for many decades and the old man just happened to enjoy it greatly.  “I have yesterday’s paper and I will read the baseball” (Hemingway 17).  I believe that baseball is one of the things that kept Santiago sane while battling the marlin.  While in his skiff he was thinking about the baseball games that were happening in the United States.  “I wonder how the baseball came out in the grand leagues today, he thought” (Hemingway 48). 

In The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway talks very little about the various groups of people.  Successful and unsuccessful fishermen were the only group of people that Hemingway described in his novel.  “The successful fishermen of that day were already in and had butchered their marlin” (Hemingway 11).  Santiago knew he was not a successful fisherman because he had not caught a single fish for over eighty days.  Manolin’s parents said that the old man was “salao, which is the worst form of unlucky” (Hemingway 9).  Even though his parents told him he should not be fishing with Santiago, he still wants to spend time with him. 

            I believe that the reason why Ernest Hemingway wrote about fishing and baseball because those were his hobbies. 

 Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. New York: Scribner, 1952. Print.