The Old Man

            As you first start reading The Old Man and the Sea, you are introduced to the old man in the title.  His name is Santiago.  Santiago is a Cuban fisherman who is “thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck (Hemingway 9).”  This can be a result of a hard life and being nutritionally deprived.  Unfortunately, he has been cursed with a bout of bad luck, or salao.  He has not caught a fish for eighty-four days.  For the first forty days of the eighty-four, Santiago fishes with a young boy named Manolin.  Manolin’s parents did not like him fishing with the unlucky old man so he was transferred to a different boat.  This shows that he is strong willed and stubborn because Santiago does not even think of stopping fishing.  Fishing is the only thing left for Santiago since his wife died.  Ever since his wife’s passing, he is lonely.  He would not even keep their wedding photograph hanging up on the wall.  It is hid away on the shelf underneath his only clean shirt. 

            The result of not bringing in fish each day is the absence of money.  Therefore, Santiago lives in a guano, which is a shack made with palms.  Inside of his guano, there is a bed, a table, a chair, and a little cooking area.  Along with having to live in a shack, he does not have any money for food.  Each day he tells Manolin he is going to have yellow rice with fish, but both the boy and the old man know that there is not any.  Santiago cannot afford to buy any food and has gotten used to not eating.  “For a long time now eating had bored him and he never carried a lunch.  He had a bottle of water in the bow of the skiff and that was all he needed for the day (Hemingway 27).”  What I have learned from the old man so far is that you cannot give up on something you cannot go a day without thinking about.

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