The Old Man and the Sea Quotes

            In the pages of The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway threw in a couple very important quotes.  Our job as the readers is to locate these quotes. 

            “He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy” (Hemingway 25).  Santiago was thinking this the night before he was scheduled to depart for his fishing trip.  He was saying that the only thing he dreamed about were lions on the beach.  This dream came up in the novel around three times.  I believe that the lions came up twice while Santiago was out at sea in his little skiff.  “The lions here are at play and thus suggest a time of youth and ease” (Sparknotes).  Dreaming of the lions calmed Santiago down.

            “Then the fish came alive, with his death in him, and rose high out of the water showing all his great length and width and all his power and his beauty. He seemed to hang in the air above the old man in the skiff. Then he fell into the water with a crash that sent spray over the old man and over all of the skiff” (Hemingway 94).  The death of the marlin is the climax of The Old Man and the Sea and is the most vital part of the novel.  It is also my favorite part of the novel because killing that fish was such a big feat for a gaunt and skinny old man.  The old man also metaphorically died.  It happened on his way home to the harbor when the marlin was destroyed by a series of sharks.  All eighteen feet of the marlin was picked clean. 

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

"The Old Man and the Sea." SparkNotes. SparkNotes, n.d. Web. 11 June 2012.