review of the Old Man and the Sea

Essay by yandreCollege, UndergraduateA, October 2014

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Review-The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Warrior and the Life

I was quite impressed that this short story should have carried so many metaphors for life.It tells a story about a "strange old man" who suffered a lot through his whole life yet maintaining his strong optimism, intelligence, courage, determination and his respect and care to all kinds of lives.It's about how the old man deals with the tough challenge from the sea or more specifically, how the warrior deals with the hard time in life.

Here are some points in the article that I've found quite inspiring and I'd like to share my paraphrase and some thoughts after reading.

1.Defeat & Undefeated

The word defeat appeared many times in the whole article,including the famous remark "Man is not made for defeat;A man can be destroyed but not defeated."Santiago was an old man, inevitably physically weaker than the young fishermen.

He was poor, lonely and he "was now definitely and finally salao"--"he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish."Even his sail "looked like the flag of permanent defeat."However.despite his sorrowful situation,the old man managed to remain his spiritual strength. His hope and his confidence had never gone. As mentioned in the book, "Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated." He is very determined, persistent and sometimes even stubborn. "Fish," he said softly, aloud,"I'll stay with you until I am dead." The fish that the old man fought with, as I understand it, symbolized the severe challenges we all went through. No matter how weak our physical body is or how limited by the objective conditions we are, we can still keep undefeated in the glory of the...