Old Man and the Sea

The book Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway’s classics where an Old Man fights a Marlin for three days trying to regain his reputation as a fisherman in the village he lives.   But, the book is about more than just fighting a marlin. Santiago has other struggles and obstacles that he must overcome to truly win again the respect of the villagers, and of himself. There is a much bigger foe that Santiago must overcome. Something bigger than any marlin or even another man. In a story in which man against nature is obviously the conflict to watch, Hemingway brings as much of nature as he can. Hemingway puts Santiago against an entire ocean.   The title of the book is The Old Man and the Sea because it’s not the marlin, or the wild life, or the village that thinks lowly of him that is the main war he fights.   They are little battles in the war; it’s the sea that gives him his challenge.   The sea challenges him by the marlin, the climate, and the village, which make up the sea.   Also Santiago had more trouble with the conditions of the sea - the sun, the salt, and the wild life.   The sea is the three antagonists combined, otherwise Hemingway would have written three different books, one each about the Old Man and the marlin, the wild life, and the village.
The Nature of the Sea was a huge part in the fight the Old Man fought.   He was diseased by the sun, “the brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer” (Hemingway 9).   He has eyes that are burned out from the sun, “all my life the early sun has hurt my eyes he thought” (33).   His skin has wrinkles from the sea salt “reflection of the tropic sea on his cheeks” (10).   The sharks that ate the Marlin “then came in fast with his half circle of jaws wide to hit the fish where he had already been bitten” (108).   Through all the pain he endured when fighting the nature of the sea, it was only the first of three battles he would fight.   He did not win this fight because he is diseased, he has bad eyes, or the sharks ate his...