Symbolism-Old Man and the Sea

There are a ton of symbols in the book The Old Man and the Sea. One of the many symbols are the marlin. Once the old man catches the marlin he realizes that it will take a long time in order to pull it in. He has to wait for days in order to catch this fish. Then he runs into the sharks witch is a completely different kind of symbol. Anyway, the marlin symbolizes the strength that the old man had in order to bring it in. The old man had to wait out in the hot sun and hold the fishing pole waiting for it to come close. I do not think that the old man had that kind of strength or at least he did not realize it. He realized he had the strength when he pulled in the huge fish. Also, the marlin shows a symbol of an ideal opponent to the old man. Throughout the book Santiago (the old man), is continuously saying "everything kills everything else someday." He feels lucky that he was able to be up against this fish and to fight it. There is another symbol in the book witch are the bottle-nosed sharks. They symbolize the destruction of your closest things. Santiago had all the glory in the world after catching this huge fish. After the sharks came he lost all of his glory and just wanted to get back home. When Hemingway says, "I hope I do not have to fight again, he thought. I hope so much I do not have to fight again" (Hemingway 117). Santiago is praying that he does not have to fight these sharks again because they have already destroyed his fish and he is so close to getting home with at least a little bit of evidence that he caught the big marlin. As you can see there were a lot of symbols in The Old Man and the Sea, but those were only a couple of them.

Bibliography

Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. New York: Scribner, 1996. Print.