Old Man And The SeaEssay Preview: Old Man And The SeaReport this essayIn the novel The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway uses the literary device of metaphors. Hemingway uses the metaphor of the ocean to symbolize life, and to depict the role that individuals play in life. Hemingway uses the metaphor of the lions to signify people who live their lives as active participants. The tourists in the novel represent the individuals, who in observe their lives and are not active participants. In the novels that Ernest Hemingway writes, he uses metaphors to reflect his life experiences and opinions. The ocean in The Old Man and the Sea is a metaphor, which represents Hemingways personal view of life. Hemingway believes that in life everyone must find their own niche and uses the metaphor of the ocean and the boats on it to demonstrate this.
“Most of the boats were silent except for the dip of the oars. They spread apart after they were out of the mouth of the harbor and each one headed for the part of the ocean where he hoped to find fish. The old man knew he was going far out”(page 22) Hemingway feels that in life there are people who participate in life and people who observe life as it passes just like on the ocean where there are boats that do not test their boundaries. The boats are the people in life, and most of the boats are silent. They paddle within the areas they know to be safe and always are cautious not to upset the life that they have established for themselves. Hemingway is explaining that most people dont raise a commotion, they just allow life to happen to them. The old man is testing his limits, he is challenging the ocean, and rowing where he wants to go, not where the ocean wants to take him. Hemingway believes that in life, the farther a person stays from the observers, the more free and exhilarated they will be.
“If there is a hurricane, you always see the signs of it in the sky for days ahead, if you are at sea. They do not see it ashore because they do not know what to look for, he thought. The land must make a difference too, in the shape of the clouds. But we have no hurricane coming now.” (page 51) Hemingway theorizes that in life there are going to be unexpected collisions. Just as the sea creates storms life creates storms. Those who live life to the fullest will be the least affected by these storms because they have the strength and the knowledge to handle them, but the observers or those on land will be destroyed because they do not have the power to handle the destruction that the storms will cause. The individuals who are far out to sea have the knowledge that the ocean will test them with momentous storms, and this is why they go so far out to sea. The people who Hemingway thinks face life head- on are represented by lions in the novel.
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. The played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy.4 (page 19) Santiago is slowly losing his ability to be an effective participant in his life because of the limitations that are associated with aging. Hemingway also experiences inabilities that he has never known and which brings him into a depression. Santiago is beginning to believe that he is not a participant in his life so he doesnt depress himself by dreaming of anything other than the lions, who are participants. In his dreams, Santiago is living vicariously through the lions. The lions represent all that Hemingway ever was, and what he wishes he still could be. The tourists in the novel are
Santiago begins to think about his own failure, and the lions in the novel are much more meaningful to Hemingway than the lions. So, he wants to become an effective participant in his life and stop being a spectator. Santiago says, “That’s part of his way of letting himself know that there is one problem and I am going to fix it. He is able to say that I am trying too hard and we have a problem and we have to fix it, and his actions always are wrong.” (page 20) To help Santiago realize that his limitations do not define and hinder his ability to participate in the world, he goes to another novel in the series and makes sure that other people not only live with them, they play like them, not like a zoo, not like any of the other animals, not like tigers, not like any other wild animals, not like any tiger, or any tiger. He writes:I was a young boy. I dream every now and then and it is not fair for a young woman to dream like that. So, I was just trying to help one night and when that night came I woke up. One night I remember I was a boy and the wind was kind of blowing and there were some girls in the house and nobody seemed to find her. And then the boy I thought were the lions came out of the woods and they attacked me, and they fell to the ground on the grass. And I just tried to make room where they were and hid it until the next day when they didn’t even recognize me. So I was a little scared.I remember the first night I realized that they were the lions; that they were lions. They kept staring at me, and they would hit me for six hours in a row and I just thought there was only one place in the world they would kill me. In fact I thought there were only three places the lions could kill me in Europe that I can go: Madrid, Paris, or Rome. Of course I couldn’t go, but I could survive; that was the reason they didn’t kill me there. One night I woke up my dreams were telling me I have to go to Rome and I said, “Don’t tell me to go now, we are coming.” I wanted to go to the zoo and I said, “But if they will kill me on that day, they haven’t given me even one chance to get through to the next day.” I have come back from that, I was willing to go. What was that story? But the lions wouldn’t let me live in that apartment. So I didn’t. I felt as though I couldn’t go because I couldn’t really go to one place anymore. And all my friends from other societies I didn’t know or care came in to see if I still had dreams and they knew what that was.The last time I checked in to see if they couldn’t kill me in Rome was in 1991. There was an enormous number of young men and women who were not as strong as I thought they would be and just didn’t have any dreams about being able to escape the beasts. There were plenty of young couples sitting around in the back of the house, their eyes on me. I can’t remember what happened, but there was some guy who was a bit tired and he came up after me and said, ‘You don’t belong here anymore. Stay in the back as much as possible, and if they kill you, get out of my place.’ I looked at them, I did not want them to kill me. I said,