The Old Man and the Sea - 11

Throughout most of the book The Old Man and the Sea there are no parallels from the novella to the Bible or any spiritual or religious things like that. Sometimes the old man swears that if God does something for him he will pray a certain prayer one hundred times. But i feel that he says those things mostly out of a ritual and not because the prayer means anything to him.

Honesty the old man treats Demagio, a professional baseball player, more like a god than he does God himself. The old man compares everything to Demagio. He thinks and wonders what Demagio would think of the old man doing a certain thing and thinks Demagio is the greatest man that ever lived. He compares everything to him as if Demagio is the ultimate person that is the highest up to compare things to. The only one anybody should be comparing themselves wit his God. People should compare themselves to God to see if they meet his standards and are doing what He wants them to do. The old man clearly does not respect God, if he believes in God, and he respects a baseball player more.

The story has hardly anything to do with God, and is almost sacrilegious, but then things change. While the old man is on the boat, he endues many hardships and overcomes them in a loving manner and with a determined heart. This man does not give up. He continues to keep pressing forward. How he handles the stress and the strain of the fish is utterly impressive and seems near impossible for someone to do that.

Eventually the old man's hands get sliced and cut open by the fishing line. The old man's hands begin bleeding. when this happens, the reader cannot help but think of Jesus and his hands being pierced by nails. The old man, despite the sliced hands keeps going. He keeps fighting for the fish. The man does not give up. The man seems to be almost inhuman in what he endures for a fish. The man's back hurts and he aches all over. His hand cramps up and it takes much time to get his hand uncrampped. So many negative things happen, yet the man stays positive. this man starts to seem Christlike. After the man finally gets back to the village, he is exhausted. The picture of the old man carrying his sail up the hill on his shoulders and falling down in exhaustion reminded me so much of how Jesus had to carry his cross up to his death.

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