Fishing With Santiago example essay topic

Title: The Old Man and the Sea Author: Ernest Hemingway Setting: This book takes place in Cuba in the early 1940's Characters Santiago- Santiago is a wise old fisherman. He has been fishing for many years. He loves baseball and is a big fan of "The Great DiMaggio" Manolin- Manolin is a young boy who is a good friend of Santiago. He brings Santiago food when he is hungry. He fishes with Santiago almost every day. Plot Summary: Santiago has not caught a fish for 84 days but since 85 is his lucky number he has a good feeling about today.

Manolin's parents will not let him go fishing with Santiago because they feel he is bad luck. They want him to fish with a different group with better luck. Santiago goes out fishing and drops his lines in the water. He hooks a huge fish and he knows it is a marlin. It drags him out to sea for three days.

Santiago would use his other lines to still fish so that he could have some food. On the third day he finally caught the fish and killed it. He tied this huge marlin to the side of his skiff. As he started to head back home a shark came up and took a bite out of the marlin.

Santiago killed the shark with his harpoon but also lost his harpoon while doing that. He knew that more sharks would smell the blood and try to eat the more of the marlin so he tied a knife to one of his oars to fight them off. Two more sharks came and he killed them but not until took more of the marlin. While killing the second shark his blade broke.

He was determined to fight off the sharks and all he had was a club. A pack of sharks came and he tried to fight them off but by the time they left they had taken all of the meat on it leaving just its head, its bones, and its tail. He sailed back home, feeling bad for the marlin because it would still be alive if he had not killed it. Once he got home the people saw the skeleton of this huge fish. Manolin was very worried about Santiago and promised to always go fishing with him from then on.

Themes: The theme of this book is that not all things in life turn out to have a happy ending. 3 important quotes that relate to the theme or are important to the meaning of the story: 1) "Fish, I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends". 2) "You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after.

If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?" 3) "I wish I had the boy". Important symbols: I do not think there is any symbols in this story Important Scenes: I think the most important scene was the one where he fought off the sharks with the club because this shows his determination to bring the fish in safely..