Parallel Between Santiago And Jesus Christ example essay topic

'There is never a simple key to any writer worth much attention, but in the case of Hemingway there is something that looks so like a key... that it cannot escape any informed and thoughtful reader's notice' (O'Conner 153). Ernest Hemingway was one such author. Very rarely did he summarize statements, therefore the only way to solve his puzzle was to take it apart and examine each components. One of the hidden elements that the reader must analyze closely is the parallel between Santiago and Jesus Christ. In the novel, The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway creates connections between Santiago and Jesus Christ that adds religious coloration to the story.

Santiago can be compared to a Christ figure on the basis of his relationships with other characters in the novel. People look up to Santiago, as would a follower to Christ, hereby setting up a comparison between the two. (transition) Since the age of five, Manolin has aided the old man by working alongside him as an apprentice. Manolin is loyal to Santiago and looks up to him as if Santiago was his real father. According to Delbert Wylder, 'Santiago has, in a sense been the boy's spiritual father' (219). Manolin is in awe of the old man, who the town recognizes as an honorable fisherman.

The boy states, 'There are many good fishermen and some great ones. But there is only you. ' Like Santiago, Christ was also a spiritual father to his town; the town of Bethlehem. He performed miracles to heal the sick, and fed thousands of starving people. As Jim Auer says, 'This demonstrates Santiago's relation to Christ. They are both extremely unique, and were father figures in their communities' (15).?

The people of Bethlehem looked up to Christ as a father figure, and they had love and admiration towards him.? Likewise, 'The love of Manolin for Santiago is that of a discipline for a master in the arts of fishing, it is also the love of a son for an adopted father' (Wagner-Martin 307). Through Manolin's caring of the old man, he shows his love for Santiago. Even though Santiago is not Manolin's biological father, he cares for him as though he was. 'The old man was asleep in the chair and the sun was down. The boy took the old army blanket off the bed and spread it over the back of the chair and over the old man's shoulders... and when he woke up he fed him supper' (Hemingway 16-17).

Manolin takes responsibility of the deteriorating Santiago, just as any son would take care of their ailing father. SIMILARLY Moreover, according to Manolin, Santiago 'has intentionally gone beyond the limits of mankind' (Wylder 205). Manolin believes that everything Santiago has achieved in his lifetime can never be attained by anyone else. Furthermore, believers of Christ agree 'that the accomplishments Christ achieved in his mortality will never be equated by anyone else' (Wylder 209).

Another comparison that parallels Santiago to Christ is the notion that Santiago is Christ. As Sheldon Grebstein notes, 'The writer cannot refrain from emphasizing a correspondence between his noble fisherman and Jesus Christ' (91). An example of this is when Santiago sees the first of two sharks and says, 'Ay,' 'There is no translation for this word and perhaps it is just a noise such a man might make, involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood' (Hemingway 99). This is a reference to the crucified Christ, when the nails pierced his hands on the Cross. Both men allude to the fear of suffering. In the case of Santiago, the sight of the sharks frighten him because he knows they can cause harm.

For Christ, after he is nailed to the Cross, he knows there is more agony to endure. Subsequent to the sight of sharks, Santiago completes his voyage on the sea and returns to land. Darkness approaches and this is more than simple lack of sunlight. As John's Gospel notes, when Judas leaves to set in motion the chain of events leading to the crucifixion, 'it was night' (JN 13: 30). It was at this point that 'he [Santiago] shouldered the mast and started to climb... at the top he fell and lay for some time with the mast across his shoulder' (Hemingway 111). 'This later passage which details Santiago's painful climb up the hill to his shack, bearing the mast of his boat on his shoulders is an allusion to Christ's last ascent' (Wylder 91).

William O'Conner believes The Old Man and the Sea can be classified as 'a Christian tragedy... especially in several marked allusions to Christian symbolism, particularly of the crucifixion' (O'Connor 169). 'Following the example of Christ, he [Santiago] suffers unjustly and undergoes defeat. He experiences his own type of crucifixion. But he accepts suffering, again following the model of Christ' (Auer 22). Carrying the mast (cross), Santiago struggles to his shack. At the shack, Santiago goes to bed in a crucifixion pose: face down, arms out, palms up.

'He pulled the blanket over his shoulders and then over his back and legs and he slept face down on the newspapers with his arms out straight and the palms of his hands up' (Hemingway 112). As a result of the precise parallel between Santiago and Christ, the reader can infer that Santiago is Christ in disguise. One critic Arvin Wells believes 'Santiago can be seen as a Christian saint' (22). Wells concludes this theory because Santiago has achieved the most difficult and saintly of all Christian virtues, humility. 'There are reminiscences of Christianity present in the story sometimes as a symbol, sometimes as direct allusion and sometimes merely as a matter of tone.

He achieves a humility so absolute that it involves 'no loss of true pride... ' Moreover, at various moments in the story, Santiago affirms the major Christian virtues: Faith-'He hasn't much faith!' (Hemingway 10-11) Hope-'It is silly not to hope, he thought. ' And charity-the old man's love generous, unsentimental love. Scott Donaldson says, 'Hemingway used Christian symbolism in the Old Man and the Sea to associate Santiago with Jesus Christ. ' (345). One example of this is that Santiago's very name means Saint James, the fisherman, martyr, and apostle of the Lord.

Furthermore, the real story from which the book comes -a tale of a Cuban fisherman Ernest told in the April 1936 Esquire-is significantly altered to suggest parallels between Santiago and Christ. The old man of the Esquire story fights his giant marlin for two days and nights. When Santiago comes ashore, the predatory sharks having stripped his prize, and he is crying in the boat. 'This bare sketch is retouched in The Old Man and the Sea, with religious coloration.

Instead of two days on the water, Santiago spends three days. As Christ fell beneath the Cross, Santiago falls beneath the mast as he struggles, exhausted and beaten, up the hill to his shack. As the heart of Christ broke, so Santiago feels something break inside him. Santiago's hands, like Christ's, are mutilated, though by fishing instead of nails. ' (Donaldson 345). Hemingway appears to be celebrating the capacity of one man's terrible suffering and pain with dignity.

With the addition of these religious features in the novel, there is Christian symbolism present. Additional religious elements that appear during the course of the novel are more apparent then others. For example, 'On the brown walls of the flattened, overlapping leaves of the sturdy fibered guano there was a picture in color of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and another of the Virgin of Cobre' (Hemingway 13). While out on the sea, Santiago continuously becomes frustrated with the fish when it doesn't cooperate. He continually refers to Christ.

'Christ knows he [the fish] can't have gone' (Hemingway 39). When Santiago is in doubt and apprehensive about being able to succeed, he prays. 'I could not fail myself and die on a fish like this,' he said. 'Now that I have him coming so beautifully, God help me endure. I'll say a hundred Our Fathers and a hundred Hail Marys' (Hemingway 80). In addition, 'he also promises to make a pilgrimage to a shrine, the Virgin of Cobre, if heaven does come through and deliver the fish to him, or at least helps him bring it in' (Auer 63).

Santiago, an avid Catholic, reaches out to the Higher Power when he is pushed to his greatest moment of need and desperation. As Samuel Shaw states, 'The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway has often been characterized as a parable. A parable is a short fiction that expresses or implies a religious purpose. Jesus Christ himself usually delivered his moral preachments in form of parable, with no elaboration. In relation, Hemingway's novel does not probe very deep into explanation into to characters, plot, or theme. Perhaps Hemingway's book bears closest resemblance to a biblical parable.

Hemingway extends his habitual economy of diction into an economy of structure and treatment. Santiago's physical appearance is sketched rather than painted; the other characters are merely outlined. '.