Featured Reading Guide
Ernest Hemingway
Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway’s magnificent fable is the story of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. It was The Old Man and the Sea that won for Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here, in a perfectly crafted story, is unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man’s challenge to the elements in which he lives.
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
FacebookAbout Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Chicago in 1899 as the son of a doctor and the second of six children. After a stint as an ambulance driver at the Italian front, Hemingway came home to America in 1919, only to return to the battlefield – this time as a reporter on the Greco-Turkish war – in 1922. Resigning from journalism to focus on his writing instead, he moved to Paris where he renewed his earlier friendship with fellow American expatriates such as Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. Through the years, Hemingway travelled widely and wrote avidly, becoming an internationally recognized literary master of his crat. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, following the publication of The Old Man and the Sea . He died in 1961
topAbout the Book
Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway’s magnificent fable is the story of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. It was The Old Man and the Sea that won for Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here, in a perfectly crafted story, is unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man’s challenge to the elements in which he lives.
topStarting Points for Discussion
- Ernest Hemingway’s work is renowned for its glorification of machismo. But in The Old Man and the Sea, Santiago fails to return the marlin to his village in tact. Although he loses his battle with the sharks, the novella ends with Santiago as a hero. What is his accomplishment?
- On four separate occasions Hemingway invokes Christian and crucifixion symbolism in his descriptions of Santiago. See if you can identify all four occasions and discuss with your group Hemingway’s purpose in portraying Santiago as a martyr.
- ‘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?’
- How does Santiago’s relationship with the marlin differ from his relationship with the sharks? Why is his attitude towards the two species so different?
- There is a strong father/son bond between Santiago and Manolin, but it is often unclear which is the father and which is the son. In what way do Santiago and Manolin play these roles and when are they reversed?
- ‘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. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy.’
- Santiago dreams of the lions on the beach three times in the novel. What do they represent for him?
Other Books by Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell To Arms
In 1918 Ernest Hemingway went to war, to the ‘war to end all wars’. He volu…
A Moveable Feast
Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest He…
Across The River And Into The…
The War is just over. In Venice, a city elaborately and affectionately desc…
Death In The Afternoon
A fascinating look at the history and grandeur of bullfighting, Death in the…
Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises…
Paris in the twenties: Pernod, parties and expatriate Americans, loose-living…
For Whom The Bell Tolls
High in the pine forests of the Spanish Sierra, a guerrilla band prepares to…
Suggested Further Reading
- The Iceman Cometh ~ Eugene O’Neill
- The Grapes of Wrath ~ John Steinbeck
- In Cold Blood ~ Truman Capote
- The Outsider ~ Richard Wright