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Example research essay topic: Nobel Prize For Literature Pulitzer Prize - 4,183 words

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ERNEST HEMINGWAY: THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA BIOGRAPHY Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, and was educated there in the public schools. Rather than attend college, Hemingway decided to work for the Kansas City Star newspaper. In World War I Hemingway served as a Red Cross ambulance driver until he was severely wounded in action. After recuperating in Italy, he settled in Paris, where he began his serious writing career while spending time with other American expatriates, including Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. In 1926 Hemingway published his first major novel, The Sun Also Rises, a depiction of what Stein referred to as the lost generation of young people in the 1920 s. This novel not only established Hemingway as the preeminent writer of his generation, but revealed two key principles that would inform the writing of most of his career.

During the following decade Hemingway travelled to Spain, Africa, and Florida, gaining material for his future works through his experiences as bullfight aficionado, big game hunter, and deep sea fisherman. He served as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War which eventually became the background for his 1939 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls and World War II. Hemingway's short novel The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953, and contributed to his winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. By the 1960 s, however, Hemingway was in poor health, depressed, and losing his memory, and he committed suicide in Ketchum, Idaho on July 2, 1961. Background The Old Man and the Sea was published 1952 after the bleakest ten years in Hemingway's literary career. His last major work, Across the River and into the Trees, was condemned as unintentional self-parody, and people began to think that Hemingway had exhausted his store of ideas.

Santiago's story was originally conceived as part of a larger work, including material that later appeared in Islands in the Stream. This larger work, which Hemingway referred to as The Sea Book, was proving difficult, and when Hemingway received positive reviews of the Santiago story, known then as The Sea in Being, he decided to allow it to be published independently. He wrote to publisher Charles Scribner in October 1951, This is the prose that I have been working for all my life that should read easily and simply and seem short and yet have all the dimensions of the visible world and the world of mans spirit. It is as good prose as I can write as of now. The Old Man and the Sea, published in its entirety in one edition of Life magazine, was an instant success.

In two days the September 1 st edition of Life sold 5, 300, 000 copies and the book version sold 153, 000. The novella soared to the top of the best-seller list and remained there for six months. At first, critical reception was warm. Many hailed it as Hemingway's best work, and no less than William Faulkner said, Time may show it to be the best single piece of any of us, I mean his and my contemporaries.

Others, however, complained of artificiality in the characterization and excess sentimentality. Despite these detractors, The Old Man and the Sea was awarded the 1953 Pulitzer Prize and American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit Medal for the Novel and played a significant role in Hemingway's selection for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. For the first fifteen or so years after its publication, critical response remained largely positive. Since the mid- 60 s, however, the work has received sustained attacks from realist critics who decry the novellas unrealistic or simply incorrect elements, e. g. the alleged eight rows of teeth in the makos mouth or the position of the star Riegel.

Through the 1970 s the book became less and less the subject of serious literary criticism, and the view of the book as embarrassingly narcissistic, psychologically simplistic, and overly sentimental became more and more entrenched. While The Old Man and the Sea is popularly beloved and assigned reading for students in the US and around the world, critical opinion places it among Hemingway's less significant works. SUMMARY There is an old fisherman, Santiago, in Cuba who has gone eighty-four days without a catch. He is thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck, and his hands had deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh.

They were as old as erosion's in a fishes desert (5). Santiago's lack of success, though, does not destroy his spirit, as his cheerful and undefeated eyes show (5). He has a single friend, a boy named Manolin, who helped him during the first forty days of his dry spell. After forty days, though, Manolin's parents decide the old man is unlucky and order their son to join another boat. Despite this, though, the boy helps the old man to bring in his empty boat every day. Santiago tells Manolin that tomorrow he will go out far in the Gulf to fish.

The two gather Santiago's things from his boat and go to the old mans house. His house is very simple with a bed, table, and chair on a dirt floor. The two friends speak for a while, then Manolin leaves briefly to get food. Santiago falls asleep.

When Manolin returns, he wakes Santiago. The two eat the food the boy has brought. During the course of the meal, the boy realizes the squalor in which the old man lives and reminds himself to bring the old man a shirt, shoes, a jacket, and a blanket for the coming winter. Manolin and Santiago talk baseball for a while, and the boy then leaves to be woken in the morning by the old man. Santiago sleeps. Santiago dreams of Africa, where he travelled as a shipmate in his youth.

He lived along that coast now every night and in his dreams he head the surf roar and saw the native boats come riding through it. He dreamed of places now and lions on the beach (18 / 19). The old man wakes and retrieves the boy from his house. The two take the old mans supplies from his shack to his boat and enjoy coffee at an early morning place that serves fisherman. The boy leaves to fetch the sardines for the old man. When he returns, he wishes the old man luck, and Santiago goes out to sea.

Santiago leaves shore early in the morning, before sunrise. He knew he was going far out and he left the smell of the land behind and rowed out into the clean early morning smell of the ocean (22). Soon, Santiago rows over the great well, a sudden drop of seven hundred fathoms were shrimp, bait fish, and squid congregate. Moving along, Santiago spots flying fish and birds, expressing great sympathy for the latter. As he queries, Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful.

But she can be so cruel. (23). Santiago keeps pressing out, past the great well where he has been recently unsuccessful. Santiago sees a man-of-war bird overhead and notices that the bird has spied something in the water. The old man follows rows near the bird, and drops his own lines into the area, hoping to capture the fish the bird has seen.

There is a large school of dolphin traveling fast, too fast for either the bird or Santiago to capture. Santiago moves on, hoping to catch a stray or perhaps even discover a marlin tracking the school. He catches a small tuna after not too long and then feels a bite on one of his deeper lines. The first bite is hard, and the stick to which the line is connected drops sharply. The next tug is more tentative, but Santiago knows exactly what it is. One hundred fathoms down a marlin was eating the sardines that covered the point and the shank of the hook where the hand-forged hook projected from the head of the small tuna (33).

Encouraged by a bite at so deep a depth so far out in the Gulf, Santiago reasons that the fish much be very large. The marlin nibbles around the hook for some time, refusing to take the bait fully. Santiago speaks aloud, as if to cajole the fish into accepting the bait. He says, Come on. Make another turn.

Just smell them. Arent they lovely? Eat them good now and then there is the tuna. Hard and cold and lovely. Dont be shy fish. Eat them (34).

After many false bites, the marlin finally takes the tuna and pulls out a great length of line. Santiago waits a bit for the marlin to swallow the hook and then pulls hard on the line to bring the marlin up to the surface. The fish is strong, though, and does not come up. Instead, he swims away, dragging the old man and his skiff along behind. Santiago wishes he had Manolin with him to help. As the sun goes down, the marlin continues on in the same direction, and Santiago loses sight of land altogether.

Expressing his resolve, Santiago says, Fish, Ill stay with you until I am dead (43). He expresses ambivalence over whether he wants the fish to jump, wanting to end the struggle as quickly as possible but worrying that the hook might slip out of the fish's mouth. Echoing his former resolve though with less certainty, Santiago says, Fish, I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends (45). A small bird land on the boat, and while Santiago is speaking to the bird, the marlin lurches forward and pulls the old man down, cutting his hand.

Lowering his hand to water to clean it, Santiago notices that the marlin has slowed down. He decides to eat a tuna he has caught in order to give him strength for his ordeal. As he is cutting the fish, though, his left hand cramps. What kind of hand is that, Santiago says, Cramp then if you want. Make yourself into a claw. It will do you no good (48).

The old man eats the tuna, hoping it will renew his strength and help release his hand. Just then, the marlin comes out of the water quickly and descends into the water again. Santiago is amazed by its size, two feet longer than the skiff. He realizes that the marlin could destroy the boat if he wanted to and says, thank God, they are not as intelligent as we who kill them; although they are more noble and more able (53). Santiago says prayers to assuage his worried heart, and settles into the chase once again. As the sun sets, Santiago thinks back to triumphs of his past in order to give himself more confidence in the present.

He remembers a great arm-wrestling match he had at a tavern in Casablanca. It had lasted a full day and a night, but Santiago, El Champion (The Champion) as he was known then, eventually won. He decided that he could beat anyone if he wanted to badly enough and he decided that it was bad for his right hand for fishing (60). He tried to wrestle with his left hand but it was a traitor then as it had been now.

Recalling his exhaustion, Santiago decides that he must sleep some if he is to kill the marlin. He cuts up the dolphin he has caught to prevent spoiling, and eats some of it before contriving a way to sleep. Santiago wraps the line around himself and leans against the bow to anchor himself, leaving his left hand on the rope to wake him if the marlin lurches. Soon, the old man is asleep, dreaming of a school of porpoises, his village house, and finally of the lions of his youth on the African beach.

Santiago is awoken by the line rushing furiously through his right hand. The marlin leaps out of the water and it is all the old man can do to hold onto the line, now cutting his hand badly and dragging him down to the bottom of the skiff. Santiago finds his balance, though, and realizes that the marlin has filled the air sacks on his back and cannot go deep to die. The marlin will circle and then the endgame will begin.

At sunrise, the marlin begins a large circle. Santiago holds the line strongly, pulling it in slowly as the marlin goes round. At the third turn, Santiago sees the fish and is amazed by its size. He readies the harpoon and pulls the line in more. The marlin tries desperately to pull away.

Santiago, no longer able to speak for lack of water, thinks, You are killing me, fish. But you have a right to. Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother. Come on and kill me. I do not care who kills you (79).

This marlin continues to circle, coming closer and pulling out. At last it is next to the skiff, and Santiago drove his harpoon into the marlins chest. Then the fish came alive, with his death in him, and rose high out of the water showing all his great length and width and all his power and his beauty (80). It crashed into the sea, blinding Santiago with a shower of sea spray. With the glimpse of vision he had, Santiago saw the slain beast laying on its back, crimson blood disseminating into the azure water. Seeing his prize, Santiago says, I am a tired old man.

But I have killed this fish which is my brother and now I must do the slave work (81). Having killed the Marlin, Santiago lashes its body alongside his skiff. He pulls a line through the marlins gills and out its mouth, keeping its head near the bow. I want to see him, he thought, and to touch and to feel him. He is my fortune, he thought (82). Having secured the marlin to the skiff, Santiago draws the sail and lets the trade wind push him toward the southwest.

An hour after Santiago killed the marlin, a mako shark appears. It had followed the trail of blood the slain marlin left in its wake. As the shark approaches the boat, Santiago prepares his harpoon, hoping to kill the shark before it tears apart the marlin. The sharks head was out of water and his back was coming out and the old man could hear the noise of skin and flesh ripping on the big fish when he rammed the harpoon down onto the sharks head (87). The dead shark slowly sinks into the deep ocean water.

Two hours later, two shovel-nosed sharks arrive at the skiff. After losing his harpoon to the mako, Santiago fastens his knife to the end of the oar and now wields this against the sharks. He kills the first shark easily, but while he does this, the other shark is ripping at the marlin underneath the boat. Santiago lets go of the sheet to swing broadside and reveal the shark underneath. After some struggle, he kills this shark as well. Santiago apologizes to the fish for the mutilation he has suffered.

He admits, I shouldnt have gone out so far, fish. Neither for you nor for me. I am sorry, fish (95). Tired and losing hope, Santiago sits and waits for the next attacker, a single shovel-nosed shark. The old man succeeds in killing the fish but breaks his knife blade in the process.

More sharks appear at sunset and Santiago only has a club with which to beat them away. He does not kill the sharks, but damages them enough to prevent their return. Santiago then looks forward to nightfall as he will be able to see the lights of Havana, guiding him back to land. He regrets not having cleaved off the marlins sword to use as a weapon when he had the knife and apologizes again to the fish. At around ten oclock, he sees the light of Havana and steers toward it. In the night, the sharks return.

by midnight he fought and this time he knew the fight was useless. They came in a pack and he could only see the lines in the water their fins made and their phosphorescence as they threw themselves on the fish (102). He clubs desperately at the fish, but the club was soon taken away by a shark. Santiago grabs the tiller and attacks the sharks until the tiller breaks. That was the last shark of the pack that came. There was nothing more for them to eat (102 / 103).

Santiago sailed lightly now and he had no thoughts nor any feelings of any kind (103). He concentrates purely on steering homewards and ignored the sharks that came to gnaw on the marlins bones. When he arrives at the harbor, everyone was asleep. Santiago steps out of the boat, carrying the mast back to his shack. He started to climb again and at the top he fell and lay for some time with the mast across his shoulder. He tried to get up.

But it was too difficult and he sat there with the mast on his shoulder and looked at the road (105). When he finally arose, he had to sit five times before reaching home. Arriving at his shack, Santiago collapsed on his bed and fell asleep. Manolin arrives at the shack while Santiago is still asleep. The boy leaves quickly to get some coffee for Santiago, crying on his way to the Terrace. Manolin sees fisherman gathered around the skiff, measuring the marlin at eighteen feet long.

When Manolin returns to the shack, Santiago is awake. The two speak for a while, and Manolin says, Now we will fish together again, To which Santiago replies, No. I am not lucky. I am not lucky anymore (106). Manolin objects, The hell with luck.

Ill bring the luck with me (106). Santiago acquiesces and Manolin leaves to fetch food and a shirt. That afternoon there are tourists on the Terrace. A female tourist sees the skeleton of the marlin moving in the tide. Not recognizing the skeleton, she asks the waiter what it is. He responds in broken English embark, thinking she wants to know what happened.

She comments to her partner that she didnt know sharks had such beautiful tails. Meanwhile, back in Santiago's shack, the old man was still sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him. The old man was dreaming about lions (109). Characters Santiago: The old man of the title, Santiago is a Cuban fisherman nursing an extended run of bad luck. Despite his expertise, he has been unable to catch a fish for eighty- four days. He is humble, but it is a deep, transcendent humility that admits a justified pride in his abilities.

His knowledge of the sea and its creatures, and of his craft, preserves his sense of hope. We do not know his age, but we are told that everything about him was old except his eyes. As a young man, Santiago won an incredible all-night arm wrestling match that earned him the title El Came n The Champion. His strength is not what it once was, but his will survives intact. As a young man, too, Santiago sailed on a ship that skirted the coast of Africa. Now, in dreams, he sees lions playing on the shore, and is happy.

For much of the book, the only spoken dialogue is Santiago's soliloquies and one-way conversations with the marlin and other creatures. Yankee great Joe DiMaggio, a baseball legend, is a powerful inspiration for the old man. Manolin (The Boy): This is Santiago's loyal young sidekick, only friend and companion, who helps take care of the old man. Santiago taught Manolin to fish, and the boy used to go out to sea with the old man, even though his parents have ordered him to find a luckier fisherman to sail with. Whenever Santiago is not sailing, the boy faithfully remains nearby to listen to the old mans stories or bring him whatever Manolin thinks he may need.

Although he is not with the old man physically during Santiago's journey, Manolin provides the old man with his primary inspiration to endure as if he were praying to give himself strength, Santiago continually meditates, I wish the boy was here (50). At the novels end, Manolin appears to be the only character who realizes the significance of the tragedy Santiago has just been through, as he breaks down and cries several times. Fittingly, in the final image Manolin sits by the sleeping Santiago watching him (105) The Marlin: This 18 foot, 1500 pound fish serves as Santiago's first great obstacle during his three day trial at sea. Although he does not speak and we do not have access to his thoughts, the marlin is certainly an important character in the novella.

The marlin is the fish Santiago spends the majority of the novel tracking, killing, and attempting to bring to shore. The marlin is larger and more spirited than any, Santiago has ever seen. Santiago idealizes the marlin, ascribing to it traits of great nobility, a fish to which he must prove his own nobility if he is to be worthy enough to catch it. The marlin, who tows the old mans skiff across the sea for two straight days stubbornly and honorably refuses to die. After the old man harpoons the marlin and attaches it to the outside of his boat, a series of sharks mutilate the fish by tearing out chunks of meat. By the end of the novel nothing remains but the long backbone of the great fish that was now just garbage waiting to go out with the tide (103).

The Mako Shark: This is the first shark the first of a series of ruthless antagonists to attack the dead marlin attached to Santiago's skiff. Although the old man successfully kills the Mako, the victory comes at a great price: the shark takes forty pounds of marlin meat, Santiago's harpoon and rope, and, most importantly, makes the marlin bleed again, ensuring that other sharks will soon appear. The Sea: As its title suggests, the sea is central character in the novella. Most of the story takes place on the sea, and Santiago is constantly identified with it and its creatures; his sea-coloured eyes reflect both the seas tranquillity and power, and its inhabitants are his brothers. Santiago refers to the sea as a woman, and the sea seems to represent the feminine complement to Santiago's masculinity. The sea might also be seen as the unconscious from which creative ideas are drawn.

TOP TEN QUOTES 1) On September: The month when the great fish come. Anyone can be a fisherman in May: 2) On life at sea: Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea. 3) On his great marlin: Fish, I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends. 4) One man vs. nature: The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea. 5) On the hunter and the hunted: If I were him I would put in everything now and go until something broke.

But, thank God, they are not as intelligent as we who kill them; although they are more noble and more able. 6) On brotherhood: It is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers: 7) On mortality: Fish, you are going to have to die anyway. Do you have to kill me too? 8) On resilience: I think the great DiMaggio would be proud of me today. I had no bone spurs. I wonder what a bone spur is.

Maybe we have them without knowing of it. 9) A man can be destroyed but not defeated. 10) They beat me, Manolin, he said. They truly beat me. He didnt beat you. Not the fish. No.

Truly. It was afterwards.


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