The Old Man and The Sea

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: By far one of his greats works. If you have not read this book there must be something wrong with you, go out and get this book. I have read it 3 or 4 times.It is as if you can feel the old mans pain and the life he has lived. I promise you this you will not be dissapointed.

Rating:
Summary: A great book with lots of meaning
Review: The book The Old Man and the Sea is as well written as everybody says it is! Ernest Hemingway does a great job of telling this story. The story is packed with great meaning and written in a way that I think all ages can understand. His sentences are simple yet they hold such meaning without having to be complicated. A child could read this book and still understand the meaning.
When I say that this book has very good meaning I say that with different perspectives of the book in mind. The Old Man, Santiago, has a great respect for many things in his life. The boy who works with him, the sea that provides with food when willing, and the great fish he battles with. He evens finds a place in his heart for those predators after his great fish.
The boy who is probably 12 or 13 works with Santiago out on his small skiff. He even helps him when they are not out on the boat. He brings him food, water and the paper so they can discuss baseball from the day before. The boy looks up to him and Santiago respects him for everything he does for him.
I especially admired the respect that Santiago has for the sea and the great marlin. Even though he has been cursed with bad luck and hasn't caught a fish for 80 some days, he still believes that he should have respect for the sea, because some day it will be good to him and provide all the fish he needs, which in the end it does but its costs him.

Rating:
Summary: Victory or defeat? The old men shall dream dreams ...
Review: Assuming that the reader is familiar with the plot, I think the irony of the story is that the old man was defeated neither by the fish nor by the sharks, just as he was not defeated by Cienfuegos of Casablanca. "And what beat you, he thought. 'Nothing,' he said alound. 'I went out too far.'" Did he defeat himself or was it simply Fate that pinned him? In the end, the boy cries, and there are only those African Lions of the dream world. Think on the words of prophet Joel, 'and the old men shall dream dreams.'

Rating:
Summary: Depressiung book, old man and the sea
Review: This book sucks. Only a depressed person would like this book. The old man is lonely and keeps trying to fish but doesn't catch any. It's like that old saying, if you put your mind to it you can accomplish anything, but this old man failed. Only a depressed person would like it

Rating:
Summary: Amazing!
Review: What is really amazing about this book I first read in elementary school, is that after all this time so few people have realized the metaphor.

Hemingway and Faulkner were bitter rivals, and Hemingway wrote this piece after Faulkner recieved the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949. Ironically it won him the Pulitzer in 1950, which Faulkner had yet to win, and surely helped in his 1954 Nobel.

Now go back and read it again, and see what the story is really about, and don't forget to think who those sharks represent, just by writing a review, you may be one of them.

Rating:
Summary: the nobel prize for fishing
Review: This is a short parable about the food chain. I read an amazonian editorial review which baldly stated that the old man is "triumphant as the other fishermen marvel at the size of the skeleton." Perhaps this reviewer read a different book ... there is absolutely no "triumph" or any other strain of hubris in the old man's character. Only a strong resolve and bucketloads of humility. The old man is not even around when the fishermen and tourists are "marvelling" - he's in his shack, in bed, recuperating. Maybe this reviewer never even read the book. Just up to the bit where it starts to get boring, after the old man actually hooks the fish, and then figured on a good Hollywood ending. Fair enough. Actually reading a book is a hindrance to writing a good review. Check out my only other amazonian review, on "Recollections of a Bleeding Heart" and see what I mean. Never even read it. Good review though, don't you think? Sure, no one has yet voted that they found my review helpful. I would be very hurt if anyone did. Bleeding utilitarians. If you want to read something helpful, read the instruction manual for your dvd player or something. Don't waste time reading reviews by mark coddington.
But I did actually read Hemingway's novella. Sort of felt obliged. You know, when books start to reproach you each time you glance at them? I've got a 614 page biography of Arthur Miller on the bookshelf in front of me, with Arthur's face on the spine looking at me through those crazy black minimalist glasses (they never really caught on, did they?) and he knows that I'm never going get around to reading "Timebends" in this lifetime, and he's staring at me with reproach.
Back to the parable. This old guy hasn't caught a fish for yonks. Everyone thinks he's bad luck, except the boy. One day he goes out deep, hooks himself one big effoff fish. Too big to fit in the boat, he straps it alongside and by the time he brings it in, sharks have picked it clean.
I mean, there you have it. Its not about spoils going to the victor. Its not about overcoming great challenges against all odds, then rubbing your detractors' noses in it. Just because The Old Man and the Sea is written by an American, doesn't mean it's about winning.
The book's 127 pages long. After the old man hooks the fish, he takes 83 pages to bring the creature in. 83 pages of Hemingway's unrelenting and unembellished prose. Think of the most uncomfortable chair you've ever sat on. Now pick a number between one and ten. Imagine sitting on that chair for that many hours. It will start to give you some idea of what reading this book is like, particularly if you are an empathetic type like me. The cuts on the old man's hands from the line - ow! Now, multiply this number of hours by nine. If you get a two-digit number, add those numbers together, otherwise stick with what you got. Now subtract five. Just do it! (Oops, I think I've broken copyright laws. Ignore that last sentence). Next, count along that number of letters in the alphabet and think of a country starting with the letter you came to. Take the second letter of that country's name and think of the first animal that comes into your head. Got it? Now when you've finished reading this review, I'll tell you what animal that was. And I'll bet you right now that you didn't think of a fish or an old man.) Okay, do we have a deal? But I digress. The idea of the animal kingdom provides one key to understanding this tale. Firstly, the old man constantly dreams of lions on the beach in Africa. Why? What do lions represent? I do not profess to be proficient in, or interested in, psychoanalytic approaches to literature. But the lions must represent something important to the old man, or why would Hemingway waste his valuable - sorry, useful - time by writing about it? Secondly, the old man (his name is Santiago, by the way, but is seldom referred to as anything other than "he" or "the old man", so I'll follow Ernest's lead) continually refers to the fish he has hooked as his "brother". During the old man's three day fishing marathon, he eats raw fish, as he has no other sustenance, which further emphasizes this "brotherhood". Hemingway is asking, where does man stand in relation to the animal? Then he goes a long way toward answering it: "I am only better than him though trickery and he meant me no harm." And: "But I was more intelligent than he was. Perhaps not, he thought. Perhaps I was only better armed."
The old man is alone, locked in a battle with both himself and the fish. Yet he identifies with the fish; he feels sorry for it: "I wish it were a dream and that I had never hooked him. I'm sorry about it, fish." The fish's name is Alberto, but is only ever referred to as "fish" by Hemingway. In a struggle to come to terms with his own life and imminent death, the old man talks aloud to himself, asking questions both simple and profound. Death is a central motif in "The Old Man and the Sea", but not one I'm much interested in.
Perhaps looking for motifs, and pondering their significance, is to read too much into a book. Maybe this one is just a story about an old man who catches a big fish. Here's an interesting question. Do Jehovah's Witnesses read all books in their literal sense, or only the Bible? Hmm. Furthermore, are there any good customer reviews of the Bible on Amazon? I'm off to have a look. Oh - before I go, I must keep my part of the deal. Was it an elephant?

Rating:
Summary: Old Man and the Sea
Review: Even though this is the last book in Hemingway's career, it is probably his most well-known. This is, indeed, one of the books that won him the Nobel prize, an extraordinary thing to win in the literary world.

It's a tale about an old man named Santiago who hadn't caught a fish in 80 days. You would think that that would be no big deal, other than money-wise, but the village people have tagged him as unlucky and washed-up, and a boy named Manolin, whom he loved as a son, was not allowed to fish with him any more.

One day he sets out to sea in a small skiff, and he hooks a gigantic marlin (kind of like a swordfish, but really very pretty). The marlin drags him far out to sea, and he feels a great connection with the fish. During the time that he's out to sea, he talks to himself and to the sea a great deal, experiences great pain, and just the teeniest bit starts to lose his mind... in the end, he does kill the marlin, but he finds out that the thing is two feet longer than his boat. This is also a really sad time for him because all through the book it talked about his connection with nature; he called the fish his brother.

To recap: He's two days out to sea, he just realized that this HUGE fish that he caught has to be TOWED IN to shore, and he's totally spent both mentally and physically. There would have been a little bit of a chance of getting back to shore with his fish, but then... a large Mako shark appears. A bite is taken out of the fish and the blood pours into the water.

Poor old Santiago has to watch as shark after shark comes and rips apart his beautiful fish, and when he gets back home, almost the entire thing is gone, except for the tail, the skeleton, and the head. Santiago is battered and bruised, not only from the catching of the fish, but also from trying to fight off the sharks.

It works out okay in the end- Manolin gets to fish with the old man again, and the village fishermen have respect for Santiago. The end just makes you so sad-happy (now that's an oxymoron if I ever saw one), though- an American couple sees the skeleton with the head taken off (Manolin got the head) and they think that the fish is a SHARK. But Santiago's alive, and everything's okay.

I just gave the bare facts; if you really want to experience the beauty of the text then you have to read it for yourself. :)

Rating:
Summary: Old man sucks!!
Review: I hate fish this book was written about fish. This was torture to read.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but...
Review: ...not that great. This is a decent story of a old man taking on a big fish (a marlin) at sea. Duh. Right?
Is the story that interesting? No. However, if you know a little about Hemingway, it seems as if this is almost autobiographical. Not in the normal sense, but that he was talking about himself getting older and not being able to catch the big fish. Maybe this is obvious, I don't know. But when this book came out Hemingway had not had a hit (had not caught a "big one") for a long time. But it all worked out. Hemingway got a Nobel prize shortly after this. Maybe the old man wasn't so old. This is a ok book. However, if you want something a little more engaging read The Snows of Kilimanjaro(sp?). A shorter and much more entertaining read by Mr. Hemingway.

Rating:
Summary: Inspirational
Review: One of the best ever, this is a book full of emotion, from the first page you can feel the Old Man's inspiration and determination. The book is not very long, it is just right, many times during the reading I stoped and imagined him at sea fighting the marlin and then the sharks, the old man talking to himself and remembering better times, when he was young, when he was stronger.
The old man finds the strenght to come back victorious even in defeat.
This book is a must read for all ages, simply a great short novel.