The Sea Essay : The Old Man And The Sea

When I look at the word failure I didn’t see success. But that slowly changed as I read the book What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain Chapter four. Bain, for me and I’m sure many other, have changed our view point on failure being a bad thing. He instead expressed failure as an “opportunity to learn something.” (121) As infants we grow and develop, we learn to walk by falling down a couple hundred times, and we learn to speak by babbling. By trying to walk, and trying to talk, we may fail at first. As an infant, you cannot give up when you are face to face with failure. You must get up and try again to learn. In the book, What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain he uses people’s experiences and research to explain why failure is an opportunity to learn something new, rather than seeing failure as something bad. He asserts “people who become highly creative and productive learn to acknowledge failures, even to embrace them, and to explore and learn from them.” (100) Failure is important. If we did not get up and try again as infants, we would not be where we are today.

Failure is something that all people encounter in their lives. In some situations failure can break a person or make a person, meaning a person can fail at something and just simply give up. Others will fail and that failure can give them the inspiration to try harder to one day achieve their goal. I'm the type of person to fail and work harder until I am content. As my championship baseball coach would say "What’s our motto? Never give up!"

In the book The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway uses the flashback technique in order to characterize Santiago and develop key themes of the novel, such as Santiago’s connection with nature and what it means to be a hero. Hemingway employs several flashbacks as an effective technique that develops Santiago’s character as he recalls past occurrences in order to renew his strength of will. There are three flashbacks in particular that are critical to the development of this story. The first flashback describes a time when Santiago associated himself with the marlins. The second flashback occurs when Santiago arm-wrestled the town’s strongest

The epic journey of “The Old Man and the Sea” describes struggle, discipline and manhood. The main characters relationships exemplify how faith and skill overcome man’s adversity during life on the sea. Santiago’s growing relationship with the boy idealizes his statute as a father figure and develops his integrity and values towards the boy. Hemmingway shows us how an old fisherman’s will to overcome the sea’s obstacles proves his manhood to himself and the young boy. His skills and knowledge of the sea provide a positive influence for the young boy to become a great fisherman someday.

Life is full of obstacles. The Old man has many, but chooses to push through life. One of his obstacles is the fact that he lives a lonely life. Santiago lost his wife and never remarried. He has no children or family to comfort and support him. The only companion Santiago has is the local boy. The boy is fond of Santiago, but his family is not. The boy’s parent do not think Santiago id good for the boy because the man is unlucky. The boy brings Santiago food and companionship. Even though the boy is a friend to Santiago he still has an empty part that should hold family. The old man continues through life with no wife or children and on to his next journey with the sea.

Failure is a difficult concept for many people to accept because it is hard to understand what failure exactly is. The idea of failure can be seen in the concluding chapters of The Great Gatsby when Gatsby fails to achieve his dream of being with Daisy. The issue of failure exists within all people whether they are successful or not. The issue of dealing with failure is a difficult hurdle to overcome for many reasons, which includes ideas

Individuals may look deep within to summon courage that is necessary to move past triumphs and tragedies. In Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Santiago struggles greatly to search for hope in seemingly hopeless situations. The idea that people look deep within to summon courage is portrayed through the actions of Santiago, Manolin, and Manolin’s parents.

In the novel The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway uses the literary device of metaphors. Hemingway uses the metaphor of the ocean to symbolize life, and to depict the role that individuals play in life. Hemingway uses the metaphor of the lions to signify people who live their lives as active participants. The tourists in the novel represent the individuals, who in observe their lives and are not active participants. In the novels that Ernest Hemingway writes, he uses metaphors to reflect his life experiences and opinions. The ocean in The Old Man and the Sea is a metaphor, which represents Hemingway 's personal view of life. Hemingway believes that in life everyone must find their own niche and uses the metaphor of the ocean and the

Failure is also an achievement, with a negative result, opposite of accomplishment. A mother that shows no interest in raising her children, the children are not productive or morally responsible end in an achievement in failure by that mother. Not all negative achievements are failures. A negative achievement can become a positive, again it depends on the achiever and what they choose do with the achievement in question. “Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts”- Winston Churchill. Throughout history the most successful people had a relationship with failure and still went on to make their mark on the world. You can have a live time of fails and one success to make it all worth it. “I suppose there are clues about his life there in the shut-up-and-locked room, perhaps even some traces of my mother, but better to be content with ignorance, I’ve always thought, than haunted by the truth” (Brume 101). A given opportunity to achieve (negative or positive) should not be ignored, it’s a gift of a life experience that expands your senses and enhances thought, it’s not something to be afraid of. Bravery can only be filtered through fear, being able to

The word “failure”, by definition, is the condition of not achieving the desired end or ends. However, this standard definition does not come close to summing up the countless other meanings of failure. Every person, regardless of status, color, or sex, has had to deal with this issue at least once in their lifetime. Even so, each person’s definition of it can vary depending on their personal experiences. The interpretations of failure may differ, but failure itself involves not putting forth effort, being a disappointment, or not succeeding in a task.

Failure is something that we cannot go through life without experiencing. The best thing about failure is that failure can be used as a great learning experience to improve upon things in our lives and career. Using failure as a learning tool is dependent upon the person and how they view it as well as how they use it. Failure is a matter of perspective and the lessons in failure are important aspects towards growth and development. If we did not experience failure there wouldn’t be opportunities for learning. Failure can teach us about ourselves as well as provide an understanding for our

It is ambiguous whether the old man succeeds or fails. At first, it seems that if Santiago has failed. “He sailed lightly now and he had no thoughts nor any feelings of any kind” (Hemingway 119). It is almost like he has lost everything that he has worked for. The old man accepts defeat as is, without mourning or grief Fortunately, after all the damage has been taken, he keeps fishing. He built some sort of relationship with the marlin, but was later broken. He has since moved on.

     In the timeless novel The Old Man and the Sea, the hero is undoubtedly the old man, Santiago, whom us as readers become very acquainted with. Santiago is a hard-worker and perseveres through every problem nature brings to him. He is in the midst of a horrendous fishing drought, during which the townspeople laugh and ridicule him. Santiago just lets the criticism pass him by because he is confident that the fish of his lifetime is coming soon. In a sense, Santiago represents the ideas of honor and pride. He is also a hero to a young boy named Manolin who conveys the image that the old man is whom he would rather live

Failure often times leads a person to feel helpless, disappointed and depressed. However,one should not allow this to set them back in trying to achieve the ultimate aim one has set out to do. Failure in the beginning can often be a powerful incentive to reassess one’s position in wanting to achieve the particular aims; to analyse whether the purpose is worth the trouble the person has to undergo and the whether the obstacles are surmountable.

The Old Man and the Sea was written by Ernest Hemingway and published in 1952. This is a captivating fiction story about a man named Santiago and his adventure when one day, he goes on a fishing journey to catch the big one. However, this adventure quickly becomes one of pain and suffering when things take a turn for the worse.