Old Man And The Sea Text Exploration Part 3

The Old Man and the SeaPart 3 – Battles at sea

Wednesday & Thursday September 13th & 14th 1950

The Marlin

Glorious, dignified, noble

A worthy opponent

Memories of the pair of marlin

Santiago’s wounds

The draw north-east

Cutting the other lines

The Nobility of Endurance

Marlin

DiMaggio

Nobility

Santiago

The Second Dawn

Shallower depth

The tired warbler & the hawks

Left hand cramp – betrayal

The first jump

Bartering prayers

Memory of arm wrestling – el Campeon

Catching the dolphin / flying fish

More wounds

The THIRD Dawn

The struggle builds to a climax

3 Smaller circles

Pass under the boat

“Come on and kill me. I do not

care who kills who”

The harpoon

Lashing the ‘elixir’ to the boat

A sin?

Material gain

Pride

What he was born to do – his

place in the natural order

The first attack

Within an hour

The Mako – fast and fearless

40 lb of the marlin is taken

Sacrifice of harpoon & rope

Knife lashed to an oar

He knows more will come

Communion

Santiago eats some of the marlin

Physical & spiritual nutrition

The second attack

The sin of hopelessness

2 shovel nosed sharks

Scavengers

‘ay’ – ‘feeling the nail go through his

hands and into the wood’

¼ of the marlin taken

“I shouldn’t have gone out so far, fish”

The 3rd & 4th attack

Sacrifice of the knife

Clubbing despite futility

He knows from his pain that he

is not dead

10pm – the glow of Havana

The final attack

Midnight

The sacrifice of the club and tiller

The copper tasting wound

The defiant spit

The long journey home

The marlin is all but gone

Was he beaten?

Return to Land

The mast and the burden of the cross

The 5 falls

Sleep in the position of the crucified

Christ

Redemption‘To live a life of great fervour and then

to accept destruction with dignity,

passing on whatever one can to a

successor.’

The skeleton is still a vehicle for the

intrinsic values that gives Santiago’s

life meaning.

Will Santiago die & does it matter?

Sharing the Elixir

Manolin – the marlin’s spear

Pedrico – the head

The villagers & tourists – the

spectacle of the skeleton