Wednesday, April 24, 2013

The Old Man and The Sea book review

The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway, Scribner Classics 1952 Fiction At the beginning of the book it details the life of an old fisherman by the name of Santiago,the story takes place in the depths of his losing streak and he was beginning to lose hope. He had not caught a fish in 84 days, so his apprentices family decided to send him off to a more accomplished fisherman. Being the kind youth character he decided to visit and feed him on a regular basis. The old man (being stubborn and proud) decided its time to get out of his slump and go on a fishing run. Sometime in on the first day he managed to land a marlin, he was aged however so it took him quite an amount of time (3 days to be exact) to catch the fish. Oh, the humanity! by a customer Okay, so I was forced, by way of caring about my grades at the point, into reading this book for freshman HS English class. Ten years and some 3,500 showers later, I still can't get the stink of this fish off me. I promise you, I still have fits when I see it on bookstore shelves. The only redeeming quality about this book is Unca Ernie's name on the cover (although, being in the middle of "The Sun Also Rises" at the moment, I'm not sure that qualifies as redeeming, at that). Sure, it's different, it's simple, it's simply brimming over with symbolism. But in my opinion, this is the sort of symbolism writers use when they don't really have anything to say. Yeah, Jesus, the cross, whatever-- we know the story, thanks. You can only read so much about how the moon is the brother of the fish and the lion is the brother of the man and the lion is also the brother of the moon and therefore the man is the brother of the fish and therefore Donnie Osmond is the brother of Marie Osmond before you want to stick your head through a plate glass window and slice your jugular open on a shard. As a matter of fact, I have a suspicion that shame over writing this book is the reason Hemingway killed himself. I speak three languages, and none of them have negative words strong enough for how I feel about this book. Would I be writing a review ten years after the fact if I didn't have strong feelings? As a last note, I do not tell friends to avoid this book, I encourage them to read it (but just checking it out at the library, don't give the sods anymore money!), because the utter badness of this book truly has to be experienced to be believed. I agree with the review complete in the fact that maybe hemingway had committed suicide because he believed his writing skill was going down. However this did go a bit too far in some manners as at the least I respect the books age I believe the writing style was a bit choppy as the sentences were short and the grammar was less than desirable. But at the very least it has heart,an example “Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and cheerful and undefeated”-The Old Man and The Sea, page 1. This is the first (among many others) use of poor grammar. Though you can’t expect much at the time as there hardly was computers then, so I decided to give credit where credit was due which was the overflowing amounts of symbolism.This grammar is the only thing I cannot really enjoy about it and at least its not “John Freeman got his computer shut down and wet on the platform to go up to the roof of the building where he left his motorcycle and normal people close because he was in his office lab coat. John Freeman got on his motorcycl and said "its time for me to live up to my family name and face full life consequences" so he had to go”-Halflife: Fulllife Consequences, Squirrelking this is as low as you can go. The closest book I can relate this is to The Pearl in setting but the grammar is to broken up for any other real correlation besides the endings. In that I mean all seems lost but there is a light at the end of the tunne He means that no matter how many times your beatdown physically you will always turn up victorious in the end. Sort of like when someone knows they are going to be killed 100% they will take there own life so that they win in the end. believing that they were better in the end. Tannor was moving down the hill at unbelievable speeds on his way to obtain some of the much fabled monster, a roaring large silver bullet smacked into him *”**t” he heard a humanoid voice speak in the distance, he would stand up and feel a painful burst of lightning through his leg.The only thing he could say was “ruh roh” this is the wriing style I belive it had The Old Man and The Sea 2 stars Find better prey and hope it not poisoned