The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway Summary and Analysis

I've been looking forward to making this video for while today I'm going to be discussing the old man in the sea by Ernest Hemingway which is one of the greatest short Classics in American literature but it's also just great book in this video I'll be breaking down the story little bit analyzing it some and equipping you with what you need to know to either approach the story for the first time or maybe think little bit more deeply about it revisit the material if you haven't read the book in while if you've been following along with the videos I've been making you know that I'm really big Ernest Hemingway fan he's had pretty big impact on me both in terms of how think and write and also just kind of how view the world his perspective is so powerful that feel like most people who read his stories are impacted by the way he writes in some way his short declarative sentences are the most it's the most imitated style maybe of all time don't know about that I'd have to think about that little bit more before make claim that big this particular story is about the will to live it's about discipline it's about determination and it's also for lack of better phrase about your why it's about like what makes man tick what makes this man continue to do what he does day in and day out the main character in the story the old man goes out to see and in the story he goes farther than he usually goes and he goes farther out than most men go most of the other fisherman in the village and after while he ends up hooking huge fish and after he hooks that fish he then needs to bring it back farther than he usually has to bring something that big back this is victory for him in the moment he did what he set out to do but on the way back as he's coming home sharks begin to eat the fish that he caught he has wrecked himself physically his hands are completely torn up and the meat of the fish is getting eaten away by these sharks so that by the time he comes back all that's left is the skeleton of the fish for everyone to see and so everyone knows that this old man just did something pretty legendary but also he doesn't really have anything to show for it he comes home and he's exhausted and the last sentence in the story which is one that think about decent amount is the old man was dreaming about the Lions and so that's him asleep dreaming and there's boy in the story who kind of comes back back and and checks on him to see how he's doing so what was the point what did he get out of all that effort that he put into catching that fish basically nothing he doesn't have anything of value to sell and show for it but the character he's able to display is to me the point this man is going to go out and do what he does whether or not he catches anything he went something like 82 days without catching fish before he started to haul in this huge Marlin or whatever it was and then the sharks ate it all up and at the end he's dreaming almost this biblical dream that to me is kind of alluding to his place in nature his place on Earth the Simplicity of Hemingway's Pros always lends itself to open-ended thought it really leaves you room to think pretty deeply because the sentences aren't distracting you're not confused about the meaning of the story sentence by sentence and to me this particular story The Old Man in the sea is like Peak hemu style Pros he's got lot of really good short stories but the old man in the sea of all of the books that I've read by him is the one that when Revisited I'm like man he really ped this one like for what it is can't find any floss in this particular story this story is definitely inspiring to me and it's kind of the literary equivalent of why watching like David gokin interview or something like that like this guy this fisherman in the story he's going out and he is living an extreme and legendary existence without anyone watching he doesn't do it for the attention he's out there making his living the way he's always done it and there is kind of purity to the approach that he takes to going out there on his own this story is certainly spiritual it reminds me of kind of the Simplicity of the arcs of Bible stories and the best part as I've mentioned before is that you can read it all just in one afternoon you can hold the whole story really freshly in your mind right after you've read it and so you're not losing lot of the details along the way highly recommend this one if you've read it let me know what you think and if you got something out of this video definitely consider subscribing I'll be making book rated cont content on this channel indefinitely