some feelings

I had read The Old Man and the Sea when I was in junior high school, and when I reread Hemingway's novel after a few years, I had a different feeling. In junior high school, I felt more of Santiago's fearlessness and bravery, but this time I felt more of his loneliness and reluctance to grow old.

To begin with, Santiago has only his wife's posthumous photo in his house, no family and often only young boys to talk to. It is easy to see his loneliness from the opening pages. But the more obvious manifestation is at sea, when the old man is out at sea. For long stretches, Santiago talks to himself. I tried to think of a situation where being alone for just a few days would not go as far as talking to oneself frequently. Santiago must have been lonely for a long time if he talked to himself as often as he did. Six times during the fight with the fish he said to himself, "If only the boy were here", and it was easy to sense his isolation. The fish, which weighed nearly a thousand pounds, was pulling him forward and he was exhausted just from pulling it all the way. After finally taking this tuna, the old man still had to battle countless sharks, and his wounds his exhaustion were telling him that he was alone. Think for a moment about how deep the despair was. This is one of the most profound experiences I have had.

Besides , I was also struck by the old man's reluctance to grow old. Santiago had many dreams about lions, and he was subconsciously afraid of growing old, just as an old lion fears being abandoned by its pride. Such dreams strike me as a projection of reality, and they make me incredibly heartbroken. It was as if his reluctance to grow old did not undo anything. After the tuna was only bones, he felt he was dead, but the pain and wounds on his body repeatedly reminded him —— he was still alive. He returned home with this decadence and fell into a deep sleep. In later accounts, Santiago seems to have triumphed and won his dignity. But was it really a success? I don't think so. Perhaps he had lost his spirit of resignation to old age in the fight with the shark. And that's where the defeat comes in, from the root of your spirit.

Finally, I want to talk  about the author, Ernest Hemingway. His life seems to be the epitome of danger. He went to war, killed a lion, was shot through the knee, had 237 pieces of shrapnel buried in his body, experienced two plane crashes and fourteen concussions. At the age of 61, he chose to end his life with a shotgun. We often describe Hemingway as a "tough guy", but he also had a soft heart and loved small animals, so he had many cats to keep him company. Like Santiago, he could be lonely, vulnerable and afraid that he would no longer be a 'hero'. Although he could be vulnerable, he was also much braver than most people. In his time, there were few people who had "fallen flat" and few who had lost their will to fight. The values of the good had been burned away by the fires of the First World War, and people were passive, confused and unsure of where to go. But Hemingway, unlike the lost generation, slipped his attitude to life into his novels. The protagonists of many of his novels do not lose heart and show a positive side after experiencing countless sufferings. The fact that fate defeats them but does not break them is his human attitude, and it is what moved me to read The Old Man and the Sea.

Reading the Old Man and the Sea again, I no longer saw success as I did in junior high school, but I saw more of the despair.  As Calvino says, "A period of one's adult life should be devoted to the rediscovery of the most important works we read as teenagers. Even if these works remain the same, we have certainly changed, and therefore what we encounter later should be completely new." Books are not frozen, and if we repeat and read again and again, at different ages of our life, the books that gave you the wisdom to survive as a teenager and young adult, you will feel that each time you read it, it will come to you in a new light, with words of wisdom that never go out of date, and deeper meanings that it holds, as it were, a never-ending and It is like a sea of wisdom that can never be exhausted and is infinitely deep. I guess that's part of the beauty of reading.

2022-12-01

分享

喜欢(0)