Pride In The Old Man And The Sea

Demise and Pride “Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.” -Ernest Hemingway. In Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea Hemingway illustrates to the reader that the Old Man’s strong self-pride is nearly his demise. From the start of The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway paints a strong vivid mental picture of a stubborn old man. Whose skin is heavily leathered, thin and filled with deep wrinkles from the years in the sun, with only tattered over used simple clothing on his back. The only possessions the Old man had were his pride, boat and the friendship with a young boy named Manolin. Only it was more than a friendship, it was more like a fathership, the Old man nearly raised him, he taught him everything he knows about fishing. …show more content…
At the beginning of the novel Hemingway builds the picture of an old man whose self-pride means everything to him, illustrated in The Old Man and the Sea by the Old man’s adamant refusal of the boys help on his journey out to deep waters. Hemingway shows this again later in the novel when Santiago only accepts the bait fish because he knows the fish were purchased which means they aren’t going to blemish his pride. Furthermore Hemingway shows that Santiago’s pride is so strong that he has placed him in a very undesirable situation, in which he releases a cry for help from the boy. As the novel reaches its climax Santiago begins to grow very weak and tired as the fight with the fish has been going on for three whole days at this point. He once again surprises the readers with a shocking statement of his self-pride by saying he would rather die right there, out in the middle of the sea, than to go back into port without any fish to prove his