Old Man and the Sea

My least favorite part about the novel Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway would be the fact that most of the story made me feel like I was waiting on something to happen. There is definitely excitement in the plot, but it felt sporadic to me. There would be nothing happening, except for the detailed explaining about how nothing was happening, and then boom. Something dramatic would come out of nowhere. For example, the old man is being pulled along by this massive fish, he sticks his hand in the water a few times and then all of a sudden the great marlin leaps out of the water and shows off its beauty and magnificence. It was not very consistent. The story had a lot of detail and explanation, but the detail and explanation would be about being towed or sailing in the middle of the ocean with no specific direction. You can only describe what it is like to be stranded in the ocean so many times. At least the old man does not seem too upset about it. Another smaller thing about this book that I did not like was all of the fishing equipment and techniques that the old man was using. That is more of a personal dislike, because I have never been around that serious of fishing before, but I kept getting confused. When the old man had caught and killed the marlin, his journey back was less exciting than the suspenseful trip out into the sea. He regretted killing the great fish, so as a reader I thought, "Are you kidding me? You just spent so much time and suffering for this prize and you wished you had not done it?" One side of me completely knew where he was coming from; after all, he thought of the fish as a brother. But another side of me thought it was a little ignorant. As much as I loved the old man, the plot he was involved in did not do it for me most of the time.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. New York: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1995.