Old Man and the Sea

If I had to give the novel Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway a rating based on a five star scale, I would give it a three star rating. I did not hate it, but I certainly did not love it. I felt at times it was a little bit vague and some details were not explained as fully as they should have been. The other thing I found I did not like was how seventy-five percent of the entire plot was the old man getting dragged out into the ocean, waiting to catch the fishing, and then sailing back home, waiting to get to the shore. I am certainly a creature of patience, but not that much patience. I appreciated the old man's patience as the marlin told him further and further away from his home, but as a read I did not enjoy waiting on everything. If I only focused on the negatives, though, I would have given this novel a much lower rating. There were many things that I did love about this story...I have already mentioned it in other blogs about a million times so I am pretty much repeated myself again. I the characters were great and really made the book worth ready. The old man seems so nice, how he talks to the fish and tells him how beautiful he is and how proud he is to catch such a wonderful fish. I am so glad he was not just some money crazy barbarian who only wanted to kill the fish for the large profit. His positive way of looking at life and kind attitude makes the difference between a tale about a grateful old man, and a fish murderer. The reader can see how much this old man cares about everything around him, which is a quality that I truly admire. The old man is pretty much the main reason that I gladly give this novel a good rating.

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