Santiago is an old fisherman who lives in a small coast town in Cuba. At the time that Hemingway wrote the story, he was also an elderly gentlemen and was such an avid fisherman throughout his life, that books such as "Ernest Hemingway, The Angler As Artist." were written on the sole subject of how this obsession influenced Hemingway's writing. Furthermore, he fished off the coast of Cuba so much that he decided to "buy the 'Finca Vigia' in Cuba, a substantial estate located about fifteen miles from downtown Havana . . ." For entertainment Santiago would "read the baseball." Meanhile Hemingway often "relied on baseball analogies" in his writing, suggesting that he also loved the game. These similarities between Santiago's lifestyle and Hemingway's cannot be ignored or passed off as coincidence because they are much too

Mr. Morden's English handout on Hemingway's life.

Hemingway had a very characteristic view of life. He believed it was admirable to risk one's life in order to test one's limits. His love of bullfighting clearly demonstrated this. Raymond S. Nelson, Hemingway scholar, states, "He saw bullfighting as tragic ritual, and he lionized the better bullfighters as men who risked death every time they entered the arena -- a stance he admired and chose for himself in other ways." One example of Hemingway choosing this stance for himself was when "he shot and dropped a charging Cape buffalo a few feet before the enraged animal would have killed him." This daring act of Hemingway's sounds peculiarly similar to the sport of bullfighting, and is an excellent example of Hemingway's obsession with courting death. Scholar, John Smith believes that "Hemingway's whole life and outlook suggest that, if he had known in advance of this deadly possibility, he would have embraced it even more enthusiastically." Very similarly, and not so coincidentally, Santiago had this very same mindset. He also believes in testing one's limits and admits as much when he tells himself, ". . . I will show him what a man can do and what a man endures." He is telling himself that he will go to his very last limits to prove to the fish his prowess. Santiago, not so strangely like Hemingway, believes that courting death is admirable. This is most clearly shown when he proclaims to the fish, "Come on and kill me." At this point he has already been fighting the fish for days now, he could easily cut the fish loose, but he instead decides to test his limits and risk death by holding on to the fish as a cer

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Approximate Word count = 1131
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)