Santiago's Defeat

“The Old Man and the Sea” is a short story, with defeat as one of its many themes, written in 1951 by American author Ernest Hemingway. Defeat is shown throughout the short novel in ways including when Santiago, the old man, has not caught a fish for 84 days then when he finally hooks a fish, it is a marlin that is too heavy to bring aboard. Then as the man tries to bring the marlin ashore by pulling it along the side of his boat, sharks eat the marlin. This along with other events shows me that Santiago was ultimately defeated.

Santiago is a man that lives in a small village who fishes for food, not recreationally. After 84 days unsuccessfully catching fish he decides to go back out and again after a couple days of failed casts

As he affirms later on : “ That was the last shark of the pack that came. There was nothing more for them to eat.”(pages 118-119). Even the sharks knew that there was no more fish, they ate it all. Santiago in spite of his efforts lost his battle. When the sharks ate all of the fish it meant that the battle was over and there was nothing left to fight

Here it is when Santiago reaches the Havana, his beach, and finally realises, or we may say, confirms his suspicion: there is no fish left. He was left with the backbone but no meat to sell. He didn’t care what would happen with the bones, as mentioned earlier, and he is not even satisfied with what he brought. He lost the fish and lost his fight/struggle. The whole point of his trip was to catch a fish so that he could sell it. If he could sell it he would have had money to survive for the next winter and so not starve to death. Fishing was his job and way of having money. Santiago lost the fish and so couldn’t accomplish his plans, his goal of passing through the upcoming necessities. It was not a spiritual goal it was Santiago being able to eat, to fulfil basic