Old Man Marlin

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“He gives strength to the weak. And He gives power to him who has little strength.”(Isaiah 40:29 New Life Version) (NLV) In The Old Man and the Sea, which is a novel by Ernest Hemingway, a village accuses an old man of being Salao or exceedingly unlucky on account of his inability to catch any large fish for eighty-four days. Setting out one morning, he resolves not to return until he snares one of the great beasts of the Sea. He is overjoyed when he snags a giant marlin. Instead of accepting the fact that the fish is much too large for him and his small skiff, he grasps the line as he shoots out to sea. Being the protagonist of the narrative, the verse above exemplifies what may have been traveling through his nous as he experiences a giant marlin schlepping him further and further from his onshore habitation. …show more content…

The Old Man had lived his entire life on the Sea and had manipulated it to feed him and to transport him wheresoever he wished to go. The Marlin was a fish that the Old Man set his hook into. It tested him to its utmost, but could not defeat the veteran fisherman. They met at the exact right time for the Marlin's strength to not surpass the strength of the Old Man. The Marlin was the concrete representation of the Sea. It was, therefore, also the personification of the Old Man's lifelong frenemy. Consequently, the emergence of the Marlin represents the return of the Old Man's womb-to-tomb competition to test him one final time before the terminal organic phenomenon which all of mankind must one day

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