Who Is Santiago A Hero

Living authentically is essential in life. People should never pretend to be someone else and should not act differently to satisfy others. The actions and opinions of people should be based off of their own personal beliefs and should not be influenced by others. In the novella The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway, the author attempts to represent real people and their lives through the use of the authentic protagonist, Santiago, and his life on the sea, with symbols that demonstrate Santiago’s positive, negative, and inspirational moments of his journey.

First, the author uses symbols to represent Santiago’s positive support or accomplishments. The author includes birds and flying fish multiple times in the story to represent friends

Santiago dreaming about being in Africa and seeing lions on the beach represent inspiration, as this is one of Santiago’s happiest memories. He dreams about this vacation constantly at night as he considers it a wonderful memory and as something that inspires him. Santiago also gets inspiration from his idol, Yankees baseball player Joe DiMaggio, who played extremely well in his career even though he had a bone spur in his heel. Santiago relates to DiMaggio as he sees his own struggles as a poor and aging man similar to DiMaggio’s foot injury. Santiago states, “But I must have confidence and I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel” (Hemingway 68). Even with the injury, DiMaggio is a successful baseball player so Santiago believes he can also be a successful fisherman even though he is aging. Finally, there is Manolin, a young boy and Santiago’s close friend who represents youth and the future. Manolin also serves as inspiration to Santiago as he attempts to be successful and pass down his knowledge and experience to