A Terrible Twist with Terrible Sprinkles and Terrible on Top

Since everyone is doing blog posts on The Secret Agent, I will not! I shall write about the excellent novel The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. The Old Man and the Sea is a great novel to analyze for two things: plot twists and long, boring sections of nothingness. In my opinion, The Old Man and the Sea is about two times as long as it has to be. From page fourteen to thirty-five all the old man is doing is holding a fishing line. Ernest Hemingway could have easily inserted a couple sentences to explain how long the old man sat in the boat holding the line. Instead he chooses to bore the reader with twenty-one pages of absolute solitude. That is not the purpose, however (Heming way is not Hemingway because he bored people). The purpose of this long, drawn-out narrative is to show how much this fish really means to the old man. He is willing to be dragged miles and miles into the sea, endure gashes and bruises, and practically starve to death just to catch the biggest fish of his life. During his adventure he thinks of the great baseball players of the time. The old man admires DiMaggio and McGraw and enjoys his talks with the boy about baseball. Perhaps the old man believes if he brings back a gigantic fish that he will become great and admired too. Because Hemingway details the entire journey of the old man the reader feels the same feelings he does. The reader ends up wanting to catch the fish just as badly, but why? For the prestige, for the honor. The description of the old man’s journey creates an emotional connection that cannot be broken and is why the plot twist is so gut-wrenching. The old man has finally caught the fish, not without withstanding a few injuries, and is on his way home. Suddenly a shark quickly approaches the boat. It tears at the flesh of the big fish and the blood spilled only attracts other sharks. After a struggle with several sharks the fish is gone. All that is left is a skeleton and head. The old man quietly sails home without anything worthwhile to show for his absence. This is where the reader feels the connection to the old man the strongest. Having stayed with him for the entirety of his escapade, having felt the desire to catch this fish, the reader too feels absolutely awful. The detailed account of the old man’s pursuit of not only the fish but honor and pride strengthens the fatherly connection the reader has with the old man which succeeds solely in making the terrible twist even more terrible. ITS JUST SO TERRIBLE!