english book review- the old man and the sea

                        ‘The old man and the sea’ by Earnest Hemmingway, is a novel about an old fisherman named Santiago, and his struggles as he fails to catch fish for eighty four days. Many parts of the novel impressed me; however the story was weak and lacked excitement.

                        The relationship seen between Santiago and Manolin was the aspect of the novel that most impressed me. Manolin fished with Santiago for a long time, however was made to move to a more successful fishing boat due to Santiago’s bad luck.  Manolin nevertheless continues to visit Santiago and to help him in whatever ways he can. This shows that their bond was strong and that Manolin was very much dedicated to the relationship. Much of the beginning and end of the novel centres around their relationship and dialogue between them.

                        The character of Santiago is also very strong and impressive. In the beginning of the novel, he has gone eighty four days without catching a thing, but he kept fishing and did not give up, I admired his persistence and commitment. I took great pity on Santiago, due to his immense bad luck, first of not catching a fish for eighty four days and then losing the marlin to the sharks.

                        One of the main themes in the novel was struggle, centring around the suffering of Santiago. He refused defeat by travelling out further than the other fishermen, in hope of catching a huge fish. This wish comes true, but even when he does hook a huge marlin; he struggles for three days to haul him in. Pride and bravery are also key themes in the novel.

There was a huge lack of characters in the novel, with only two

Main characters. This added to the weakness and perhaps tedious nature of the novel. I felt more characters were definitely needed.

                        I also found the language of the novel quite monotonous, I thought it was overly formal with no use of colloquial phrases or abbreviations and I thought that dialogue was overused in parts of the novel.

                        Overall I found the novel quite uninteresting and irksome, due to the lack of characters and excitement in the plot. I would not recommend this novel to people of my age group; however an older reader might enjoy it.

                        I would give this novel two stars out of five.