Great Gatsby-Santiago :: essays research papers

This may be true in all cases, but it is clearly predominant in Ernest Hemingways Old Man and the Sea. It is evident that Hemingway modeled the main character, Santiago after his possess person, and that the desires, the mentality, and the lifestyle of the old military personnel are analogous to Hemingways.     Santiago is an old fisherman who lives in a small coast town in Cuba. At the time that Hemingway wrote the story, he was also an elderly gentlemen and was such an avid fisherman throughout his life, that books such as "Ernest Hemingway, The Angler As Artist were written on the sole subject of how this obsession influenced Hemingways writing. Furthermore, he fished false the coast of Cuba so much that he decided to "buy the Finca Vigia in Cuba, a substantial estate located about fifteen miles from downtown capital of Cuba . . . For entertainment Santiago would "read the baseball." Meanwhile Hemingway often "relied on baseball analog ies in his writing, suggesting that he also loved the game. These similarities between Santiagos lifestyle and Hemingways cannot be do by or passed off as coincidence because they are much too precise. Already, from these prominent identical traits it is evident that Hemingway modeled the character of Santiago after his own person.     Hemingway had a very characteristic view of life. He believed it was admirable to risk ones life in order to test ones limits. His love of bullfighting clearly present this. Raymond S. Nelson, Hemingway scholar, states, "He saw bullfighting as tragic ritual, and he lionized the better bullfighters as men who risked death every time they entered the arena -- a stance he admired and chose for himself in other ways." One example of Hemingway choosing this stance for himself was when "he shot and dropped a charging Cape buffalo a few feet in the lead the enraged animal would have killed him." This daring act of Hemi ngways sounds peculiarly similar to the sport of bullfighting, and is an excellent example of Hemingways obsession with courting death. Scholar, John Smith believes that "Hemingways totally life and outlook suggest that, if he had known in advance of this deadly possibility, he would have embraced it even more enthusiastically." Very similarly, and not so coincidentally, Santiago had this very same mindset. He also believes in testing ones limits and admits as much when he tells himself, ". . . I will show him what a man can do and what a man endures.