Q1 Blog 1: La Mar

After a bit of switching around after noticing I can't find the book I was originally reading, I settled on The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, because it was visible on my desk looked like a good read.

In the first quarter of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, the story is established. The old man, who has gone eighty four days without catching any fish, sets out for the eighty fifth day after speaking with the boy, his former fishing partner who was forced by his father to quit after the old man's unlucky streak. The character of the old man is very wise, optimistic, and experienced. He seems to know that good things don't always come to the skilled and experienced. Sometimes things just require luck and patience for things to start going one's way. The boy has a very close relationship with the old man, as he trained the boy on his fishing ship since he was five. I thought it was interesting how the story has no divisions or chapters; it's all uninterrupted paragraphs. It makes it a little difficult to read because there are no spots to take a break and think over what just happened. However, the structure seems the reflect the monotony of the eight four day bad luck streak and the long trip to finally catch a fish. Near the end of the first quarter of the story, the old man spots a Portuguese man of war jellyfish. He admires the "iridescent bubbles" but curses their double nature, calling the one he sees a "whore."  They are "the falsest things in the sea," as their beauty is contrasted by their deadly tentacles, and he enjoys watching them being eating by the sea turtles. The fact that he uses a female term to describe it parallels the custom of uses the feminine term "la mar" to refer to the sea as a female. Both the sea and the jellyfish have great beauty and terrible danger hidden within them, just how some considered females at the time. This theme of duality seems to be present throughout the book so far. A quotation from this section about la mar's duality was, "But the old man always thought of her [the sea] as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought." This is important to the book as a whole because it describes the duality and capriciousness of the sea. The quarter ends with a tug on one of the fishing lines, possibly marking the end of the old man's eighty four days without fish.