Q1 Blog 4: Jaws

In the final quarter of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, a plot twist occurs, unless the reader thought about the situation leading up to it logically to infer what should happen (which this reader did not do). The boat is approached by several groups of sharks, attracted by the cloud of blood being trailed by the swordfish corpse that was tethered to the side of the skiff, as it was too large to fit on the boat. It seems like this should have been expected, as tying what is essentially a free meal for sharks onto the outside of a boat will probably look pretty appetizing to and therefore attract sharks. The sharks were fought off by the old man, but with each new shark he began to tire and run out of weapons. When he finally staved off the last shark with a broken tiller, they had taken their toll on the swordfish's corpse, which was now just a head and a skeleton. He reached the port of Havana from which he had departed several days prior, and headed back home, collapsing several times on the way and continually muttering that it was his fault for sailing out too far. "And what beat you, he thought. 'Nothing,' he said aloud. 'I went out too far.'" This quotation displays the old man's dejection and self-blaming. He also seems accepting of his failure to think soundly under the pressure of catching this one fish. In the end of the story,the old man returns home with nothing to show for it but a fish skeleton that soon washes back out to sea. Although some people are glad he has returned safely and are impressed by the immensity of the skeleton he brought back, I felt that too little changed from the beginning to the end and that it was a little disappointing. I expected an ending with more closure or more change, just because it seems like the old man gained nothing but the experience. Perhaps the lack of change is reminiscent of the fickle nature of the sea with her ebb and flow of waves that wash things onto the shore and quickly take them back. The ending also shows how life always goes on; fishermen will hook great catches, sharks will eat fish, and great trials will be endured, but life must continue. So the old man continues to his life after enduring this ordeal.