The Old Man and the Sea
Hemingway claimed that the novel The Old Man and the Sea is his best work of which he is most proud. Literary critics disagree with him and believe that the novel To Whom the Bell Tolls is his masterpiece and that is why I read both. Although this was the first time I had read The Old Man and the Sea in elementary school, I wanted to see what impression it would leave on me today. I was pleasantly surprised. A warm story about the old fisherman Santiago from Cuba, his goals, attempts, friendship and much more is written in this short novel. The novel also describes Manolino, a humble young man grateful for what he has and always ready to help the old man. The old man expresses the beautiful wisdoms of life in a simple way while Manolino looks at them from a different angle.
"You are born to be a fisherman, just as a fish is born to be a fish."
For Whom the Bell Tolls
This is one of the novels that are easy to read because it is very interesting. The novel follows the life story of a young American professor Robert Jordan who is a participant in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Communists. Robert was given the task of blowing up a bridge near Segovia. He resides with the partisans in humble conditions in the hills. There he meets an old man Anselm, a loyal, well-meaning, and wise man, and Maria, a girl who survived the horrors of war. When he set out to perform this task, Robert was a man without hope and desire for life. Maria opens his eyes and he starts planning the future with her. But the fear of death begins to creep in.
Anselmo is very similar to Santiago from his work The Old Man and the Sea. The reader has no choice but to look at the old man as his own father, grandfather, or role model.
"It was a night plan, and it's morning now. The night plans don't work in the morning."
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist.
Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois.
His father was a physician.
Hemingway attended Oak Park and River Forest High School.
After high school, he was a reporter for a few months for The Kansas City Star before leaving for the Italian Front to enlist as an ambulance driver in World War I. In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home.
In 1922 he was introduced to the expatriate artists and writers of the Montparnasse Quarter in Paris, whom she referred to as the "Lost Generation"
During his first 20 months in Paris, Hemingway filed 88 stories for the Toronto Star newspaper.
In 1923. Hemingway's first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems was published.
His debut novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926.
Hemingway was had been a journalist in the Spanish Civil War.
In early 1939, Hemingway went to Cuba and lived in Havana, where he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940).
Hemingway was in Europe from May 1944 to March 1945. In 1947, Hemingway was awarded a Bronze Star for his bravery during World War II.
In 1946, he wrote The Garden of Eden and a couple of years after he wrote The Old Man and the Sea (1951).
See you on Tuesday!
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