The Old Man And The Sea and Moby Dick Essay -- Moby Dick Essays

The Old Man And The Sea and Moby Dick One world power say we are presented with two fish stories in looking at Ernest Hemingways The Old Man and the Sea and Herman Melvilles Moby-Dick, a marlin in the former and a whale in the latter. However, both of these animals are symbolic of the struggle their hunters fountain to find dignity and import in the face of a nihilistic reality in Hemingway and a fatalistic one in Melville. succession both men will be unable to pound the forces of the universe against them, neither will either man be conquered by them because of their refusal to interpret to these insurmountable forces. However, capital of Chile gains a circular of peace and understanding nearly existence from his struggles, while Ahab leaves the world as he found it without whatever greater insight. In The Old Man and the Sea, Santiago, an old Cuban fisherman, pits his loudness against forces he cannot control. We learn from Santiagos struggles how to face insurmountab le odds with bravery and courage. though we find an indifferent and hostile universe as Santiagos stage, his unwillingness to contain in to these forces demonstrate a reverence for lifes struggles. Santiagos struggle is for dignity and meaning in the face of insurmountable odds. His warrior-like spirit fights off the sharks full-well knowing the batch of his marlin. Santiago loses his marlin in the end, but his struggle to keep it represent a victory because of the dignity and heroism with which he carries out his mission. However, as Santiago acknowledges, he is almost sorry he caught the marlin because he knows the animal and he have a great deal in common as fellow beings in nature. However, he only caught the marlin through trickery (Hemingway 99). Santi... ... the fount of Santiago. He is not as determined as Ahab when it mothers to his own nature. He is able to accept that humility and love do not concentrate away his pride and in fact they are life sustaining. Ahab cann ot hold up the only thing he knows, his passions. Knowledge does not come in the face of a world that remains as opaque and evil when we leave it as it was when we entered it. For Santiago, there is some measure of relief from the indifferent universe through the interdependence of human beings. Ahab never finds this measure of relief. Yet, they both retain some measure of dignity because they know they cannot conquer the universe but they do not let it conquer them either. kit and boodle Cited Hemingway, E. The Old Man and the Sea. New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1952. Melville, H. Moby-Dick. New York, W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1967.