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03-23-2018, 11:58 AM | #91 |
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:biting my lip to stay out of the hunting discussion:
Signed, a hunter.... I think the book aptly describes the skill vs. luck needed for fishing, and the respect the fisherman has to the fish, who also “hunt” to survive. But it is not “the great hunter” type story, or even a “story” as in one with a lot of things happening. More contemplative, maybe. |
03-23-2018, 08:06 PM | #92 |
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It is probably unwise to generalise as I have, June, as there are a myriad different forms of hunting, and every hunter is an individual. The hunting and fishing that I've done is pretty small stuff compared to what we've been reading about.
But I do see it as, at least partly, a "great hunter" type story. It is almost an ode to a hunter. I see in Hemingway's writing a great admiration for this struggle of man versus beast. (issybird noted some symmetry between this book and The Sun Also Rises, and that symmetry includes this struggle.) To some extent I share that admiration: the strength and determination required by such fishermen is something admirable - I think. But that is not the same as admiring the waste that comes from poor decisions; given the situation the poor decisions were understandable, they did not seem unrealistic, but that doesn't make them good decisions. And because I don't see this in the same way that Hemingway did, the entire short story ends up feeling wrong to me. (And the fact that I don't like his writing style, his voice, doesn't help.) |
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03-23-2018, 10:15 PM | #93 | |
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Last edited by Alohamora; 03-23-2018 at 10:21 PM. |
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03-24-2018, 09:36 AM | #94 | |
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I think, too, that “reading” a work of art (and I regard this novel as such) does not simply mean limiting oneself to the simple physical text. There is a synergy between the text and the imagination of the reader. Wordsworth said that we both “see and half create” and that recreation occurs each time we read a literary work.Certainly The widely differing attitudes to Hemingway’s book on this thread illustrate this. Last edited by fantasyfan; 03-26-2018 at 05:05 PM. |
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03-26-2018, 09:34 PM | #95 | ||||||
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So much great discussion on the novel. It clarified a lot of my reaction to the book.
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He's always most effective when he describes the physical. Quote:
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One thing that I did wonder about was how much of himself Hemingway saw in Santiago. When Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea in 1949 he had gone a very long time since his last big catch - For Whom The Bell Tolls in 1940. He was 50 - probably in his own mind, old and long past his physical prime. The Old Man and the Sea was his last big fish. I first read this book fifty years ago in high school as an assigned text. Bits of it have stuck in my mind ever since then, which I suppose is indicative of how well Hemingway could write. |
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03-27-2018, 09:13 AM | #96 | |
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I think Santiago was meant to be Christ-like, but not in the sense of representing Christ, but in the sense that all are called to be like Christ and take up their crosses. I also see thinking that's pushing it! On another and perhaps personal front, while I tend not to like "manly men doing manly things" novels, I didn't read this like that. Perversely, I think the absence of female characters helped in that respect. I don't care for Heminway's women overall, Catherine Barkley being the exemplar for most of them. She's entirely subjective to Frederic Henry's needs and desires even at great cost to herself; Hemingway's projection of the ideal woman, it seems to me. But since Santiago is post-sexual and Manolin is pre-sexual there's no need for the pesky creatures. |
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03-27-2018, 10:16 AM | #97 | |
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03-27-2018, 12:47 PM | #98 |
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It's a fish. Let's not carry it too far!
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03-27-2018, 02:49 PM | #99 |
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A Good reminder! (though many of the perspectives are amazingly perceptive)
Last edited by fantasyfan; 03-27-2018 at 05:16 PM. |
03-27-2018, 03:50 PM | #100 |
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Why not? Why can't it be seen as significant that in the almost completely masculine milieu of the novel, a female creature is clubbed to death? If the point of the recalled scene was merely to show the two fish being bonded and devoted to each other, why is it that of the two, the female became the victim and the male got to be the courageously loyal one? Why include that terrible story at all?
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03-27-2018, 04:20 PM | #101 |
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03-27-2018, 07:21 PM | #102 | |
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I certainly don't find this any more of stretch than some of the other things that have been drawn from the story in this thread so far - although I read this scene as intending to humanise the marlin: if they bond like this then they are creatures we can relate to. I did wonder if the reader was supposed to think that maybe this new catch was that earlier male, returned to fulfil his fate next to that his mate (or some such allegorical rubbish - whoops! Oh dear, my cynicism slipped ). |
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03-27-2018, 10:41 PM | #103 | |
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I do agree with you about Hemingway’s view of the world being rather disturbing, but he was by no means extraordinary - and I fear still is not. Lots of he-men out there at the moment in Australia, blasting waterfowl out of the skies, including of course many native species which are vulnerable and supposed to be protected. |
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03-27-2018, 11:57 PM | #104 |
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I was thinking of other aspects, as much as hunting, of Hemingway's view of the world. As issybird referred to his, his portrayal of women, but also in his portrayal of other nationalities and beliefs, there is a condescension in his manner which, while not unexpected for a man of his generation, is a rather unsettling now. Unlike many writers who might be described as ahead of their time, Hemingway appears (to me) to be a man firmly entrenched in his time.
As to hunting, I grew up on a farm and all that goes with that: fishing, duck-shooting, vermin hunting, helping my father to kill and butcher beasts for the freezer. (There was, of course, some farm work as well. ) But my father also encouraged us to watch and admire wildlife, and not with the intention of killing what we'd grown to love, but with an eye to conservation. So I grew up somewhere in the middle ground between avid hunters and steadfast vegetarians: I do see a place for hunting, but I get dismayed when I see it done badly and with inappropriate targets. Where I live now we see quite a lot folk that leave their comfortable city homes for the holidays and come out to the country to blast away at anything that moves. (They have their gun licences to allow them to hunt vermin on properties they rarely bother to visit at other times, so the guns are legal, but that doesn't make the shooters any more sensible.) Some of these holiday visitors also bring their cats down with them and I see them roaming our block at night looking for birds and sugar gliders and who knows what else. Christmas and Easter are especially bad times for wildlife in this area. |
03-28-2018, 06:50 AM | #105 |
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Oh dear - good luck to your wildlife during this coming long weekend.
Sadly, I think the other aspects you mention - attitude to women, to other nationalities and beliefs, tends to "go with the territory" as they say. |
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