Universal Themes- The Old Man and the Sea

The book, 'The Old Man and the Sea' displays many universal themes in it. One major theme in this story is that people will go very far to keep their pride. In the book the old man is called "salao" which means "unlucky", by many people because he has gone eighty four days with out a single catch. This hurts the old mans pride, which is what pushes him to keep trying and finally helps him to catch the eighteen foot long marlin. In the book, there are many times that the old man feels like he can not possibly catch and kill the fish all by himself. He feels like he is not strong enough to do it alone and he wants to give up. At these times he thinks back to all the people who do not believe him and how good it would feel to prove them all wrong by bringing home the giant eighteen foot long marlin. Thinking back to all the people who doubted him is what pushed him to keep going and to finally catch the fish and kill it. The old man went to great lengths to catch the fish. He let it pull him out to sea for many days, which was a risk to his health and his safety. He could have died if he had let the fish take him out too far, but he was determined to prove to everyone that he was not unlucky so he took his chances. When the marlin jumped out of the water and the old man saw for the first time exactly how big the fish really was, he decided that he would fight with this fish until one of them was dead. He did not even care that he could catch the fish. He would do whatever it would take for him to not lose the fish because he thought that if he lost the fish, no one would believe him that it really was eighteen feet long. He wanted people to respect him again and he knew that by bringing in the fish, he could gain all of their respect because none of them had even seen a fish so big, let alone caught and killed one by themselves.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. New York: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1995. Print.