I Went Out Too Far. Review of ‘The old man & the sea’

BOOK REVIEW
Title of book: The Old Man And The Sea.
Written by: Ernest Hemingway.
347 words.
Title of Review : I Went Out Too Far.

This story has simple sentences. No difficult words. No harsh judgements. No desperate attempt at trying to sound unique. The old man or Santiago, his skiff, the fish he caught, the sharks, and the sea have unified diversities. The connections, if I be allowed to reflect, emerge from Santiago’s thoughts, and effectively create bonds of empathy between the fears of affluence and the desperation in the Third World, the theory of ‘karma’ and the speculations of destiny, contended resilience and joyful resignation — and all done without employing complexities and verbiage that even I was compelled to resort to in this last sentence.
Santiago tells us in a plain language, all that we keep trying to suppress. Why else does he think aloud — ‘I hope I do not have to fight again ….. I hope so much I do not have to fight again.’ Which Nation, what situation would not relate to words like: ‘Could it have been hunger that made him desperate, or was he frightened by something in the night? May be he suddenly felt fear. But he was such a calm, strong fish and he seemed so fearless and so confident. It is strange.’
It isn’t just wisdom that exists within books that I am talking of. Everybody, from a practical-joker to a management trainee must listen to the old man telling himself — ‘ I must hold his pain where it is, he thought. Mine does not matter. I can control mine. But his pain could drive him mad.’ That’s the way Hemingway has fused the tangible with the intangible.
Ernest Miller Hemingway, you’ll always be with me asking me through Santiago to ‘keep awake and steer. You may have much luck yet.’ And even ‘ when you are beaten’, it is easy. I’ll agree because it is the old man saying so: ‘ I never knew how easy it was. And what beat you, he thought. Nothing, he said aloud, I went out too far.’

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