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The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest hemingway, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

The Old Man and the Sea: Introduction

The old man and the sea: plot summary, the old man and the sea: detailed summary & analysis, the old man and the sea: themes, the old man and the sea: quotes, the old man and the sea: characters, the old man and the sea: symbols, the old man and the sea: theme wheel, brief biography of ernest hemingway.

Historical Context of The Old Man and the Sea

Other books related to the old man and the sea.

• Full Title: The Old Man and the Sea
• When Written: 1951
• Where Written: Cuba
• When Published: 1952
• Literary Period: Modernism
• Genre: Fiction (novella); Parable
• Setting: Late 1940s; a fishing village near Havana, Cuba, and the waters of the Gulf of Mexico
• Climax: When Santiago finally harpoons and kills the marlin; when Santiago fights off the final pack of sharks
• Antagonist: The marlin; the sharks
• Point of View: Third-person omniscient, although largely limited to Santiago's point of view

Extra Credit for The Old Man and the Sea

Awards: The Old Man and the Sea was the last major work of fiction Hemingway wrote. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and contributed to Hemingway's selection for the Nobel Prize in 1954.

Criticism of the Critics: Hemingway's novel Across the River and Into the Trees , published in 1950, met with severe negative criticism, although Hemingway said he considered it his best work yet. When The Old Man and the Sea was published to great acclaim, some viewed the story as Hemingway's symbolic attack on literary critics—the elderly master fighting and triumphing over his long-time adversaries.

The Old Man and the Sea

By ernest hemingway.

'The Old Man and the Sea' is often considered to be Ernest Hemingway's finest work and one of the most important books of 20th century American literature.

About the Book

Article written by Emma Baldwin

B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.

Hemingway’s unique style of writing is exemplified through short, concise sentences and a factual approach to the events he portrays. Within the novella, a reader will come across complex themes of strength and perseverance, as well as symbols of perfection and age which are all addressed directly.

The Old Man and the Sea Themes

Hardship and perseverance.

Of the variety of themes to be found in The Old Man and the Sea hardship and the perseverance needed to surmount those hardships is one of the most prominent. The majority of the novel, whether Santiago is onshore or at sea, is punctuated by struggle. It’s clear through context clues, as well as Manolin’s desire to care for the old man, that Santiago is very poor. He suffers without complaint in his poverty. It’s seen through his small shack, the bed he sleeps on, his lack of food, and in the eyes of the other fishermen.

Once he gets to sea his suffering only increases. He bears the weight of the fish as it pulls his skiff along . The line cuts into his hands and his back. His body, which was not in a good state, to begin with, is forced to contend with three days at sea without real rest or respite from the pressures the hooked marlin imposes on his body.

Suffering, at least in the snapshot the reader gets of the old man’s life, seems central. But, so is perseverance. These two themes are linked because Santiago’s perseverance is the reason he continues to wake up every day, go out to sea, and return empty-handed. Only to do it all again during his eighty-four days of bad luck. His ability to withstand pain and hardship, while keeping in mind his end goal of killing the fish, is remarkable and is one of the defining features of his personality. Plus, there is the suffering at the end of the story, after the sharks eat the much labored for marlin to contend with as well. These moments can also be connected to another theme, man vs. nature.

Another prominent theme, friendship, between human beings and amongst the wider non-human animal world spans the length of the novella. The most important human relationship is that between Santiago and his young pupil and fellow fisherman, Manolin . The boy cares deeply for Santiago, often berating himself for not doing more to take care of him. They share a passion for baseball, something that helps sustain Santiago while he’s at sea.

A reader must also consider the relationship between humans and animals. Santiago spends a great deal of time while sailing thinking about the relationship between himself and the marlin. He feels as though they are brothers, connected by their mutual existence on earth and desire to survive. In fact, the old man feels as though he is the brother of every living thing on the planet and shows the utmost respect for the lives he encounters.

Memory, and the power it has over the present and future, is important in The Old Man and the Sea . While Santiago navigates the Gulf of Mexico he often becomes distracted by thoughts of the past. He can recall the strong young man he used to be and believes that some of that strength should still exist inside him. There are moving moments in the novella when Santiago thinks back to one specific memory that doesn’t seem to fade. He recalls the time he spent on a turtle fishing boat along the coast of Africa. While there, he saw lions playing on the beach. He isn’t sure why, but this image continues to come to mind. In fact, it ends the novel.

Analysis of Key Moments in The Old Man and the Sea

• The novel opens, the reader learns that Santiago hasn’t caught a fish in eighty-four days.
• Santiago spends time with Manolin, their relationship is defined.
• He heads out to fish the next morning, prepared to go to a distant spot.
• The old man considers his relationship with the natural world and thinks about the past.
• He gets a fish on his line but isn’t sure how large it is.
• Santiago commits to catching this fish, coming to the understanding that it’s enormous. He wills it to jump and show itself.
• The old man catches a dolphin and eats.
• After a prolonged battle, he kills the fish with his harpoon and ties it to the side of the skiff.
• Sharks descend on the vessel, he kills some but they take the majority of the fish.
• He returns to land, collapses in exhaustion, and everyone marvels over the fish’s remains.
• The novel ends with Santiago dreaming about the lions once again.

Style, Tone, and Figurative Language

Hemingway was known for his concise, to-the-point style of writing. His syntax is straightforward and simple. This is mostly due to the time he spent working as a journalist. Throughout this novella, he doesn’t employ complicated metaphors or refer to things far outside the average reader’s understanding of Cuba, fishing, and the battle between life and death. He is best known for his “iceberg theory” . When reading, there is a little information on the surface, but a breadth of detail to explore beneath the waves. Hemingway described it as “seven-eighths” of the story existing below the surface.

In regards to mood, it is quite depressing and solemn. Throughout much of the novel, the frailty of life is exemplified through a very human struggle for survival that ends in defeat. The tone is less emotional. Through Hemingway’s style of writing, it comes across as factual and at times sympathetic and hopeful.

Hemingway makes use of multiple narrative perspectives in The Old Man and the Sea. The story begins with a third-person, omniscient narrator that doesn’t have access to Santiago’s thoughts. But, as the story progresses, the reader receives a third-person narration of Santiago’s state of mind and musings on the past and present. He speaks to himself, creating the majority of the dialogue in the novella.

The most prominent uses of figurative language include personification, hyperbole, as well as metaphors, and similes in which two unlike things are compared with or without using like/as. Personification occurs when a poet imbues a non-human creature or object with human characteristics. This is obvious through the way Hemingway treats the depictions of the marlin, as well as other fish and the birds in the sky. Hyperbole is an intentionally exaggerated description, comparison or exclamation meant to further the writer’s important themes, or make a specific impact on a reader.

Analysis of Symbols

The lions on the beach are a mysterious symbol in The Old Man and the Sea. Hemingway does not reveal what exactly they represent but the reader can come to a few conclusions. They seem to be symbols of the past, dreams, other worlds, and harmony in nature. Santiago’s mind returns unbidden again and again to the African seashore as a place of respite. The lions represent a perfectly functioning world Santiago would like to return to.

The most obvious symbol in The Old Man and the Sea, the marlin represents the unattainable. It is Santiago’s ideal foe, one against whom he can measure himself. The fish is magnificent, enormous and seemingly one of a kind. It also represents the past and an attempt to return to previous ways of being as Santiago seeks to regain the strength of his youth.

Santiago’s left hand

His hand is a less obvious symbol, but one that connects to the larger struggle in The Old Man and the Sea. His left hand, which Santiago believes he didn’t “train” properly, “betrays” him throughout the novella. It cramps up when he needs to use it, and only comes to his aid, seemingly, when it chooses. As it weakens, along with the rest of Santiago’s body, he becomes angry, punishing it with harder tasks. It represents the fragility of old age and foreshadows disappointment and defeat.

About Emma Baldwin

Emma Baldwin, a graduate of East Carolina University, has a deep-rooted passion for literature. She serves as a key contributor to the Book Analysis team with years of experience.

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Baldwin, Emma " The Old Man and the Sea Analysis 🎣 " Book Analysis , https://bookanalysis.com/ernest-hemingway/the-old-man-and-the-sea/analysis/ . Accessed 15 April 2024.

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The Old Man and the Sea

By ernest hemingway, the old man and the sea essay questions.

Describe Hemingway's portrayal of Santiago's relationship with the sea.

Hemingway focuses on the connections between Santiago and his natural environment: the fish, birds, and stars are all his brothers or friends; he has the heart of a turtle, eats turtle eggs for strength; anddrinks shark liver oil for health. This connection with the sea and its creatures helps Santiago in the midst of his great tragedy. For Santiago, success and failure are two equal facets of the same existence. They are transitory forms which capriciously arrive and depart without affecting the underlying unity between himself and nature. As long as he focuses on this unity and sees himself as part of nature rather than as an external antagonist competing with it, he cannot be defeated by whatever misfortunes befall him.

Is Santiago a prideful man? Why or why not?

Hemingway's treatment of pride in The Old Man and the Sea is ambivalent. A heroic man like Santiago should have pride in his actions, and as Santiago shows us, "humility was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride" (14). At the same time, though, it is apparently Santiago's pride which presses him to travel dangerously far out into the sea, "beyond all people in the world," to catch the marlin (50). While he loved the marlin and called him brother, Santiago admits to killing it for pride, his blood stirred by battle with such a noble and worthy antagonist. Some have interpreted the loss of the marlin as the price Santiago had to pay for his pride in traveling out so far in search of such a catch. Contrarily, one could argue that this pride was beneficial as it allowed Santiago an edifying challenge worthy of his heroism. In the end, Hemingway suggests that pride in a job well done, even if pride drew one unnecessarily into the situation, is a positive trait.

How does Santiago embody Hemingway's ideals for manhood?

Hemingway's ideal of manhood is nearly inseparable from the ideal of heroism. To be a man is to behave with honor and dignity: to not succumb to suffering, to accept one's duty without complaint and, most importantly, to display a maximum of self-control. The representation of femininity, the sea, is characterized expressly by its caprice and lack of self-control; "if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them" (30). The representation of masculinity, the marlin, is described as 'great,' 'beautiful,' 'calm,' and 'noble,' and Santiago steels him against his pain by telling himself, "suffer like a man. Or a fish," referring to the marlin (92). In Hemingway's ethical universe, Santiago shows us not only how to live life heroically but in a way befitting a man.

In your opinion, is Santiago successful as a fisherman? Why or why not?

Hemingway draws a distinction between two different types of success: outer, material success and inner, spiritual success. While Santiago clearly lacks the former, the import of this lack is eclipsed by his possession of the later. One way to describe Santiago's story is as a triumph of indefatigable spirit over exhaustible material resources. As noted above, the characteristics of such a spirit are those of heroism and manhood. That Santiago can end the novella undefeated after steadily losing his hard-earned, most valuable possession is a testament to the privileging of inner success over outer success.

Discuss Santiago's obsession with being a worthy adversary for the marlin.

Being heroic and manly are not merely qualities of character which one possesses or does not. One must constantly demonstrate one's heroism and manliness through actions conducted with dignity. Interestingly, worthiness cannot be conferred upon oneself. Santiago is obsessed with proving his worthiness to those around him. He had to prove himself to the boy: "the thousand times he had proved it mean nothing. Now he was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it" (66). And he had to prove himself to the marlin: "I'll kill him....in all his greatness and glory. Although it is unjust. But I will show him what a man can do and what a man endures" (66). A heroic and manly life is not, then, one of inner peace and self-sufficiency; it requires constant demonstration of one's worthiness through noble action.

How does Hemingway imply that Santiago is a Christ-like figure?

Manolin has an almost religious devotion to Santiago, underscored when Manolin begs Santiago's pardon for his not fishing with the old man anymore. Manolin says, "It was Papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him," to which Santiago replies, "I know... It is quite normal. He hasn't much faith" (10). Manolin's father forced his son to switch to a more successful boat after 40 days had passed without a catch for Santiago; this is the amount of time Jesus wandered in the desert, tempted by Satan. Just as Christ resisted the temptation of the devil, Santiago resists the temptation of giving in to his exhaustion as he battles the marlin. "It was a great temptation to rest in the bow and let the fish make one circle by himself without recovering any line." But he is committed to beating the fish, to proving his strength is more steadfast, thinking, "He'll be up soon and I can last. You have to last. Don't even speak of it."

What is Santiago's view of his own sinfulness?

Throughout this final section, Santiago repeatedly apologizes to the marlin in a way that provides another way to read Santiago's sin. He says, "Half fish... Fish that you were. I am sorry that I went out so far. I ruined us both" (115). Santiago's transgression is no longer his killing of the fish, but going out too far in the ocean, "beyond all people in the world" (50). While the former sin helped account for the inescapable misery of the human condition, the latter focuses instead on avoidable misery brought about by intentional action. Santiago chose to go out so far; he did not need to do so, but in doing so he must surrender his prize, the marlin, to the jealous sea.

This understanding of Santiago's sin is strange because it seems to separate man from nature in a way which contradicts the rest of the novella. Going out too far is an affront against nature similar to the hubristic folly of Greek tragedy; he has courted disaster through his own pride. Nowhere previously in the novel was this apparent, though. The sea seemed to welcome him, providing him company and food for his expedition. There was no resistance from nature to his activities, except perhaps the sharks, but these were never made to be nature's avengers. This reading of Santiago's sin thus seems very problematic.

Describe the important aspects of Santiago's relationship with Manolin.

The relationship between Santiago and Manolin can be summed up in one sentence: "The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him" (10). Manolin is Santiago's apprentice, but their relationship is not restricted to business alone. Manolin idolizes Santiago but the object of this idolization is not only the once great though presently failed fisherman; it is an idolization of ideals. This helps explain Manolin's unique, almost religious, devotion to the old man, underscored when Manolin begs Santiago's pardon for his not fishing with the old man anymore. Manolin says, "It was Papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him," to which Santiago replies, "I know... It is quite normal. He hasn't much faith" (10).

Despite the clear hierarchy of this teacher/student relationship, Santiago does stress his equality with the boy. When Manolin asks to buy the old man a beer, Santiago replies, "Why not?... Between fisherman" (11). And when Manolin asks to help Santiago with his fishing, Santiago replies, "You are already a man" (12). By demonstrating that Santiago has little more to teach the boy, this equality foreshadows the impending separation of the two friends, and also indicates that this will not be a story about a young boy learning from an old man, but a story of an old man learning the unique lessons of the autumn of life.

Discuss the importance of the sense of sight to the characters in the novella.

Hemingway peppers the novella with numerous references to sight. We are told, for instance, that Santiago has uncannily good eyesight for a man of his age and experience, while Manolin's new employer is nearly blind. When Manolin notices this, Santiago replies simply, "I am a strange old man" (14). Given the analogy between Santiago's eyes and the sea, one suspects that his strangeness in this regard has something to do with his relationship to the sea. This connection, though, is somewhat problematic as it might suggest that Santiago would have success as a fisherman.

Santiago's statement that his eyes adjust to the sun during different parts of the day furnishes another example of the importance of sight and visual imagery in the novella. Santiago says, "All my life the early sun has hurt my eyes, he thought. Yet they are still good. In the evening I can look straight into it without getting the blackness. It has more force in the evening too. But in the morning it is just painful" (33). Given the likening of natural time cycles to human age, e.g. September as the autumn of life, it is plausible to read this passage as a statement of the edifying power of age. While it is difficult to find one's way in the morning of youth, this task becomes easier when done by those who have lived through the day into the evening of life.

How is the figure of Joe DiMaggio used to emphasize Santiago's respect for nature?

As he struggles against the marlin despite the pain he suffers, Santiago recalls the figure of Joe DiMaggio, identified at the beginning of the novella as a heroic paragon. "I must have confidence," thought Santiago, "and I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel" (68). It is strange, though, that immediately after valorizing DiMaggio, Santiago immediately diminishes the baseball player's greatness by thinking that the pain of a bone spur could not be as bad as the pain of the spur of a fighting cock. He even concludes that "man is not much beside the great birds and beasts. Still I would rather be that beast down there in the darkness of the sea" (68). Nature, and the marlin especially, is privileged above even the greatest exemplars of human endurance.

The Old Man and the Sea Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Old Man and the Sea is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

The Old Man and the Sea, Part 2

Worthiness is an important themes in the second part of the story, Being heroic and manly are not merely qualities of character which one possesses or does not. One must constantly demonstrate one's heroism and manliness through actions conducted...

Describe santiago

Santiago is the protagonist of the novella. He is an old fisherman in Cuba who, at the beginning of the book, has not caught anything for eighty-four days. The novella follows Santiago's quest for the great catch that will save his career....

Who is manolin

Manolin is Santiago's only friend and companion. Santiago taught Manolin to fish, and the boy used to go out to sea with the old man until his parents objected to Santiago's bad luck. Manolin still helps Santiago pull in his boat in the evenings...

Study Guide for The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea study guide contains a biography of Ernest Hemingway, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Old Man and the Sea
• The Old Man and the Sea Summary
• Character List

Essays for The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.

• Hemingway’s Fight with Old Age
• A Different Outlook on Christian Symbolism in Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea
• Santiago: Transcending Heroism
• Chasing Fish: Comparing The Ultimate Goals Found in "The Old Man and The Sea" And "Dances with Wolves"
• Hemingway the Absurdist

Lesson Plan for The Old Man and the Sea

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to The Old Man and the Sea
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• The Old Man and the Sea Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for The Old Man and the Sea

• Introduction
• Background and publication
• Reception and legacy
• Critical analysis

The Old Man and the Sea

37 pages • 1 hour read

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Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Summary and Study Guide

In The Old Man and the Sea, a 1952 adventure novella by American author Ernest Hemingway, an aging fisherman pits his life and wits against a giant fish as he battles to catch it and then protect its flesh from ravenous sharks. With its themes of endurance, perseverance, and respect for one’s opponent, this simple, straightforward narrative is widely regarded as an American classic and one of the greatest sea stories ever told.

The book helped cement Hemingway’s fame and legacy to a worldwide audience; it won a Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and helped him win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. The story has three times been made into motion pictures and is a staple of student reading lists.

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Scribner’s 2020 hardcover edition contains the original illustrations and several analytical essays; it forms the basis for this study guide. An unpaginated ebook version of the print edition also is available.

Plot Summary

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Santiago, an old fisherman, rows his skiff out each day from a harbor in Cuba into the surrounding deep waters in search of large fish. He is assisted by a boy, Manolin, whom he has taught to catch marlin and shark. For weeks he has hooked nothing, and the locals decide he is unlucky; after day 40 of catching no fish, Manolin’s father reassigns the boy to another boat. Every evening, though, the boy visits Santiago, helps him stow the boat’s equipment, and shares with him a meal and conversation.

On day 85 of his unsuccessful streak, Santiago rows especially far out, where he hopes big fish lurk. Late in the morning, a very large marlin takes the bait and swims away, dragging the boat northward many miles from shore. Rather than tie the line directly to the boat, Santiago hangs onto it for hours with his hands, greatly straining his shoulders and back. As night falls, the fish keeps pulling them north. The chase continues all night and past dawn. On the second day, the fish jumps clear out of the water. Longer than Santiago ’ s skiff, it is a magnificent creature larger than any he has seen or heard of.

The fishing line cuts Santiago’s hands when it slides past them. He manages to catch a couple of smaller fish to eat; that night, he also grabs some sleep, his body braced painfully against the line.

As the hunt continues, Santiago’s respect and admiration for the fish grow, and he begins to wonder if so worthy an opponent should simply be killed and eaten. He decides that it is his task to do so, but that he will nevertheless respect the great creature.

On the third day, the fish begins to circle back underneath the boat. Each time it passes, Santiago pulls in more of the line. Finally, the fish cannot swim anymore; Santiago reels it close and kills it with a harpoon through the heart. He lashes the fish to his skiff, raises his sail, and heads for home with a catch that will pay him handsomely and get him through the winter.

Sharks, smelling blood, swim from miles away to feast on the marlin. Santiago defends his catch by stabbing and clubbing the attackers, but they are persistent, and as the hours pass they consume more and more of the great fish. Exhausted, and having lost most of the catch, the old man finally rests while the sharks clean off the last of the meat.

In the hours before dawn, the old man arrives back at his home port, where he pulls the boat and its skeleton cargo onto the beach. He collects the sail and trudges back to his shack, falling once and resting several times. At home, he collapses into bed and sleeps deeply, dreaming of his youth. Late in the morning, Manolin brings him coffee, and they talk about fishing together again. On the beach, villagers measure the marlin’s skeleton: It is 18 feet long, the longest anyone has ever seen.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Books — The Old Man and The Sea

Essays on The Old Man and The Sea

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Nature in The Old Man and The Sea: Moving from Surpassing Heroism to Modernism

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Analysis of Santiago's Heroism in The Old Man and The Sea

Christian symbolism in the old man and the sea, a man can be destroyed but not defeated.

Ernest Hemingway

Literary Fiction

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Introduction and Summary of the Old Man and the Sea

Summary of the old man and the sea.

In this article you will learn about the introduction to The Old Man and the Sea, introduction to author; Ernest Hemingway, and the summary of The Old Man and the Sea.

The Old Man and the Sea: An Introduction

The Old Man and the Sea is a short novel, based on the three-day journey of an old man, to catch a big fish. Ernest Hemingway wrote it in 1951, published in 1952. The Old Man and the Sea is his last chief fictional work. It is a heroic novel, and it deals with the concepts of aging, self-identification, and commitment. The novel was an immediate success and is still famous worldwide. It has been adapted into film three times, one of which was animated. The Old Man and the Sea won Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953 and Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

Ernest Hemingway (July, 1899–July, 1961)

Ernest Hemingway, the author of this novel, was an American. He was a sportsman, journalist, and writer of fiction and nonfiction. His iceberg theory , writing in an economical and minimalistic style , influenced the fictional writing of the 20th century. He was born in 1899, and was the second of the six siblings. Hemingway had an adventurous and happening life. He was an ambulance driver in World War I and was present as a journalist in World War II. He married four times and had four children. He shot himself in 1961, ending his life. 

The story of Old Man and the Sea revolves around the central character, Santiago. He has gone straight 84 days, without catching a single fish. Because of this, the people have started seeing him as ‘ salao’ , the worst of unluckiness. He is considered so unlucky that the young boy, Manolin, who was his apprentice, is stopped by his parents to go for fishing with Santiago anymore. However, Manolin has admiration for Santiago and sees him as a mentor. Therefore, Manolin visits Santiago each night at his shack. They talk about American baseball, Manolin prepares food, and they just enjoy each other’s company. One day, Santiago tells Manolin that the following day; he will go far out into the Gulf Stream to fish. He is confident that the unluckiness, that has attached itself to him, is going to wash away with this venture.

On the start of an 85th day of unluckiness, the old man does what he decided to do. He goes far off into the Gulf Stream and very optimistically waits for his big catch. At noon, Santiago sees that a big fish, which he identifies as a marlin, has taken his bait. Filled with joy, he tries to pull the marlin, but the marlin pulls the old man with his boat. He tries to tie the cord with the boat but fails. The marlin keeps on pulling the boat throughout the day and night, for two days. In all this, trying to hold on to the fish, the old man gets badly injured and exhausted. Every time the marlin pulls hard, his hands end up getting more wounded. However, just like the marlin, he does not give up.

The old man admires the marlin for it staying true to its nature and struggling for freedom. He feels like the marlin is a partner in his pain, suffering, and also in his strength. Finally, on the third day of the old man’s struggling to keep the marlin, the fish tires and gives in. It starts to circle around his skiff. Santiago, with all that he has in him, pulls the fish and manages to kill it with a harpoon. He ties the fish to the side of the skiff and finally, after days of unimaginable struggle, aims for home. Santiago is happy and proud of himself that he has managed to catch a fish that would have a great price, and feed a lot of people. However, he is also concerned that his eaters will be unworthy of it because of its greatness.

Just within some time, due to scent of marlin’s blood, sharks gather round. They start to tear flesh away from marlin. Santiago manages to drive away a few but loses his harpoon as a result. Then as more sharks keep coming, he makes another harpoon by putting his knife into an oar. He kills several sharks and scares many away. However, still filled with hunger, the sharks keep coming and stealing the flesh off of the marlin. In the end, they leave nothing but the shell of marlin, which too only comprised mainly its backbone, head, and tail. Santiago feels defeated at the loss of his precious opponent. He feels like his entire struggle, and labour ended in vain and he lost. He tells the sharks too that they have destroyed him and his dreams. He even blames himself for going too far.

Santiago reaches the shore, crushed with the labour of past three days. With very little that was left in him, he carries his stuff and struggles towards his shack. He leaves the skeleton of the martin, which he had arduously caught, behind. He thinks it is of no use to him now. Santiago makes it to his shack and just collapses on his bed. He goes into a deep slumber and becomes oblivious to everything. Now on the shore, where his boat is, fishermen gather round. They see the skeleton of the marlin attached to it and measure it. It turns out to be 18 feet (5.5 m) from nose to tail. The fish appears to be the biggest that the village had ever seen. The fishermen tell Manolin to tell the old man how sorry they are over their rude behaviour.

Manolin gets teary when he sees the old man alive, but injured. The old man tells Manolin that he lost again but Manolin assures him that everything was fine. He brings him coffee and newspapers. They chat and agree ongoing fishing together again. Some tourists that same day see the marlin’s skeleton and mistake it as a shark. Now in the shack, the old man goes back to his sleep and dreams of lions that he had seen in his youth when he was in Africa.

About Authoress : The article “ Introduction and Summary of The Old Man and the Sea ” was written by Sayeda Javaria. ([email protected]).

   old man and the sea.

• Introduction and summary of The Old Man and the Sea
• Main characters and their analysis in The Old Man and the sea
• Theme of the novel The Old man and the sea
• Symbolism in The old man and the sea
• Quotations used in the novel The old man and the sea

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78 The Old Man and the Sea Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best the old man and the sea topic ideas & essay examples, 📌 most interesting the old man and the sea topics to write about, 👍 good research topics about the old man and the sea, ❓ old man and the sea essay questions.

• Hemingway’s Code Hero in The Old Man and the Sea. Traits & Definition To solve the misconception, Hemingway sets in with his The Old Man and the Sea, featuring Santiago, an aged angler and an epitome of code heroes.
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• Friendship in The Old Man and The Sea The book was the last published during the author’s lifetime, and some critics believe that it was his reflection on the topics of death and the meaning of life.
• The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway In The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway reveals his conception of heroism not as a measure of the glory and recognition his character receives, but instead in the determination of the struggle.
• Human Victory in “The Old Man and the Sea” by Hemingway “[…] he wrote about pity: about something somewhere that made them all: the old man who had to catch the fish and then lose it, the fish that had to be caught and then lost, […]
• The Old Man and the Sea It can also be stated that the novel itself has distinct religious overtones as evidenced by Santiago’s reference to the crucifixion in the scene where the sharks came to eat the body of the marlin.
• “The Old Man and the Sea”: Unlucky but Undefeated The main character of Hemingway’s book The Old Man and the Sea is a person with great experience in life and in his work but he does not seem to be lucky; this is where […]
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• Comparison of Tom in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and Santiago in “The Old Man and the Sea”
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• How Does “The Old Man and the Sea” Prompt the Audience to View the Human Condition?
• How Is Luck Important to Santiago and Manolin in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• What Does Hemingway Convey About Success in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
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• How Are the Nightly Precautions Santiago Takes With His Fishing Equipment Both Realistic and Optimistic in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• Is Santiago a Prideful Man in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• How Does Santiago Embody Hemingway’s Ideals for Manhood in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• What Is the Main Conflict in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• Is Santiago Successful as a Fisherman in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• Why Won’t Santiago Borrow Money in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• How Does Hemingway Imply That Santiago Is a Christ-Like Figure in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• What Is Santiago’s View of His Sinfulness in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• How Is the Figure of Joe Dimaggio Used to Emphasize Santiago’s Respect for Nature in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• Is the Old Man Right to Kill the Marlin in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• What Significance Do the Lions on the Beach Have for the Old Man in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• How Is Santiago Characterized Early in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• What Is the Relationship Between Santiago and Manolin in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• How Is Santiago Separated From or Different From the Other Fishermen in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
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• How Is Santiago’s House Described in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• What Are Santiago’s Feelings for Creatures of the Sea Including the Birds in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
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• Why Doesn’t Santiago Worry About Talking to Himself in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• Is the Ending of “The Old Man and the Sea” Hopeful or Discouraging?
• In What Ways Are the Fish and Santiago Alike in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• What Do the Sharks in “The Old Man and the Sea” Symbolize?
• Why Does Santiago Say the Fish Is More Noble Than He in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• How Does Santiago Feel About the Marlin in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• How Does Hemingway Stress the Endurance of Santiago in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
• What Does Santiago Conclude Even When Things Are Hopeless in “The Old Man and the Sea”?
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This Old Man

By Roger Angell

Check me out. The top two knuckles of my left hand look as if I’d been worked over by the K.G.B. No, it’s more as if I’d been a catcher for the Hall of Fame pitcher Candy Cummings, the inventor of the curveball, who retired from the game in 1877. To put this another way, if I pointed that hand at you like a pistol and fired at your nose, the bullet would nail you in the left knee. Arthritis.

Now, still facing you, if I cover my left, or better, eye with one hand, what I see is a blurry encircling version of the ceiling and floor and walls or windows to our right and left but no sign of your face or head: nothing in the middle. But cheer up: if I reverse things and cover my right eye, there you are, back again. If I take my hand away and look at you with both eyes, the empty hole disappears and you’re in 3-D, and actually looking pretty terrific today. Macular degeneration.

I’m ninety-three, and I’m feeling great. Well, pretty great, unless I’ve forgotten to take a couple of Tylenols in the past four or five hours, in which case I’ve begun to feel some jagged little pains shooting down my left forearm and into the base of the thumb. Shingles, in 1996, with resultant nerve damage.

Like many men and women my age, I get around with a couple of arterial stents that keep my heart chunking. I also sport a minute plastic seashell that clamps shut a congenital hole in my heart, discovered in my early eighties. The surgeon at Mass General who fixed up this PFO (a patent foramen ovale—I love to say it) was a Mexican-born character actor in beads and clogs, and a fervent admirer of Derek Jeter. Counting this procedure and the stents, plus a passing balloon angioplasty and two or three false alarms, I’ve become sort of a table potato, unalarmed by the X-ray cameras swooping eerily about just above my naked body in a darkened and icy operating room; there’s also a little TV screen up there that presents my heart as a pendant ragbag attached to tacky ribbons of veins and arteries. But never mind. Nowadays, I pop a pink beta-blocker and a white statin at breakfast, along with several lesser pills, and head off to my human-wreckage gym, and it’s been a couple of years since the last showing.

My left knee is thicker but shakier than my right. I messed it up playing football, eons ago, but can’t remember what went wrong there more recently. I had a date to have the joint replaced by a famous knee man (he’s listed in the Metropolitan Opera program as a major supporter) but changed course at the last moment, opting elsewhere for injections of synthetic frog hair or rooster combs or something, which magically took away the pain. I walk around with a cane now when outdoors—“Stop brandishing! ” I hear my wife, Carol, admonishing—which gives me a nice little edge when hailing cabs.

The lower-middle sector of my spine twists and jogs like a Connecticut county road, thanks to a herniated disk seven or eight years ago. This has cost me two or three inches of height, transforming me from Gary Cooper to Geppetto. After days spent groaning on the floor, I received a blessed epidural, ending the ordeal. “You can sit up now,” the doctor said, whisking off his shower cap. “Listen, do you know who Dominic Chianese is?”

“Isn’t that Uncle Junior?” I said, confused. “You know—from ‘The Sopranos’?”

“Yes,” he said. “He and I play in a mandolin quartet every Wednesday night at the Hotel Edison. Do you think you could help us get a listing in the front of The New Yorker ?”

I’ve endured a few knocks but missed worse. I know how lucky I am, and secretly tap wood, greet the day, and grab a sneaky pleasure from my survival at long odds. The pains and insults are bearable. My conversation may be full of holes and pauses, but I’ve learned to dispatch a private Apache scout ahead into the next sentence, the one coming up, to see if there are any vacant names or verbs in the landscape up there. If he sends back a warning, I’ll pause meaningfully, duh, until something else comes to mind.

On the other hand, I’ve not yet forgotten Keats or Dick Cheney or what’s waiting for me at the dry cleaner’s today. As of right now, I’m not Christopher Hitchens or Tony Judt or Nora Ephron; I’m not dead and not yet mindless in a reliable upstate facility. Decline and disaster impend, but my thoughts don’t linger there. It shouldn’t surprise me if at this time next week I’m surrounded by family, gathered on short notice—they’re sad and shocked but also a little pissed off to be here—to help decide, after what’s happened, what’s to be done with me now. It must be this hovering knowledge, that two-ton safe swaying on a frayed rope just over my head, that makes everyone so glad to see me again. “How great you’re looking! Wow, tell me your secret!” they kindly cry when they happen upon me crossing the street or exiting a dinghy or departing an X-ray room, while the little balloon over their heads reads, “Holy shit—he’s still vertical!”

Let’s move on. A smooth fox terrier of ours named Harry was full of surprises. Wildly sociable, like others of his breed, he grew a fraction more reserved in maturity, and learned to cultivate a separate wagging acquaintance with each fresh visitor or old pal he came upon in the living room. If friends had come for dinner, he’d arise from an evening nap and leisurely tour the table in imitation of a three-star headwaiter: Everything O.K. here? Is there anything we could bring you? How was the crème brûlée? Terriers aren’t water dogs, but Harry enjoyed kayaking in Maine, sitting like a figurehead between my knees for an hour or more and scoping out the passing cormorant or yachtsman. Back in the city, he established his personality and dashing good looks on the neighborhood to the extent that a local artist executed a striking head-on portrait in pointillist oils, based on a snapshot of him she’d sneaked in Central Park. Harry took his leave (another surprise) on a June afternoon three years ago, a few days after his eighth birthday. Alone in our fifth-floor apartment, as was usual during working hours, he became unhinged by a noisy thunderstorm and went out a front window left a quarter open on a muggy day. I knew him well and could summon up his feelings during the brief moments of that leap: the welcome coolness of rain on his muzzle and shoulders, the excitement of air and space around his outstretched body.

Here in my tenth decade, I can testify that the downside of great age is the room it provides for rotten news. Living long means enough already. When Harry died, Carol and I couldn’t stop weeping; we sat in the bathroom with his retrieved body on a mat between us, the light-brown patches on his back and the near-black of his ears still darkened by the rain, and passed a Kleenex box back and forth between us. Not all the tears were for him. Two months earlier, a beautiful daughter of mine, my oldest child, had ended her life, and the oceanic force and mystery of that event had not left full space for tears. Now we could cry without reserve, weep together for Harry and Callie and ourselves. Harry cut us loose.

A few notes about age is my aim here, but a little more about loss is inevitable. “Most of the people my age is dead. You could look it up” was the way Casey Stengel put it. He was seventy-five at the time, and contemporary social scientists might prefer Casey’s line delivered at eighty-five now, for accuracy, but the point remains. We geezers carry about a bulging directory of dead husbands or wives, children, parents, lovers, brothers and sisters, dentists and shrinks, office sidekicks, summer neighbors, classmates, and bosses, all once entirely familiar to us and seen as part of the safe landscape of the day. It’s no wonder we’re a bit bent. The surprise, for me, is that the accruing weight of these departures doesn’t bury us, and that even the pain of an almost unbearable loss gives way quite quickly to something more distant but still stubbornly gleaming. The dead have departed, but gestures and glances and tones of voice of theirs, even scraps of clothing—that pale-yellow Saks scarf—reappear unexpectedly, along with accompanying touches of sweetness or irritation.

Our dead are almost beyond counting and we want to herd them along, pen them up somewhere in order to keep them straight. I like to think of mine as fellow-voyagers crowded aboard the Île de France (the idea is swiped from “Outward Bound”). Here’s my father, still handsome in his tuxedo, lighting a Lucky Strike. There’s Ted Smith, about to name-drop his Gloucester home town again. Here comes Slim Aarons. Here’s Esther Mae Counts, from fourth grade: hi, Esther Mae. There’s Gardner—with Cecille Shawn, for some reason. Here’s Ted Yates. Anna Hamburger. Colba F. Gucker, better known as Chief. Bob Ascheim. Victor Pritchett—and Dorothy. Henry Allen. Bart Giamatti. My elder old-maid cousin Jean Webster and her unexpected, late-arriving Brit husband, Capel Hanbury. Kitty Stableford. Dan Quisenberry. Nancy Field. Freddy Alexandre. I look around for others and at times can almost produce someone at will. Callie returns, via a phone call. “Dad?” It’s her, all right, her voice affectionately rising at the end—“Da-ad?”—but sounding a bit impatient this time. She’s in a hurry. And now Harold Eads. Toni Robin. Dick Salmon, his face bright red with laughter. Edith Oliver. Sue Dawson. Herb Mitgang. Coop. Tudie. Elwood Carter.

These names are best kept in mind rather than boxed and put away somewhere. Old letters are engrossing but feel historic in numbers, photo albums delightful but with a glum after-kick like a chocolate caramel. Home movies are killers: Zeke, a long-gone Lab, alive again, rushing from right to left with a tennis ball in his mouth; my sister Nancy, stunning at seventeen, smoking a lipstick-stained cigarette aboard Astrid, with the breeze stirring her tied-up brown hair; my mother laughing and ducking out of the picture again, waving her hands in front of her face in embarrassment—she’s about thirty-five. Me sitting cross-legged under a Ping-Pong table, at eleven. Take us away.

My list of names is banal but astounding, and it’s barely a fraction, the ones that slip into view in the first minute or two. Anyone over sixty knows this; my list is only longer. I don’t go there often, but, once I start, the battalion of the dead is on duty, alertly waiting. Why do they sustain me so, cheer me up, remind me of life? I don’t understand this. Why am I not endlessly grieving?

What I’ve come to count on is the white-coated attendant of memory, silently here again to deliver dabs from the laboratory dish of me. In the days before Carol died, twenty months ago, she lay semiconscious in bed at home, alternating periods of faint or imperceptible breathing with deep, shuddering catch-up breaths. Then, in a delicate gesture, she would run the pointed tip of her tongue lightly around the upper curve of her teeth. She repeated this pattern again and again. I’ve forgotten, perhaps mercifully, much of what happened in that last week and the weeks after, but this recurs.

Carol is around still, but less reliably. For almost a year, I would wake up from another late-afternoon mini-nap in the same living-room chair, and, in the instants before clarity, would sense her sitting in her own chair, just opposite. Not a ghost but a presence, alive as before and in the same instant gone again. This happened often, and I almost came to count on it, knowing that it wouldn’t last. Then it stopped.

People my age and younger friends as well seem able to recall entire tapestries of childhood, and swatches from their children’s early lives as well: conversations, exact meals, birthday parties, illnesses, picnics, vacation B. and B.s, trips to the ballet, the time when . . . I can’t do this and it eats at me, but then, without announcement or connection, something turns up. I am walking on Ludlow Lane, in Snedens, with my two young daughters, years ago on a summer morning. I’m in my late thirties; they’re about nine and six, and I’m complaining about the steep little stretch of road between us and our house, just up the hill. Maybe I’m getting old, I offer. Then I say that one day I’ll be really old and they’ll have to hold me up. I imitate an old man mumbling nonsense and start to walk with wobbly legs. Callie and Alice scream with laughter and hold me up, one on each side. When I stop, they ask for more, and we do this over and over.

I’m leaving out a lot, I see. My work— I’m still working, or sort of. Reading. The collapsing, grossly insistent world. Stuff I get excited about or depressed about all the time. Dailiness—but how can I explain this one? Perhaps with a blog recently posted on Facebook by a woman I know who lives in Australia. “Good Lord, we’ve run out of nutmeg!” it began. “How in the world did that ever happen?” Dozens of days are like that with me lately.

Intimates and my family—mine not very near me now but always on call, always with me. My children Alice and John Henry and my daughter-in-law Alice—yes, another one—and my granddaughters Laura and Lily and Clara, who together and separately were as steely and resplendent as a company of Marines on the day we buried Carol. And on other days and in other ways as well. Laura, for example, who will appear almost overnight, on demand, to drive me and my dog and my stuff five hundred miles Down East, then does it again, backward, later in the summer. Hours of talk and sleep (mine, not hers) and renewal—the abandoned mills at Lawrence, Mass., Cat Mousam Road, the Narramissic River still there—plus a couple of nights together, with the summer candles again.

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Friends in great numbers now, taking me to dinner or cooking in for me. (One afternoon, I found a freshly roasted chicken sitting outside my front door; two hours later, another one appeared in the same spot.) Friends inviting me to the opera, or to Fairway on Sunday morning, or to dine with their kids at the East Side Deli, or to a wedding at the Rockbound Chapel, or bringing in ice cream to share at my place while we catch another Yankees game. They saved my life. In the first summer after Carol had gone, a man I’d known slightly and pleasantly for decades listened while I talked about my changed routines and my doctors and dog walkers and the magazine. I paused for a moment, and he said, “Plus you have us.”

Another message—also brief, also breathtaking—came on an earlier afternoon at my longtime therapist’s, at a time when I felt I’d lost almost everything. “I don’t know how I’m going to get through this,” I said at last.

A silence, then: “Neither do I. But you will.”

I am a world-class complainer but find palpable joy arriving with my evening Dewar’s, from Robinson Cano between pitches, from the first pages once again of “Appointment in Samarra” or the last lines of the Elizabeth Bishop poem called “Poem.” From the briefest strains of Handel or Roy Orbison, or Dennis Brain playing the early bars of his stunning Mozart horn concertos. (This Angel recording may have been one of the first things Carol and I acquired just after our marriage, and I hear it playing on a sunny Saturday morning in our Ninety-fourth Street walkup.) Also the recalled faces and then the names of Jean Dixon or Roscoe Karns or Porter Hall or Brad Dourif in another Netflix rerun. Chloë Sevigny in “Trees Lounge.” Gail Collins on a good day. Family ice-skating up near Harlem in the nineteen-eighties, with the Park employees, high on youth or weed, looping past us backward to show their smiles.

Recent and not so recent surveys (including the six-decades-long Grant Study of the lives of some nineteen-forties Harvard graduates) confirm that a majority of us people over seventy-five keep surprising ourselves with happiness. Put me on that list. Our children are adults now and mostly gone off, and let’s hope full of their own lives. We’ve outgrown our ambitions. If our wives or husbands are still with us, we sense a trickle of contentment flowing from the reliable springs of routine, affection in long silences, calm within the light boredom of well-worn friends, retold stories, and mossy opinions. Also the distant whoosh of a surfaced porpoise outside our night windows.

We elders—what kind of a handle is this, anyway, halfway between a tree and an eel?—we elders have learned a thing or two, including invisibility. Here I am in a conversation with some trusty friends—old friends but actually not all that old: they’re in their sixties—and we’re finishing the wine and in serious converse about global warming in Nyack or Virginia Woolf the cross-dresser. There’s a pause, and I chime in with a couple of sentences. The others look at me politely, then resume the talk exactly at the point where they’ve just left it. What? Hello? Didn’t I just say something? Have I left the room? Have I experienced what neurologists call a TIA—a transient ischemic attack? I didn’t expect to take over the chat but did await a word or two of response. Not tonight, though. (Women I know say that this began to happen to them when they passed fifty.) When I mention the phenomenon to anyone around my age, I get back nods and smiles. Yes, we’re invisible. Honored, respected, even loved, but not quite worth listening to anymore. You’ve had your turn, Pops; now it’s ours.

I’ve been asking myself why I don’t think about my approaching visitor, death. He was often on my mind thirty or forty years ago, I believe, though more of a stranger. Death terrified me then, because I had so many engagements. The enforced opposite—no dinner dates or coming attractions, no urgent business, no fun, no calls, no errands, no returned words or touches—left a blank that I could not light or furnish: a condition I recognized from childhood bad dreams and sudden awakenings. Well, not yet, not soon, or probably not, I would console myself, and that welcome but then tediously repeated postponement felt in time less like a threat than like a family obligation—tea with Aunt Molly in Montclair, someday soon but not now. Death, meanwhile, was constantly onstage or changing costume for his next engagement—as Bergman’s thick-faced chess player; as the medieval night-rider in a hoodie; as Woody Allen’s awkward visitor half-falling into the room as he enters through the window; as W. C. Fields’s man in the bright nightgown—and in my mind had gone from spectre to a waiting second-level celebrity on the Letterman show. Or almost. Some people I knew seemed to have lost all fear when dying and awaited the end with a certain impatience. “I’m tired of lying here,” said one. “Why is this taking so long?” asked another. Death will get it on with me eventually, and stay much too long, and though I’m in no hurry about the meeting, I feel I know him almost too well by now.

A weariness about death exists in me and in us all in another way, as well, though we scarcely notice it. We have become tireless voyeurs of death: he is on the morning news and the evening news and on the breaking, middle-of–the-day news as well—not the celebrity death, I mean, but the everyone-else death. A roadside-accident figure, covered with a sheet. A dead family, removed from a ramshackle faraway building pocked and torn by bullets. The transportation dead. The dead in floods and hurricanes and tsunamis, in numbers called “tolls.” The military dead, presented in silence on your home screen, looking youthful and well combed. The enemy war dead or rediscovered war dead, in higher figures. Appalling and dulling totals not just from this year’s war but from the ones before that, and the ones way back that some of us still around may have also attended. All the dead from wars and natural events and school shootings and street crimes and domestic crimes that each of us has once again escaped and felt terrible about and plans to go and leave wreaths or paper flowers at the site of. There’s never anything new about death, to be sure, except its improved publicity. At second hand, we have become death’s expert witnesses; we know more about death than morticians, feel as much at home with it as those poor bygone schlunks trying to survive a continent-ravaging, low-digit-century epidemic. Death sucks but, enh—click the channel.

I get along. Now and then it comes to me that I appear to have more energy and hope than some of my coevals, but I take no credit for this. I don’t belong to a book club or a bridge club; I’m not taking up Mandarin or practicing the viola. In a sporadic effort to keep my brain from moldering, I’ve begun to memorize shorter poems—by Auden, Donne, Ogden Nash, and more—which I recite to myself some nights while walking my dog, Harry’s successor fox terrier, Andy. I’ve also become a blogger, and enjoy the ease and freedom of the form: it’s a bit like making a paper airplane and then watching it take wing below your window. But shouldn’t I have something more scholarly or complex than this put away by now—late paragraphs of accomplishments, good works, some weightier op cits? I’m afraid not. The thoughts of age are short, short thoughts. I don’t read Scripture and cling to no life precepts, except perhaps to Walter Cronkite’s rules for old men, which he did not deliver over the air: Never trust a fart. Never pass up a drink. Never ignore an erection.

I count on jokes, even jokes about death.

T EACHER : Good morning, class. This is the first day of school and we’re going to introduce ourselves. I’ll call on you, one by one, and you can tell us your name and maybe what your dad or your mom does for a living. You, please, over at this end.

S MALL B OY : My name is Irving and my dad is a mechanic.

T EACHER : A mechanic! Thank you, Irving. Next?

S MALL G IRL : My name is Emma and my mom is a lawyer.

T EACHER : How nice for you, Emma! Next?

S ECOND S MALL B OY : My name is Luke and my dad is dead.

T EACHER : Oh, Luke, how sad for you. We’re all very sorry about that, aren’t we, class? Luke, do you think you could tell us what Dad did before he died?

L UKE ( seizes his throat ): He went “ N’gungghhh! ”

Not bad—I’m told that fourth graders really go for this one. Let’s try another.

A man and his wife tried and tried to have a baby, but without success. Years went by and they went on trying, but no luck. They liked each other, so the work was always a pleasure, but they grew a bit sad along the way. Finally, she got pregnant, was very careful, and gave birth to a beautiful eight-pound-two-ounce baby boy. The couple were beside themselves with happiness. At the hospital that night, she told her husband to stop by the local newspaper and arrange for a birth announcement, to tell all their friends the good news. First thing next morning, she asked if he’d done the errand.

“Yes, I did,” he said, “but I had no idea those little notices in the paper were so expensive.”

“Expensive?” she said. “How much was it?”

“It was eight hundred and thirty-seven dollars. I have the receipt.”

“Eight hundred and thirty-seven dollars!” she cried. “But that’s impossible. You must have made some mistake. Tell me exactly what happened.”

“There was a young lady behind a counter at the paper, who gave me the form to fill out,” he said. “I put in your name and my name and little Teddy’s name and weight, and when we’d be home again and, you know, ready to see friends. I handed it back to her and she counted up the words and said, ‘How many insertions?’ I said twice a week for fourteen years, and she gave me the bill. O.K.?”

I heard this tale more than fifty years ago, when my first wife, Evelyn, and I were invited to tea by a rather elegant older couple who were new to our little Rockland County community. They were in their seventies, at least, and very welcoming, and it was just the four of us. We barely knew them and I was surprised when he turned and asked her to tell us the joke about the couple trying to have a baby. “Oh, no,” she said, “they wouldn’t want to hear that.”

“Oh, come on, dear—they’ll love it,” he said, smiling at her. I groaned inwardly and was preparing a forced smile while she started off shyly, but then, of course, the four of us fell over laughing together.

That night, Evelyn said, “Did you see Keith’s face while Edie was telling that story? Did you see hers? Do you think it’s possible that they’re still—you know, still doing it?”

“Yes, I did—yes, I do,” I said. “I was thinking exactly the same thing. They’re amazing.”

This was news back then, but probably shouldn’t be by now. I remember a passage I came upon years later, in an Op-Ed piece in the Times , written by a man who’d just lost his wife. “We slept naked in the same bed for forty years,” it went. There was also my splendid colleague Bob Bingham, dying in his late fifties, who was asked by a friend what he’d missed or would do differently if given the chance. He thought for an instant, and said, “More venery.”

More venery. More love; more closeness; more sex and romance. Bring it back, no matter what, no matter how old we are. This fervent cry of ours has been certified by Simone de Beauvoir and Alice Munro and Laurence Olivier and any number of remarried or recoupled ancient classmates of ours. Laurence Olivier? I’m thinking of what he says somewhere in an interview: “Inside, we’re all seventeen, with red lips.”

This is a dodgy subject, coming as it does here from a recent widower, and I will risk a further breach of code and add that this was something that Carol and I now and then idly discussed. We didn’t quite see the point of memorial fidelity. In our view, the departed spouse—we always thought it would be me—wouldn’t be around anymore but knew or had known that he or she was loved forever. Please go ahead, then, sweetheart—don’t miss a moment. Carol said this last: “If you haven’t found someone else by a year after I’m gone I’ll come back and haunt you.”

Getting old is the second-biggest surprise of my life, but the first, by a mile, is our unceasing need for deep attachment and intimate love. We oldies yearn daily and hourly for conversation and a renewed domesticity, for company at the movies or while visiting a museum, for someone close by in the car when coming home at night. This is why we throng Match.com and OkCupid in such numbers—but not just for this, surely. Rowing in Eden (in Emily Dickinson’s words: “Rowing in Eden— / Ah—the sea”) isn’t reserved for the lithe and young, the dating or the hooked-up or the just lavishly married, or even for couples in the middle-aged mixed-doubles semifinals, thank God. No personal confession or revelation impends here, but these feelings in old folks are widely treated like a raunchy secret. The invisibility factor—you’ve had your turn—is back at it again. But I believe that everyone in the world wants to be with someone else tonight, together in the dark, with the sweet warmth of a hip or a foot or a bare expanse of shoulder within reach. Those of us who have lost that, whatever our age, never lose the longing: just look at our faces. If it returns, we seize upon it avidly, stunned and altered again.

Nothing is easy at this age, and first meetings for old lovers can be a high-risk venture. Reticence and awkwardness slip into the room. Also happiness. A wealthy old widower I knew married a nurse he met while in the hospital, but had trouble remembering her name afterward. He called her “kid.” An eighty-plus, twice-widowed lady I’d once known found still another love, a frail but vibrant Midwest professor, now close to ninety, and the pair got in two or three happy years together before he died as well. When she called his children and arranged to pick up her things at his house, she found every possession of hers lined up outside the front door.

But to hell with them and with all that, O.K.? Here’s to you, old dears. You got this right, every one of you. Hook, line, and sinker; never mind the why or wherefore; somewhere in the night; love me forever, or at least until next week. For us and for anyone this unsettles, anyone who’s younger and still squirms at the vision of an old couple embracing, I’d offer John Updike’s “Sex or death: you take your pick”—a line that appears (in a slightly different form) in a late story of his, “Playing with Dynamite.”

This is a great question, an excellent insurance-plan choice, I mean. I think it’s in the Affordable Care Act somewhere. Take it from us, who know about the emptiness of loss, and are still cruising along here feeling lucky and not yet entirely alone. ♦

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Guest Essay

The Troubling Trend in Teenage Sex

By Peggy Orenstein

Ms. Orenstein is the author of “Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent and Navigating the New Masculinity” and “Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape.”

Debby Herbenick is one of the foremost researchers on American sexual behavior. The director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University and the author of the pointedly titled book “Yes, Your Kid,” she usually shares her data, no matter how explicit, without judgment. So I was surprised by how concerned she seemed when we checked in on Zoom recently: “I haven’t often felt so strongly about getting research out there,” she told me. “But this is lifesaving.”

For the past four years, Dr. Herbenick has been tracking the rapid rise of “rough sex” among college students, particularly sexual strangulation, or what is colloquially referred to as choking. Nearly two-thirds of women in her most recent campus-representative survey of 5,000 students at an anonymized “major Midwestern university” said a partner had choked them during sex (one-third in their most recent encounter). The rate of those women who said they were between the ages 12 and 17 the first time that happened had shot up to 40 percent from one in four.

As someone who’s been writing for well over a decade about young people’s attitudes and early experience with sex in all its forms, I’d also begun clocking this phenomenon. I was initially startled in early 2020 when, during a post-talk Q. and A. at an independent high school, a 16-year-old girl asked, “How come boys all want to choke you?” In a different class, a 15-year-old boy wanted to know, “Why do girls all want to be choked?” They do? Not long after, a college sophomore (and longtime interview subject) contacted me after her roommate came home in tears because a hookup partner, without warning, had put both hands on her throat and squeezed.

I started to ask more, and the stories piled up. Another sophomore confided that she enjoyed being choked by her boyfriend, though it was important for a partner to be “properly educated” — pressing on the sides of the neck, for example, rather than the trachea. (Note: There is no safe way to strangle someone.) A male freshman said “girls expected” to be choked and, even though he didn’t want to do it, refusing would make him seem like a “simp.” And a senior in high school was angry that her friends called her “vanilla” when she complained that her boyfriend had choked her.

Sexual strangulation, nearly always of women in heterosexual pornography, has long been a staple on free sites, those default sources of sex ed for teens . As with anything else, repeat exposure can render the once appalling appealing. It’s not uncommon for behaviors to be normalized in porn, move within a few years to mainstream media, then, in what may become a feedback loop, be adopted in the bedroom or the dorm room.

Choking, Dr. Herbenick said, seems to have made that first leap in a 2008 episode of Showtime’s “Californication,” where it was still depicted as outré, then accelerated after the success of “Fifty Shades of Grey.” By 2019, when a high school girl was choked in the pilot of HBO’s “Euphoria,” it was standard fare. A young woman was choked in the opener of “The Idol” (again on HBO and also, like “Euphoria,” created by Sam Levinson; what’s with him ?). Ali Wong plays the proclivity for laughs in a Netflix special, and it’s a punchline in Tina Fey’s new “Mean Girls.” The chorus of Jack Harlow’s “Lovin On Me,” which topped Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for six nonconsecutive weeks this winter and has been viewed over 99 million times on YouTube, starts with, “I’m vanilla, baby, I’ll choke you, but I ain’t no killer, baby.” How-to articles abound on the internet, and social media algorithms feed young people (but typically not their unsuspecting parents) hundreds of #chokemedaddy memes along with memes that mock — even celebrate — the potential for hurting or killing female partners.

I’m not here to kink-shame (or anything-shame). And, anyway, many experienced BDSM practitioners discourage choking, believing it to be too dangerous. There are still relatively few studies on the subject, and most have been done by Dr. Herbenick and her colleagues. Reports among adolescents are now trickling out from the United Kingdom , Australia , Iceland , New Zealand and Italy .

Twenty years ago, sexual asphyxiation appears to have been unusual among any demographic, let alone young people who were new to sex and iffy at communication. That’s changed radically in a short time, with health consequences that parents, educators, medical professionals, sexual consent advocates and teens themselves urgently need to understand.

Sexual trends can spread quickly on campus and, to an extent, in every direction. But, at least among straight kids, I’ve sometimes noticed a pattern: Those that involve basic physical gratification — like receiving oral sex in hookups — tend to favor men. Those that might entail pain or submission, like choking, are generally more for women.

So, while undergrads of all genders and sexualities in Dr. Herbenick’s surveys report both choking and being choked, straight and bisexual young women are far more likely to have been the subjects of the behavior; the gap widens with greater occurrences. (In a separate study , Dr. Herbenick and her colleagues found the behavior repeated across the United States, particularly for adults under 40, and not just among college students.) Alcohol may well be involved, and while the act is often engaged in with a steady partner, a quarter of young women said partners they’d had sex with on the day they’d met also choked them.

Either way, most say that their partners never or only sometimes asked before grabbing their necks. For many, there had been moments when they couldn’t breathe or speak, compromising the ability to withdraw consent, if they’d given it. No wonder that, in a separate study by Dr. Herbenick, choking was among the most frequently listed sex acts young women said had scared them, reporting that it sometimes made them worry whether they’d survive.

Among girls and women I’ve spoken with, many did not want or like to be sexually strangled, though in an otherwise desired encounter they didn’t name it as assault . Still, a sizable number were enthusiastic; they requested it. It is exciting to feel so vulnerable, a college junior explained. The power dynamic turns her on; oxygen deprivation to the brain can trigger euphoria.

That same young woman, incidentally, had never climaxed with a partner: While the prevalence of choking has skyrocketed, rates of orgasm among young women have not increased, nor has the “orgasm gap” disappeared among heterosexual couples. “It indicates they’re not doing other things to enhance female arousal or pleasure,” Dr. Herbenick said.

When, for instance, she asked one male student who said he choked his partner whether he’d ever tried using a vibrator instead, he recoiled. “Why would I do that?” he asked.

Perhaps, she responded, because it would be more likely to produce orgasm without risking, you know, death.

In my interviews, college students have seen male orgasm as a given; women’s is nice if it happens, but certainly not expected or necessarily prioritized (by either partner). It makes sense, then, that fulfillment would be less the motivator for choking than appearing adventurous or kinky. Such performances don’t always feel good.

“Personally, my hypothesis is that this is one of the reasons young people are delaying or having less sex,” Dr. Herbenick said. “Because it’s uncomfortable and weird and scary. At times some of them literally think someone is assaulting them but they don’t know. Those are the only sexual experiences for some people. And it’s not just once they’ve gotten naked. They’ll say things like, ‘I’ve only tried to make out with someone once because he started choking and hitting me.’”

Keisuke Kawata, a neuroscientist at Indiana University’s School of Public Health, was one of the first researchers to sound the alarm on how the cumulative, seemingly inconsequential, sub-concussive hits football players sustain (as opposed to the occasional hard blow) were key to triggering C.T.E., the degenerative brain disease. He’s a good judge of serious threats to the brain. In response to Dr. Herbenick’s work, he’s turning his attention to sexual strangulation. “I see a similarity” to C.T.E., he told me, “though the mechanism of injury is very different.” In this case, it is oxygen-blocking pressure to the throat, frequently in light, repeated bursts of a few seconds each.

Strangulation — sexual or otherwise — often leaves few visible marks and can be easily overlooked as a cause of death. Those whose experiences are nonlethal rarely seek medical attention, because any injuries seem minor: Young women Dr. Herbenick studied mostly reported lightheadedness, headaches, neck pain, temporary loss of coordination and ear ringing. The symptoms resolve, and all seems well. But, as with those N.F.L. players, the true effects are silent, potentially not showing up for days, weeks, even years.

According to the American Academy of Neurology, restricting blood flow to the brain, even briefly, can cause permanent injury, including stroke and cognitive impairment. In M.R.I.s conducted by Dr. Kawata and his colleagues (including Dr. Herbenick, who is a co-author of his papers on strangulation), undergraduate women who have been repeatedly choked show a reduction in cortical folding in the brain compared with a never-choked control group. They also showed widespread cortical thickening, an inflammation response that is associated with elevated risk of later-onset mental illness. In completing simple memory tasks, their brains had to work far harder than the control group, recruiting from more regions to achieve the same level of accuracy.

The hemispheres in the choked group’s brains, too, were badly skewed, with the right side hyperactive and the left underperforming. A similar imbalance is associated with mood disorders — and indeed in Dr. Herbenick’s surveys girls and women who had been choked were more likely than others (or choked men) to have experienced overwhelming anxiety, as well as sadness and loneliness, with the effect more pronounced as the incidence rose: Women who had experienced more than five instances of choking were two and a half times as likely as those who had never been choked to say they had been so depressed within the previous 30 days they couldn’t function. Whether girls and women with mental health challenges are more likely to seek out (or be subjected to) choking, choking causes mood disorders, or some combination of the two is still unclear. But hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation — judging by what research has shown about other types of traumatic brain injury — could be a contributing factor. Given the soaring rates of depression and anxiety among young women, that warrants concern.

Now consider that every year Dr. Herbenick has done her survey, the number of females reporting extreme effects from strangulation (neck swelling, loss of consciousness, losing control of urinary function) has crept up. Among those who’ve been choked, the rate of becoming what students call “cloudy” — close to passing out, but not crossing the line — is now one in five, a huge proportion. All of this indicates partners are pressing on necks longer and harder.

The physical, cognitive and psychological impacts of sexual choking are disturbing. So is the idea that at a time when women’s social, economic, educational and political power are in ascent (even if some of those rights may be in jeopardy), when #MeToo has made progress against harassment and assault, there has been the popularization of a sex act that can damage our brains, impair intellectual functioning, undermine mental health, even kill us. Nonfatal strangulation, one of the most significant indicators that a man will murder his female partner (strangulation is also one of the most common methods used for doing so), has somehow been eroticized and made consensual, at least consensual enough. Yet, the outcomes are largely the same: Women’s brains and bodies don’t distinguish whether they are being harmed out of hate or out of love.

By now I’m guessing that parents are curled under their chairs in a fetal position. Or perhaps thinking, “No, not my kid!” (see: title of Dr. Herbenick’s book above, which, by the way, contains an entire chapter on how to talk to your teen about “rough sex”).

I get it. It’s scary stuff. Dr. Herbenick is worried; I am, too. And we are hardly some anti-sex, wait-till-marriage crusaders. But I don’t think our only option is to wring our hands over what young people are doing.

Parents should take a beat and consider how they might give their children relevant information in a way that they can hear it. Maybe reiterate that they want them to have a pleasurable sex life — you have already said that, right? — and also want them to be safe. Tell them that misinformation about certain practices, including choking, is rampant, that in reality it has grave health consequences. Plus, whether or not a partner initially requested it, if things go wrong, you’re generally criminally on the hook.

Dr. Herbenick suggests reminding them that there are other, lower-risk ways to be exploratory or adventurous if that is what they are after, but it would be wisest to delay any “rough sex” until they are older and more skilled at communicating. She offers language when negotiating with a new partner, such as, “By the way, I’m not comfortable with” — choking, or other escalating behaviors such as name-calling, spitting and genital slapping — “so please don’t do it/don’t ask me to do it to you.” They could also add what they are into and want to do together.

I’d like to point high school health teachers to evidence-based porn literacy curricula, but I realize that incorporating such lessons into their classrooms could cost them their jobs. Shafia Zaloom, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, recommends, if that’s the case, grounding discussions in mainstream and social media. There are plenty of opportunities. “You can use it to deconstruct gender norms, power dynamics in relationships, ‘performative’ trends that don’t represent most people’s healthy behaviors,” she said, “especially depictions of people putting pressure on someone’s neck or chest.”

I also know that pediatricians, like other adults, struggle when talking to adolescents about sex (the typical conversation, if it happens, lasts 40 seconds). Then again, they already caution younger children to use a helmet when they ride a bike (because heads and necks are delicate!); they can mention that teens might hear about things people do in sexual situations, including choking, then explain the impact on brain health and why such behavior is best avoided. They should emphasize that if, for any reason — a fall, a sports mishap or anything else — a young person develops symptoms of head trauma, they should come in immediately, no judgment, for help in healing.

The role and responsibility of the entertainment industry is a tangled knot: Media reflects behavior but also drives it, either expanding possibilities or increasing risks. There is precedent for accountability. The European Union now requires age verification on the world’s largest porn sites (in ways that preserve user privacy, whatever that means on the internet); that discussion, unsurprisingly, had been politicized here. Social media platforms have already been pushed to ban content promoting eating disorders, self-harm and suicide — they should likewise be pressured to ban content promoting choking. Traditional formats can stop glamorizing strangulation, making light of it, spreading false information, using it to signal female characters’ complexity or sexual awakening. Young people’s sexual scripts are shaped by what they watch, scroll by and listen to — unprecedentedly so. They deserve, and desperately need, models of interactions that are respectful, communicative, mutual and, at the very least, safe.

Peggy Orenstein is the author of “Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent and Navigating the New Masculinity” and “Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape.”

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An earlier version of this article misstated the network on which “Californication” first appeared. It is Showtime, not HBO. The article also misspelled a book and film title. It is “Fifty Shades of Grey,” not “Fifty Shades of Gray.”

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