My Great Fish

"There is never a time or place for success. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment."

In The Old Man In The Sea, Santiago has to face many struggles while while trying to make his "big catch". While he was struggling with his fish, one of his biggest struggles was himself. He had struggled a lot with his need for water and food and keeping sane. It was only his self on the boat which made it harder for him to concentrate and focus on his real goal of catching the fish. Another struggle that he faced were the sharks that threatened to eat his prize. He had nothing he could use to fend for himself so in the end they ended up eating it on him. One other struggle were the cuts and burns that he got on his hands from the fishing line while trying to reel in the fish. 

My own struggle I can relate to is with my grade for geometry. All year I have had trouble trying to keep it up and stay on task. My sharks were the tests. The tests were like the sharks from The Old Man in The Sea because each test was another threat to drop my grade lower than it was. I wasn't completely comfortable with the material that we would go over, so when it came to the day if the test I wouldn't know what to do and get a low grade. As for me, I wouldn't study for the tests and had no motivation to, so that wouldn't help either. This I can relate to the Old Man's struggle with himself. Lastly, I had a hard time juggling with the sports and homework and trying to balance them out and have time for each. I would have practice right after school, and By the time I would get home and be done showering it would be pretty late so I would just want to go to sleep. I relate this with Santiago's burns and cuts on his hands because, it hurt him and didn't help motivate him to keep trying. 

It took me a while to realize that I needed to get in task and really start to focus on getting my work done. All together it was the first two terms of school where I was in the D range, and it made me feel really stressed out. It really sucked.

At the start of the 3rd quarter, after receiving my midterm and seeing my grade it really snapped me back to reality and made me realize I need to focus. My parents were my turtles in this situation because they supported me and pushed me to do better. I started to stay after, do my homework, and study for my tests. As mentioned before, sports were hard to deal with but I decided that work would have to come first. I finally came over my struggle when I made my goal come true by getting a 100 on a test that I took. My hard work really payed off and it felt really good. At the end of term 3, I had raised my grade to a B which was pretty awesome. 

I think that Santiago's main struggle was himself and what other people on the island though of him. To overcome this struggle, he went out everyday to try and catch a fish to prove them wrong and he finally did. I think that he made a good decision to go out and try to prove them wrong everyday because he knew he could. And in the end, all of his hard work payed off. Yes, the sharks may have eaten the fish but in the end it was all worth it to him because he knew he had proved then wrong and that's all that mattered. 

All throughout the story, I think Hemingway is trying to portray a certain message/lesson to his readers. It can be said in a couple ways but the two that I think best fit it are "always believe in yourself" and "never give up" I feel like these fit because the old man never have up in trying and kept fishing and believed that he would catch a fish.