As is known to all, the classic The Old Man and the Sea is a masterpiece of all time by Hemingway who is good at describing the war scenes as well as the realism. Since a young age, I have heard of this great writer and his extraordinary life and l had been wanting to read his book for a long time. It is surely not my first time to read The Old Man and the Sea, that being said, l still am impressed by how lively and real his descriptions are and the unique way that he expresses himself. In fact, I can hardly remove the beginning of the book out of my head. One thing I have truly understood after reading this novel is that everybody is living through a tough life and there may be millions of people who live a life with only a meal today and someone are even struggling with thirst. Life is never fair in history but we are now still running with our own lives. Santiago is to be learned by people, his spirits shall never leave us, it remains in the galaxy, shining through history. Men are born to be tough. Men are to be strong. No matter what difficulties we are faced with, we know we will fight for ourselves. We will fight till death, even if the last strength has fade away, we still will not let go. It seems to be the human nature. “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.” Sometimes Brief words embrace the most power. “Eighty-four days without taking a fish”, I suppose that this may be the magic of Hemingway, without any description of the old man, his appearances, his expressions, his words, neither… but only the brief sentence, all that other stuff seem to be overwhelming. The magic of briefness can make us overdose. There is an old saying in Chinese, one can be seen through his style of writing which applies to Hemingway perfectly. He is a very direct person, no more fancy words, he is likely to be the most real person in his eras which filled with chaos and disturbances and lies. He seems to be the very only person who keeps his mind clear to look for the truth covered by all of the fake people who did not want the world to be in peace. The Old Man and the Sea was written at that time by him as far as I know. After going through a long-time darkness, he wrote this novel which kind of like his reflections of his heart at that time. Just like Santiago, Hemingway fought against his life alone, all by himself, but all of the necessary fights at the end turn into an unnecessity which discourages a lot of readers including me. The old man fights so hard with the hope of making a fortune to improve his own life, but only finds out there is nothing left but tiredness, all the struggles are taken away, he gains nothing at the end. One of the most impressive inspirations I learn from this book is probably about this part, you might still get nothing after paying efforts, sometimes hard works just do not get paid, no reward, that is it, but we can‘t give up running with our own businesses merely because of this, you know it may be wrong at the end of the road, you still do it, because you have to. Obviously Hemingway makes the main character Santiago more complicated which can also be explained by the complex humanity. Santiago is old, at the age of enjoying the happiness of reunion and having fun with dozens of grandchildren, he struggles with hunger, poverty, loneliness, and death, but he never runs away, he faces the challenges himself bravely, and that is the second lesson I have learnt from him, running away from your problems doesn’t solve anything and may bring it to something worse instead. If any problem arises, just face it and then solve it, no matter what the causes will be, no matter how disastrous it may seem to be, we shall never turn back and play hide and see, the rule is simple and everybody sees that, what challenge us most is our own mentalities, the quality to bear the unknow results, extremely good or extremely bad, no one knows which direction life will lead us to, and the interesting part is that life is made up of our choices along the lifeway, it is totally up to you what life you want , if you want it to be super, you work hard for it, no pay no gain or more exactly no pain no gain, quite easy to understand for all of us, but when it comes to the implementation, things are different applying to different people. For example, if the character in the book were not Santiago but someone else, someone who is cowardice and not willing to take his responsibility, this book then would have not been the best seller as it is boring, as if repeating the ordinary life over and over again. What we need is not comfort, we are supposed to be extraordinary and we are all ambitious. At the end of my reading report, I would like to suggest that reading experience is personal a kind of feeling, and I was ,am and will be impressed by reading a book like this which teaches me to get tough with my own life and eventually create my own life.
Respect and thanks for Santiago as well as Ernest Hemingway.
