Great Gatsby-Santiago
This may be true in all cases, but it is clearly predominant in Ernest Hemingway 's Old Man and the Sea. It is evident that Hemingway modeled the main character, Santiago after his own person, and that the desires, the mentality, and the lifestyle of the old man are identical to Hemingway 's. Santiago is an old fisherman who lives in a small coast town in Cuba. At the time that Hemingway wrote the story, he was also an elderly gentlemen and was such an avid fisherman throughout his life, that books such as "Ernest Hemingway, The Angler As Artist" were written on the sole subject of how this obsession influenced Hemingway 's writing. Furthermore, he fished off the coast of Cuba so much that he decided to "buy the 'Finca Vigia ' in Cuba, a substantial estate located about fifteen miles from downtown Havana . . ." For entertainment Santiago would "read the baseball." Meanwhile Hemingway often "relied on baseball analogies" in his writing, suggesting that he also loved the game. These similarities between Santiago 's lifestyle and Hemingway 's cannot be ignored or passed off as coincidence because they are much too precise. Already, from these prominent identical traits it is evident that Hemingway modeled the character of Santiago after his own person. Hemingway had a very characteristic view of life. He believed it was admirable to risk one 's life in order to test one 's limits. His love of bullfighting clearly demonstrated this. Raymond S. Nelson, Hemingway scholar, states, "He saw bullfighting as tragic ritual, and he lionized the better bullfighters as men who risked death every time they entered the arena -- a stance he admired and chose for himself in other ways." One example of Hemingway choosing this stance for himself was when "he shot and dropped a charging Cape buffalo a few feet before the enraged animal would have killed him." This daring act of Hemingway 's sounds peculiarly similar to the sport of bullfighting, and is an excellent example of
Cited: Brenner, Gerry. The Old Man and the Sea: Story of a Common Man. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1991. Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Lynn, Kenneth S. Hemingway. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987. Mellow, James R. Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1992. Meyers, Jeffrey. Hemingway: A Biography. New York: Harper & Row, 1985. Mr. Morden 's English handout on Hemingway 's life. Nelson, Raymond S. Ernest Hemingway: Life, Work, and Criticism. Fredericton: York Press, 1984. Samuelson, Arnold. With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba. New York: Random House, 1984. Sojka, Gregory S. Ernest Hemingway: The Angler as Artist. New York: Peter Lang, 1985.