The Old Man and the SeaThere is a scene in The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, where a shark has taken a large piece of about forty pounds from the prize Santiago having caught the marlin, Santiago begins to doubt whether he should have gone out to sea and wishes he had never caught the fish and had only been in bed with his newspaper (103). Immediately afterwards Santiago says: “But man is not made for defeat, a man can be destroyed but not defeated” (103). Ernest Hemingway's life is intertwined with the novel The Old Man in the Sea in many different ways. For example, in Hemingway's late life he didn't have the money to really live on his own, so he ended up moving to Cuba like Santiago and buying a little shack he could stay in. Hemingway felt Santiago's pain as a man. With much time spent between novels and his reputation as a great author on the line, Hemingway had proven himself, and Santiago also felt he had to prove his worth as a fisherman again. Santiago's quest to catch a big fish is the author trying to bring out the big story from its depths. But Santiago's big catch, a ten-foot marlin, was torn to pieces by sharks and that symbolic if critics tore The Old Man and the Sea to pieces. Hemingway's failed marriages and teenage rejection also influenced the writing of this story. The main character and protagonist of the story was Santiago. Santiago is an elderly Cuban, a skilled fisherman by profession. His neck is wrinkled from the sun and his hand bears the scars of many fishing battles, only his blue eyes remain bright and cheerful''. Santiago's personality is courageous, self-confident, cheerful and determined, and he doesn't let anything shake him in life. Even when he doesn't catch a single fish for eighty-four days, he spends r... half the paper... eating the fish and leaving only the skeleton behind. The old man, tired and defeated, returns home crushed by fatigue. My first impression of Santiago is that he is old, weak and lonely. Hemingway illustrates this through the novel's opening sentence: "He was an old man fishing alone in the Gulf Stream and had gone eighty-four days without catching a single fish." This suggests that the old man is an extremely unlucky fisherman. Hemingway's vision of heroism and ability to convey one's life events and feelings onto the page is work that requires ephemeral ends. By facing adversity in both his literature and real-life events, Hemingway makes himself and Santiago more of a human being rather than an author or character. Santiago, for example, says: “Man is not made for defeat… A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”