Post #2 - The Old Man and the Sea - Favorite Passage

I read to page 20, for a total of 20 pages.

The book begins the story explaining how the old man has not caught a fish for over eighty days and a boy who used to help him has been forced to work on another boat by his parents. The old man is well respected by the other fishermen it seems but the boy is the only one who cares for him. The beginning of the book put simply is the boy preparing the man for another day of fishing.

A theme so far seems to be simplicity in life, the old man has only what he needs to survive (if that considering the boy is his main source of food). He is very simple minded, the only thing he and the boy discuss besides fishing is baseball and dreams from his youth.

One of my favorite passages was on page 17:

"May I take the cast net?"
"Of course."
There was no cast net and the boy remembered when they had sold it. But they went through this fiction every day. There was no pot of yellow rice and fish and the boy knew this too.

This is a perfect example of Hemingway's style of writing. The sentences are all extremely simple and concise, only enough words to convey the information. There is also a pattern of lots of tradition throughout this book. Everything is done a certain way and the past is revered by the main characters, though they operate in the present. The sentences also do not have any punctuation because they sentences are all so short and/or simple. All of the writing is also very explanatory. As the conservation occurs, Hemingway explains the surroundings and meaning behind everything (at least from the eyes of the boy or old man).