Santiago displays courage in his tireless efforts to
endure and to continue to fight against the nothingness that exists if one does not
strive to "live correctly."
Hemingway himself wrote that
his code hero is
readability="10">...a man who lives correctly, following the
ideals of honor, courage and endurance in a world that is sometimes chaotic, often
stressful, and always
painful.Indeed, Santiago is
the code hero as he displays perseverance, courage, and honor. He ventures out to sea
each day, even though he has not caught a fish for eighty-four days. When he finally
catches a marlin, he must fight to bring it in; his hands are bloodied and the one
cramps, but Santiago perseveres just as his baseball hero Joe DiMaggio ran with terrible
bone spurs in his feet. Truly, Santiago exerts himself
bravely:But
I have had worse things than that....My hand is only cut a little and the cramp is gone
from the other. My legs are all right....The fish is my friend....But I must kill
him.Even when the sharks
attack and eat his catch, Santiago continues to battle. When he can no longer talk to
the fish because it has been so badly ruined, Santiago becomes philosophical, telling
the mangled fish he is sorry that he ventured too far out to sea, and caused the ruin of
them both, still demonstrating courage,readability="10">But we have killed many sharks, you and I....You
do not have that spear on your head for nothing....Fight
them, he said. I'll fight them until I
die.This courage, this
willingness to remain a man even in defeat, is what Hemingway refers to as grace under
pressure. When Santiago returns, enervated and with nothing but a skeleton for a catch,
he retains this quality of humility:readability="7">His hope and confidence had never gone....He was
too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and
he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true
pride.Santiago leaves the
skeleton of the great fish tied to his boat, and the other fisherman measure it at
eighteen feet. Destroyed in body, but not in mind, the courageous Santiago returns to
his shack and lies face down on his cot to sleep and dream a memory of his youth: "The
old man was dreaming about the lions."
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