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Santiago's Excessive Pride In The Old Man And The Sea

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During the past few weeks, I have been reading the novella "The Old Man and the Sea", and I have enjoyed it very much. In this essay, I will be relating my thesis statement to my likes and dislikes about the book. To begin with, my thesis statement is: Santiago 's excessive pride leads to his own defeat. In my statement, I would like to define excessive pride as it relates to the book. In this passage, the pride represents the fish, and excessive pride means that when Santiago catches the fish, he is extremely proud of himself because it was the biggest marlin he has ever seen and experienced. During the process, as the sharks came and started biting the marlin, his pride was taken away bit by bit until he declared his own defeat. To prove my point, I would like to quote from the book: "He knew he was beaten now finally and without remedy and he went back to stern……" (Hemingway, 86). The fish represents his excessive pride because he suffered in …show more content…

To begin with, I would like to talk about some of the qualities of machismo shown in the book, and all of these qualities represent the old man 's excessive pride. I am going to talk about three points and why they led to the downfall of the old man 's pride. The first quote: "And pain does not matter to a man." (Hemingway, 61). This is because of the fact that he thinks he is strong; therefore, pain does not matter to him. However, later on in the book, pain does matter to him because his constant suffering was making him weaker and weaker. The second quote: "I have no cramps…" (Hemingway, 64). This also shows a sign of pride and machismo because again, the old man wants to prove that he is strong and able to catch the marlin. The last quote: "A man can be destroyed but not defeated." (Hemingway, 75). This is the strongest example of machismo and pride. I firmly believe that this quote foreshadows his eventual defeat and

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