Old Man and the Sea 11

I think The Old Man and the Sea is alright as far as required reading goes, but it is still a required reading book. I would give it a four out of ten. There is close to an equal amount of pros to cons. The first pro is that this book was very short. Most of the books that we have to read are not under two hundred pages. This one was well under that amount. A con would be that this is a book. I do not like to read, especially over the summer, and especially when it is a book that I did not choose. Another pro is that this book was extremely simple. It followed one character while he performed the amazing feat of catching a fish and losing it. This is a book that can be summed up simply by the title. There is an old man and a sea, and that is just about it. The next con is that nothing really happens. There is an old Cuban, and he talks to himself at sea. He is lonely, and must resort to talking to either a fish or himself. There is minimal suspense and action because it is sacrificed to tell a simple story. I think this is a bold move because it sets a kind of bland mood to the story. It is almost like the story is being narrated by Ben Stein because it is so droll. The last con of this novel is the setting. It is in a time and place that I really can’t relate to. I have never been an aging Cuban man right after the turn of the century trying to catch fish. I have never even been fishing. I am a sixteen year old American living in the twenty first century who does not even like fish. I can’t relate to this story at all. This is really a story that people should have stopped reading a few decades back. It has little merit in today’s society, and it should be put to an end.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. New York: Scribner, 2003. Print.