Old Man and the Sea. Repetition Part Three (that rhymes!)

This is a continuation of giving examples of repetition in the book Old Man and the Sea. I am on the third example which is talking about if the boy, Manolin, was there on the boat to help him. Many times while the old man was on the boat he would speak of things the boy and him would do or how the boy would be of help. (Hemingway) By repeating things about the boy so much it gave the old man, Santiago, a lot of strength and reason to fight for his life. This repetition kind of represented reasons for Santiago to fight for his life. Hemingway did well on this repetition but I feel he could have added more detail about the boy himself just to give more depth to the story. The fourth example of repetition is the great DiMaggio. Known also as Joe DiMaggio, former New York Yankees baseball player who in the book was also this character. In the book Santiago talks about DiMaggio's foot spur and DiMaggio didn't let that effect his game play. (Hemingway) This is how DiMaggio plays into the book because Santiago saw the foot spur as an obstacle. Just like Santiago being old, his hands, and not having help were all obstacles. The author used the repetition to represent the hardships and obstacles the DiMaggio overcame that helps Santiago overcome his. The last repetition happens to be the worst of all of them. This is the repetition of the purple coloring of fish. (Hemingway) This one to me makes absolutely no sense and has no real meaning or purpose at all. It only serves as another repetition but doesn't help the story line. In part one I said "I felt some of the repetition could have been completely gotten rid of", this was the EXACT repetition I was referring to. In my opinion, it only hurt the story instead of helping it. It added more confusion and clutter to a already in depth story. I must say that all in all though Hemingway did do a fantastic job in using repetition in aiding and giving more depth to the story (minus the whole purple fish stuff).



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