How does santiago compare himself to a turtle

How does Santiago compare himself to a turtle? He says he has such a heart too, and his feet and hands are like theirs too. Santiago leaves shore early in the morning, before sunrise. Soon, Santiago rows over a sudden drop of seven hundred fathoms where shrimp, bait fish, and squid congregate.

Moving along, Santiago spots flying fish and birds, expressing great sympathy for the latter. He wonders, "Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel We are told that while other fishermen, those who used buoys and motorboats, thought of the sea as a masculine competitor or enemy, Santiago "always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favors, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them" Santiago keeps pressing out, past the great well where he has been recently unsuccessful.

He travels out where schools of bonito and albacore are, hoping there might be a big fish with them. Before light, Santiago casts his bait fish out but does not let them drift with the current. He wants to know exactly where his hooks are. Santiago says of this, "I keep them with precision. Only I have no luck anymore. But who knows? Maybe today. Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready" Santiago sees a man-of-war bird overhead and notices that the bird has spied something in the water.

The old man follows near the bird, and drops his own lines into the area, hoping to capture the fish the bird has seen. There is a large school of dolphin traveling fast, too fast for either the bird or Santiago to capture. Santiago moves on, hoping to catch a stray or perhaps even discover a marlin tracking the school.

A Portuguese man-of-war approaches the boat. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home Coursework How does Santiago compare himself to a turtle? Ben Davis April 13, How does Santiago compare himself to a turtle? How is the old man like a turtle? What does Santiago compare to the sea? Santiago clings to the hope that perhaps he will catch a stray, but the dolphin get away. Santiago studies a Portuguese man-of-war agua mala he calls it in Spanish floating in the water.

He notices the tiny fish swimming in its filaments and notes that while these fish are immune to its poisons, men are not. While working on a fish, he has many times suffered welts and sores from the poisons.

He considers the man-of-war's iridescent beauty the falsest thing in the sea, and he thinks how much he loves to watch sea turtles eat them or to step on them himself on the beach after a storm.

Santiago recalls his days turtling and thinks that "people are heartless about turtles because a turtle's heart will beat for hours after he has been cut up and butchered. Although the oil is there for anyone who wants it, most of the fishermen don't like it. But Santiago considers it no worse than the early hours fishermen keep, and he drinks it because it gives him strength, is good for the eyes, and protects against colds and grippes. The second time Santiago sees the bird circling above him, he sees tuna jumping into the air.

Santiago successfully catches a ten-pound albacore and hauls it into the boat, where it flops around until he kills it out of kindness. Santiago says aloud that the fish will make a good bait, which prompts him to begin thinking about his habit of talking aloud to himself at sea, a habit that he began after Manolin stopped fishing with him.

He remembers that he and Manolin talked only when necessary or at night when bad weather had them storm-bound. Most fishermen consider talking only when necessary at sea a virtue, and Santiago has always respected that belief. Now, however, he grants himself this minor indiscretion because it bothers no one. He knows that if the others hear him, they will consider him crazy, but he decides that if he is crazy, this habit doesn't matter and that the rich take along their radios to listen to baseball games.

Santiago upbraids himself for thinking of baseball when he should be focusing his attention on what he describes as "[t]hat which I was born for. Although he is not sure whether that is a sign of bad weather or something else, he has noticed. He also notices that he is now so far out into the ocean that he can barely see the tops of the tallest hills, which look white in the distance. With the sun hot on his back, Santiago briefly is tempted to nap, with a line around his toe to wake him if a fish bites.

But he remembers that he has been trying to catch a fish for 85 days now and so "must fish the day well. The novella's overall structure can be divided, according to setting, into three parts — the three phases of Santiago's cyclical journey from the land to the sea and then back to the land again. This cyclical journey also suggests the cyclical quality of human life and the various cycles of the natural world, such as the change of season or the interdependency of all living creatures in the food chain.

The novella's middle part, which takes place at sea, actually comprises the bulk of the story, its central action, and its most dramatic moments. However, by considering first what takes place on Santiago's voyage out and then what takes place during his great sea battles, special attention can be focused on the first section's realistic description and other details that should not be glossed over lightly.

As Santiago, alone in his boat, rows out to sea, the third-person, omniscient narrative of the first part on land begins to shift a bit and continues to do so throughout the second part at sea. Here the perspective draws closer to Santiago, entering his mind with increasing regularity as Hemingway begins blending narrative modes methods of telling the story.