The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea

Literary Response Journal Prompts

Each response should be thoughtful and well-developed. 2-3 pages in your LRJ per response is the proper range.

1. The Hero Criteria

According to Webster’s Dictionary, a hero is defined as“any person admired for courage, nobility, or exploits, esp. in war... any person admired for qualities or achievements and regarded as an ideal or model.”According to Hemingway, the code hero is a man who “lives correctly, following the ideals of honor, courage and endurance [perseverance] in a world that is sometimes chaotic, often stressful, and always painful.” The code hero, he says, must perform his work well to create a kind of personal meaning. Still, life is filled with misfortunes, and a code hero is known by how he endures those misfortunes. Ultimately, the code hero will lose in his conflict with life because he will die. But all that matters is how one faces death. In fact, one should court death, in the bull ring, on the battlefield, against big fish, because facing death teaches us how to live. We might think of this as being “brave” or “courageous.”

This response will be completed in three parts:

1. Building upon Webster’s and Hemingway’s definitions of a hero, list at leastthreemore qualities that you believe define a person as a hero. Be specific and detailed. I do not want you to simply list threewords. Please explain each quality you identify. These five qualities (your three plus Webster’s and Hemingway’s) will become your “hero criteria.”

1. Read the article below (“You guys ready? Let’s roll!”) on Flight 93 hijack victim Todd Beamer. Does Beamer fit the definition of a hero according to your “hero criteria”? Explain why or why not.

1. Now, choose a fictional character – from a novel, short story, movie, television series, comic book, etc. – or a real-life person (living or historical) that you consider a hero. That means a character / person who meets all aspects of your hero criteria. Explain what makes this character or person a hero. Be as specific and detailed as possible. I want to know how this character/person fulfills the role, what obstacles and struggles he’s overcome.

2. The Great DiMaggio

Joe DiMaggio was a hero to Santiagoand he thought of him often when he was fishing alone in his skiff. Joe DiMaggio made baseball history by setting the all-time major league record of getting a hit in 56 consecutive games. DiMaggio demonstrated perseverance, resolution and determination by giving his best despite serious injuries. He once said, “There is always some kid who may be seeing me for the first or last time. I owe him my best.” When Santiago wanted to give up in his battle with the huge marlin, he remembered how DiMaggio ignored the pain and kept fighting.

Joe DiMaggio was a hero not only to Santiago, but to a whole generation of baseball fans. Santiago called him the "great DiMaggio." He was also known as "Joltin' Joe" and the "Yankee Clipper." Throughout his life, Joe retained an aura of heroism. Former All-Star outfielder Andy Pafko said, “Even today I look up to him. And he's never disappointed me.”

1. Visit The Official Joe DiMaggio website to find information about the life and baseball career of Joe DiMaggio. List 14 facts that could be used in a speech to introduce him as a new member of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
2. Once you have your 14 facts, write a letter nominating Joe DiMaggio to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Include at least 4 reasons why he should be added as a member. Follow the persuasive writing standard below.

Persuasive compositions:

1. include a well-defined thesis that makes a clear and knowledgeable judgment (e.g., Joe DiMaggio deserves a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame).
2. support arguments with detailed evidence, examples, and reasoning, differentiating between evidence and opinion.
3. arrange details, reasons, and examples, effectively anticipating and answering reader concerns and counter-arguments.

3. Lessons in Manliness from The Old Man and the Sea

Note: This LRJ assignment will be revised and crafted into an essay that you will type and submit to me as part of your autobiography portfolio on the day of the Semester Exam at the end of Second Quarter.

Read the article “Manliness from The Old Man and the Sea.” The article discussessix lessons in manliness to be learned from Hemingway’s novella. For each of the lessons, explain first how Santiago’s actions and thoughts “teach” these lessons, and second write about how you might apply each of these lessons to your life. Write your response in six paragraphs – one on each of the following lessons in manliness.

1. A man does not depend on luck.
2. A man bears pain and hardship without complaint.
3. A man does not boast.
4. A man finds inspiration from others.
5. A man goes down swinging–no matter his age.
6. A man’s legacy comes from maintaining his integrity.

4. Book Review

The toughest and perhaps the most important question of all remains: As a literary work, how good isThe Old Man and the Sea?Read “Clean & Straight” (see below), a review of The Old Man and the Sea in TIME Magazine from 1952, the year the novel was published.

Now it’s your turn. Write a review of the book in which you give this question the most detailed, thoughtful, honest answer of which you are capable. Although you cannot force your reader to agree with your judgment, try to win his respect for the thoroughness, the fair-mindedness, and the insight that have gone into the making of that judgment. Refer to the persuasive writing standard above in prompt #4.

RELATED ARTICLES

“Are you guys ready? Let's roll!”

September 16, 2001, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

By Jim McKinnon

"Are you guys ready? Let's roll!" That's how Todd Beamer lived. And that's how he died, helping to lead a takeover by passengers on United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed Tuesday in Somerset County. It was the fourth plane to go down in last week's terrorist attacks.

Beamer, an Oracle Inc. executive from Hightstown, N.J., and others are being credited with foiling hijackers bent on crashing the Boeing 757 into what authorities say might have been a second target in Washington, D.C., possibly the Capitol or the White House.

Flight 93 had left Newark, N.J., at 8 a.m. Tuesday, bound for San Francisco.

"That's Todd," his wife, Lisa, said yesterday of the "Let's roll!" command, which he made over the plane's in-flight telephone. A GTE supervisor talked with him for about 13 minutes before the plane crashed.

"My boys even say that. When we're getting ready to go somewhere, we say, 'C'mon guys, let's roll.' My little one says, 'C'mon, Mom, let's roll.' That's something they picked up from Todd."

Beamer, 32, told the GTE supervisor, Lisa D. Jefferson, that he and others on the plane had decided they would not be pawns in the hijackers' suicidal plot. Jefferson told him about the other hijackings and Beamer made her promise to call his wife and their two boys, David, 3, and Andrew, 1. Beamer's call connected at 9:45 a.m. He told Jefferson there were three hijackers, armed with knives. He did not know their nationalities or their intentions. One of the men had what appeared to be a bomb tied to his midsection with a red belt.

Beamer said he could account for 37 of the plane's 38 passengers. The hijackers had forced 27 of them into the first-class compartment near the front. Beamer, nine other passengers and five flight attendants were ordered to sit on the floor in the rear of the plane. He did not know the whereabouts of the pilot, copilot and the remaining passenger. He said a flight attendant had told him the pilot and copilot had been forced from the cockpit and may have been wounded. Two of the hijackers were in the cockpit with the door locked behind them. The man with the bomb stayed in the back of the plane, near Beamer's group.

With him were others who placed cell-phone calls from the plane, Jeffery Glick, 31, a sales manager for a technology firm, Thomas Burnett Jr., 38, a California businessman, and Mark Bingham, 31, a former college rugby player from California. Beamer mentioned Glick by his first name in the call to Jefferson, Lisa Beamer said.

Toward the end of his conversation with Jefferson, Beamer said the plane appeared to have changed directions a few times. Later, it would be determined that it had flown west from Newark to near Cleveland, then turned back to the southeast toward Pittsburgh.

Beamer became anxious. "Oh! We're going down!" he shouted at one point. He paused, then said in a calmer voice, "No, we're OK. I think we're turning around."

Beamer then told Jefferson that he and the others had decided to "jump on" the hijacker wearing the bomb. Jefferson could hear shouts and commotion and then Beamer asked her to pray with him. They recited the 23rd Psalm. [“The Lord is my shepherd…. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…”]

He got Jefferson to promise that she would call his family, then dropped the phone, leaving the line open.That's when Jefferson heard what Lisa Beamer believes were her husband's last words: "Let's roll."

Then there was silence. Jefferson hung up at 10 a.m. EST, realizing that the plane had gone down. Officials said it crashed at 9:58 a.m. Although it's not yet clear what Beamer, Glick and the others were able to do, they are being hailed as heroes for forcing the plane down in a remote strip mine area in Stoneycreek, Somerset County, about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

"When the plane started to fly erratically, he said he knew he wouldn't make it out of there," said Lisa Beamer, who is expecting their third child in January. Lisa Beamer said reports of her husband's heroic role had "made my life worth living again." Jefferson kept her promise and called Lisa Beamer at 8 p.m. Friday.

"It was the best thing that I could've gotten [Friday]. It totally changed the mood around here," Lisa Beamer said.

Jefferson, reached by telephone yesterday, declined comment. She said GTE's parent company, Verizon, may issue a statement tomorrow about Beamer's call. Lisa Beamer said the call she received from Jefferson had lifted her family's spirits. "We all knew what kind of person Todd was. We know he's in heaven. He was saved," Lisa Beamer said. "Just knowing that when the crisis came up he maintained the same character we all knew, it's a testament to what real faith means. It's been a real uplift. It's put a spring in my step that I didn't have since Monday."

The couple met at Wheaton College near Chicago, hometown for both of them. After graduation and marriage, they moved to New Jersey and both took jobs at Oracle before starting a family. "He's a great guy in a crisis. He would have had his family in the forefront of his thoughts. And he would not let other people overpower him," Lisa Beamer said.END

Lessons in Manliness from The Old Man and the Sea

by Bryan Schatz, July 12, 2011 in “The Art of Manliness”

“Success” is all too often assumed to be the indicator of the value of a man. But success, in and of itself, merely speaks to a particular status and may have nothing to do with the journey that the man took to get there, or whether or not he retained his integrity along the way. Among the many aspects of the story, it is the idea of redefining success and victory that makes The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway’s classic novella, so profound.

It is a seemingly simple story: Santiago is an old, experienced fisherman who hasn’t brought in a catch for months. On the 85th day of this dry spell, he heads far out into the Gulf of Mexico where he hooks a giant marlin. Unable to pull the fish into his skiff, he holds onto the line for three days before killing it with a harpoon. After lashing the fish to his boat, Santiago heads home with his hard-won prize. But along the way, sharks reduce the fish to bones, and the old man returns to port as he left–empty-handed.

Yes, a simple story on the surface, but also a tale with a much deeper message and a relevance that transcends time and place. It speaks to the universal truths of a man’s existence within this world, where pride, respect, tenacity, and dreams fuel a man in his quest to thrive in the face of struggle. It is a story about the indomitable spirit of man; Santiago stands as a symbol of an attitude toward life, and his fight with the mighty marlin offers numerous lessons to all men.

“A man is not made for defeat.”

Santiago has nothing but a broken-down shed and a rickety skiff with a sail that is “patched with flour sacks” and looks “like the flag of permanent defeat.” The skin of his gaunt body illustrates his hardships and is marked with deeply-set wrinkles, scars, and blotches from the punishing sun. And because of his terrible misfortune, he is a pariah in his small fishing village.

But while nearly “everything about Santiago is old,” his eyes remain “the same color as the sea and are cheerful and undefeated.” Instead of throwing in the towel after 84 days of terrible luck, he sails farther out into the Gulf than he has gone before.

A man continues to do whatever he must do to the best of his ability, no matter what tribulations befall him. While challenges and setbacks can strip a man of all outward signs of success, still his spirit can remain undefeated. For it can will a man to never give up and to keep on trying.

Or as Hemingway puts it: “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

A man does not depend on luck.

Luck plays a major role in the story and in our everyday lives, and to a superstitious lot like fishermen, poor luck can seem paralyzing. In Santiago’s little Cuban fishing village he is labeled “salao, which is the worst form of unlucky,” after having gone eighty-four days without taking a single fish.

This makes him a outsider among his peers, and it costs him his trusty partner, the boy Manolin, whose parents forbid him from fishing with the old man. While Santiago deals with the suffering of being hungry and poor, other boats from his village continue pulling in good fish every day.

Anyone can have luck of course, but not everyone one can have determination, skill, and perseverance. Santiago knows this and therefore believes in his ability rather than chance. “To hell with luck,” he thinks. “I’ll bring the luck with me.”

He does this by not taking any shortcuts in his work. He keeps his fishing lines straighter than anyone, and he makes sure that, “at each level…there [will] be a bait waiting exactly where he wishes it to be for any fish that swim there.” Santiago keeps his lines with precision, and he is ready for whatever comes.

We cannot attain success simply by waiting for good things to happen. It is when we strive forward towards a goal that we open ourselves up to opportunity. As Santiago muses, “It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when the luck comes you are ready.”

A man bears pain and hardship without complaint.

“He was shivering with the morning cold. But he knew he would shiver himself warm and that soon he would be rowing.”

Whether it’s something as trivial as being cold or as significant as skirting along the borders of death, a man simply does what must be done, without self-pity and without complaint. Santiago does not whine about hunger pains or thirst, nor does he mope about the fishing line that cuts into his hands.

Out at sea, far beyond the other boats, Santiago is presented with the greatest challenge of his life. It comes in the form of an eighteen-foot marlin and makes for a long, long battle that spans days. Near the edge of his exhaustion, Santiago’s hand is cut deeply and cramps up “as tight as the gripped claws of an eagle.” He washes the cut in the salt water and lets it dry and warm in the sun. But the hand refuses him and he is forced to work with his right hand alone, against the powerful fish that is two feet longer than his own skiff. Drained, Santiago “settles against the wood” and simply “takes his suffering as it comes. He is comfortable but suffering, although he does not admit the suffering at all.”

A man does not boast.

The quality of a man is best seen through his actions, and developing humility is a key ingredient in letting our actions do the talking for us. Santiago is given plenty opportunity to boast during a conversation with his young friend, Manolin, but he does not.