"The Old Man and the Sea" Question 8

This novel takes place in the 1940's.  You would think that would make it easy to compare it to significant evens in history in that time, such as you know...maybe that World War II thing.  That was kind of important.  Right?  *For those who have not realized yet, my voice is dripping with sarcasm right now.*  This is not an easy thing to do, however!  Do you want to know why?  Well I'm going to tell you no matter what, so here goes:  It dominantly takes place on a boat!  Isolated out on the sea!  Really, the only talk of the outside world of Cuba and the sea is of Dimaggio and the Yankees.  That is even limited.  So how accurately does this novel reflect events in history?  Honestly?  I do not know!  I'm sure it accurately described the sea and such because, well that's not hard to do!  Other than that and some limited baseball facts and such I have nothing to compare to!  What relationships does the author believe exist between various groups in society?  Not many groups of society are illustrated in this book.  There is the boy and the old man, the old man and other fisherman, and the boy and his parents.  Even some of those relationships aren't explicitly illustrated in the novel.  They are only spoken of by the boy or the old man.  For example, the boy only speaks of how disproving his parents are of him spending time with the 'unlucky old man' and demand he begin to fish on his own.  This shows the authors possible point of view when it comes to parent-offspring relationship.  It shows that they believe most parents do what they think is best for their children but sometimes their judgement can be clouded by other peoples opinion of the situation.  The rest of the fisherman that knew the old man made fun of and talked about the old man behind his back about his unlucky streak and the boy's parents most likely heard and formed opinions based off of others judgement, not their own.  Therefore they never knew what an amazing and healthy impact the old man was actually making on the boy.   What people, ideas, and events probably influenced this author?  Ernest Hemingway most likely had a fisherman of some sort in his life or just the sea in general.  Maybe it was a childhood book, maybe his great uncle was a man of the sea.  I have deduced that the sea somehow influenced him somehow.  The ideas of perseverance and determination most likely had a role as well.  This book basically screamed perseverance at me while I was reading about it and am now blogging about it.  


Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. New York: Scribner, 1952. Print.