TOMATS

In the novella, The Old Man in the Sea, we can make assumptions that Santiago has a connection with nature that bonds the two of them together as family. "But I have killed this fish which is my brother and now I must do the slave work."(Hemingway 95). Here we see that Santiago refers to the fish as his brother so he definitely has a strong bond with the fish. "The old man hit him on the head for kindness and kicked him, his body still shuddering under the shade of the stern."(Hemingway 38). In this section of the book, Santiago is killing a fish out of necessity to survive. We know from this quote, that even though he is killing the fish he has sympathy for it and instead of letting the fish die slowly and painfully, he makes his death short and painless so the fish would not suffer. He kicks and hits the fish on the head out of his sympathy for him. (Hemingway 38). We know that Santiago has a special bond with the animals and on his way back from catching the marlin he has an interaction with a shark he describes as beautiful. The author can be confusing though, because with Santiago's interactions with the other sharks, he describes them to be "scavengers and killers" (Hemingway 108). We notice that Santiago's connection with nature and animals at this point may have changed due to a variety of factors. First of all ,Santiago is tired and has not had a good long rest in three days, we could also assume he is a little frustrated by the way things are going with the fish and how long they are taking, and also the fact that after all his hard work from catching the fish, he is being attacked by many sharks. We can infer that Santiago's faith and pride of catching the fish was lessened when his great, noble, fish was taken away from him.