Recently, I have just read a famous novel written by Ernest Hemingway. The book’s title is well-known by everyone – The Old Man and the Sea. The novel talks a story about an old fisherman whose name is Santiago. In this story, I have learnt the spirit of persistence and never giving up.

         The old Santiago lives alone and poor, and the only person who would like to chat with him is a boy, and the boy would also help him to gather the fishing tools. For once the old man gets a really bad luck, because for continuous eighty-four days, he did not catch any fish. However, on the eighty-fifth day, he still goes to sea in an optimistic mood. This time, not like before, he gets a pretty good luck by catching a huge marlin fish. In the other hand, the fish is too big that Santiago has to fight for three days and nights to bring the fish under control. Under his strong will, he overcomes pain, loneness and hunger and kills the fish. He ties the fish on his boat, but the smell of blood attracts sharks and they fight for eating the marlin’s meat. The old fisherman tried his best to kill sharks, but by the time he reaches the coast, the marlin fish got nothing left but a structure of bones. The story ends by the old man eating the bone of the fish.

       I cannot say it is a story with good ending or sad ending, because from my perspective, though the old man had only the bones left, the bones were the proof of his victory over the big marlin fish. Some people might say that Santiago is a man with great strength in spirit or a man who knows the importance of consistence, who never gives up even though the fruit may seem small. And I pretty agree with it that he is really a man of consistence. However, more in my opinion, by the contrast, is that the old Santiago is too stubborn. He can either choose to release the huge marlin fish when he found that it was too big, or choose to bring back the died sharks when he found that the marlin fish had became the sharks feast. But he did neither of them, so I’d say he doesn’t know how to change, and that is why, at least in my thoughts, the old man is not successful all the time.