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Hello everyone, I'm Meiya.
"Man can be destroyed, but he cannot be defeated."
Hemingway's words, I believe everyone must have heard.
This sentence is not only the essence of his book "The Old Man and the Sea", but also a true portrayal of his life.
At that time, Hemingway had been in violation of the literary scene for ten years, and after his comeback, he published a novel, but the criticism was overwhelming.
People think that Hemingway's era is gone, he "Jiang Lang is exhausted", and he can no longer write good novels.
However, it did not take long for "The Old Man and the Sea" to come out, selling 5.3 million copies in a short period of time, and winning the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature the following year.
The novel not only helped him salvage his damaged reputation, but also brought him to the pinnacle of literature.
Author: Ten O'Clock Li Xiaomu
Some people say that santiago, the protagonist of this novel, is Hemingway's self-projection.
Santiago is a thin and elderly fisherman who has not caught a fish for 84 days, and has been ridiculed by the fishermen around him, who firmly believes that he is a good fisherman, and in order to prove himself, regardless of his life, he resolutely decided to go fishing in the deep sea.
After three days and three nights of life-and-death struggles, alone he brought back eighteen-foot-sized fish bones that these fishermen had never seen in their lives.
In the end, both Santiago and Hemingway won.
They win in:
The fortitude to plunge into the deep sea alone, the courage to stab sharks with a single knife, the wisdom to build on strengths and weaknesses, and the tenacity to never give up.
The fortitude to plunge alone into the deep sea
Santiago is a skinny old man who paddles alone in a small boat and fishes in the Gulf Stream. He had the appearance of an old man all over his body, except for his eyes, which had the color of the sea, revealing a look of optimism and confidence.
For eighty-four days, he hadn't caught a fish.
For the first forty days, a boy had been following him. But there had been no fish for forty days, and the boy's parents told him that the old man was useless now, that he was no longer strong, and that his luck had reached the extreme.
So the boy was forced to go to another boat and catch a few good fish in the first week.
On a morning when dreaming of a lion, the old man bypassed the "big well" filled with small fish and entered the quiet deep sea alone.
The old man rowed the boat and heard the trembling sound of flying fish jumping out of the water, lonely but calm.
Then he saw a black seabird, and the old man knew that it was chasing the fish, and he paddled towards the place where it was circling.
There, he put down his bait and expertly caught a 10-pound longfin tuna that "just makes it bait," he says to himself.
The old man knew that he had caught the tuna because it was greedy for small fish, which was nothing more than a lost person in the group, and there must be a school of fish ahead, and a larger fish.
It turned out that this was just a prelude to his fishing, and his goal was to be a real big fish.
How could the old man not know that he was hungry, cold, lonely, and dangerous at sea, but going into the deep sea was the choice of his perseverance and character, and he would never back down.
The courage to stab a shark with a single knife
Finally, a fish bit the old man's bait.
The old man reached for the fishing rope, gently sandwiched it between his thumb and forefinger, and then tentatively pulled it, feeling a strong and heavy force.
With years of experience, he knew that this was a big fish.
The old man waited patiently, giving the fish time to eat the bait, while letting the fishing rope continue to slide down, and after making sure that the fish was fully hooked, he shouted "Okay! ", with all his strength, he pulled the fishing rope hard, trying to pull the fish out of the sea.
However, even the water droplets on the fishing rope jumped up, and the fish slowly swam away on its own, and dragged the fishing boat slowly forward.
From noon to evening, from evening to early morning, from warm to cold, and from cold to warm sun, for a whole day and a half, the old man wanted to subdue the big fish but there was nothing he could do, and the big fish wanted to get rid of the old man and there was no way, so it has been deadlocked.
The old man brought only a bottle of water with him when he went to sea, and now he can only rely on the freshly caught tuna and loach to fill his hunger, in order not to let himself eat raw fish and nausea, affecting his physical strength, he tried his best to divert his attention.
At this time, a small bird flew to the stern of the ship to rest, and the old man said to it, "Take a good rest, and then run to the front to try your luck." ”
He spoke to the bird to cheer himself on.
At this moment, the big fish suddenly twisted and dragged the old man down, fortunately, he reacted very quickly and released a piece of hook and rope, otherwise he would have been dragged down to the sea.
The old man's hand had been strangled with blood, and he had to transfer the power of the fishing rope to his left shoulder and kneel on the board.
The corners of his eyes were injured, his left hand was cramped, and his back and the back of his hand were blurred with the blood and flesh of The Fishing Soler, but he was never discouraged, did not bow his head, and did not give up.
Life encounters some setbacks, it is inevitable, it is easy to give up, not to abandon the difficult, but the value of life, is not this time and again gritted teeth and persistence process?
Later, the old man was so sleepy that he fell asleep unconsciously and dreamed of a majestic lion.
At night, the exhausted big fish finally surfaced.
The old man threw down the fishing rope, stepped on it with his feet, raised the spear as high as possible, did not know where the strength came from, slammed into the fish, and then used the strength of the whole body to desperately press down.
The fish immediately flew up, and when it was about to die, it jumped high above the water, its whole body exposed, and it looked very majestic.
The fish was so big that it couldn't fit in the boat, and it was the first time the old man had caught such a big fish alone.
"Get up and get to work, old man," he said to himself. "Although the fight is over, there is still a lot of rough work to be done."
The old man had a hunch that things were not so easy.
Wisdom to build on strengths and avoid weaknesses
After a long period of persistence and fighting, the old man finally tied the huge sailfish to the side of the boat, and the sailfish's wound left a dark mark in the blue water, and the faint smell of blood filled the air...
Sure enough, the smell of blood attracted sharp-toothed sharks, and they came to plunder the old man's big fish, because the physical strength was really limited, and the old man picked the shark's weakest eye in the middle of the hand, fast, fierce, and accurate.
But the sharp tooth shark still bit about forty pounds of fish, and dragged away the old man's spear and rope, and now the big fish is bleeding again, and it will attract other sharks.
Sure enough, in the evening, there were attacking sharks again, and they even omitted the search for the fishy smell and swam straight to the boat side by side.
Because there were no decent tools, the old man unloaded a broken oar from the boat, held it firmly in his hand, and when the previous shark bit it, he directly hit it in the head, and the later fish swam over and hit the tip of its nose with a heavy stick.
The shark rushed up again, and the old man gave it a shot at the moment when its upper and lower jaws were closed, and this time it hit it very strongly, and it lifted the stick to the limit before it fell, and the two sharks swam away and gave up.
By this time, the fish was half left,
By about ten o'clock in the night, he had driven into the reflective area, and it would not be long before he could enter the Gulf Stream.
But in the middle of the night, he faced another fight. The night raid came in droves, and the old man struck them on the head, unable to see clearly, and could only wield short sticks by feeling and hearing.
But there are too many sharks, they tear in groups, tear off the fish piece by piece, and the old man's fish is eaten...
The big fish he had guarded with all his might had not been able to escape the shark's attack, and he knew that he had finally been defeated, and the old man returned to the stern of the ship with all his thoughts, draped the sack on his shoulders, and let the boat sail home.
The boat moved briskly in the night, and the old man was already indifferent to everything around him, only feeling brisk and sad.
The old man, covered in bruises, returned to his hut exhausted and soon fell asleep.
In the morning the boy found that the old man had returned, and he looked at his boat and the fish bones, and the serious injuries on his body, and knew that he had endured a hard battle.
On the surface, the big sailfish eventually let the shark eat it, and the old man brought back only its white skeleton, but from a spiritual point of view, the old man was defeated.
It turns out that the real strength is not youth and luck, but when these two things leave you, you face the predicament, do not flinch, and still do your best.
The boy cried for a long time, he knew that there was too much he had to learn from the old man, he was the best fisherman in the world, no matter how much his parents objected, the boy decided never to leave again.
At this time, the lion entered the dream of the old man.
Never-say-die resilience
Many readers have discovered that in this novel, the old man dreams of a lion three times.
Before going to sea, during fishing, and after fishing, it symbolizes hope, courage and strength.
Although the old man had reached his twilight years, although no one except the boy understood him, although the fish bones he brought were still mistaken for sharks, as long as he could still dream of lions, he could control his life.
Nietzsche, in What Zarathustra Says, once wrote that the human spirit undergoes three changes, one of which is to become a lion.
The lion means that once a person truly awakens, his life can move from passive to active.
Have the tenacity to know what you want, and to do your best and never give up.
The brave are inevitably lonely, and they are often questioned and ridiculed by the people around them, just like Zhuangzi's Dapeng will be ridiculed by birds.
But the lion will not be depressed because of this, and the outside world is like a shot in the heart, stimulating its body, which is pregnant with unlimited, incalculable potential.
Because, I can be destroyed, but I can't be defeated.
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Background music | "On Our Softer Side-2"
Image source | stills from "Everything Lost"
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