The Old Man and the Sea #7

In the novel The Old Man and the Sea, there is a lot of different tones. One of the main tones that I saw was hope. The Old Man, whose name is Santiago, he is very hopeful that he will catch a big fish and have luck. He has been a fisherman for a very long time and he knows that to be a great fisherman you need to be patient and you need to have luck. The Old Man has been eighty four days without luck. He told himself that no fisherman can go eighty five days without luck. He knows that he will get lucky the next day that he goes out to fish. This sets a hopeful tone for the book by showing that though Santigo is old and has little to no help, he is still hopeful. The next day that he goes out to sea he has an extremely optimistic view on how his day will go. He is hopeful that he will catch a big fish and his unlucky streak will be gone. While he is on the sea, he gets even more hopeful when he catches a huge marlin fish. The Old Man does not know at the time the big fish that he has. When Santiago sees the masterpiece he caught he becomes even more hopeful.

The hopeful tone of the book starts to dwindle as The Old Man is traveling in the sea with the marlin fish. The marlin fish travels three days dragging Santiago and the boat. The Old Man cuts his hand while the fish was jumping out of the water. The tone starts to change to discouragement. The hopeful tone comes back really fast when Santiago kills the fish and gets the fish tied to the boat. Then once the fish is tied to the boat and they are one their way home, the sharks start to attack the marlin. Santiago tries to fight off the sharks, but he can not. The sharks slowly eat away at the marlin. The tone of the novel changes dramatically at this point. The tone is now overpower. Santiago feels over powered and he gives up. He goes back to his shack and he falls asleep and he does not want to do anything because he is an unlucky fisherman.