The Old Man and the Sea - Question 6

Why do we still read this book?

Ernest Hemingway is an author who is known for many timeless classics such as The Old Man and the Sea. So many kids whine and complain because we have to read "old" books for summer reading, but we can learn so much from those novels. Most of the books that teenagers read today are purely for entertainment purposes, and don't really provide deep themes or intense symbolism. We read The Old Man and the Sea for many reasons. Most kids would assure you that the main reason we read it is to ruin our summer, but actually, if you sit down and read the story (which, really doesn't take all that long because the book is like 100 pages, so stop complaining) you can be opened up to a story of determination and perseverance. You won't get those kind of messages from a Gossip Girl book (not to slam Gossip Girl; I'm sure that they are wonderful...). People will never stop needing to push through tough times to get to what they have been longing for. Believe it or not, reading novels and writing blogs is probably not what high school kids want to be doing over summer (I thought that was what school was for...) but because we are able to follow in Santiago's footsteps, we can persevere through it all and at the end of the year, when that extra point on our GPA gets added, it is a great feeling. And at the same time, when all of the other kids in our grade are laughing at us because we had to do so much work over the summer, we know that it was all worth it. Just like the old man was not able to show off his fish to everyone, he knew how big it was and how great of a fisherman he truly was, just like we know how great of students we truly are for sticking with the summer blogs (even though we would all rather be doing something else).

Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. New York: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1995. Print.