Decision's && Consequences
In everyday life we come across decisions all the time. From what to wear in the morning, to deciding what you want to do for a living. Then some of our decisions, we have consequences in the end. In the book, The Old Man and the Sea, Santiago come across a lot of decisions that has a consequence afterwords. The main decision he makes is going out and keep on looking for the marlin.
In the very first few pages of the book Santiago makes a decision. “He had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.. the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky,” (pg. 9). He keeps on going after this. He doesn’t stop, even though he was the laughing stock of his village. He kept on trying, trying to get the biggest marlin in his village so he wouldn’t be the laughing stock anymore. He had hope and faith in his dreams. He was not, going to back down.
Santiago makes a few bad decision here and there. One of them was keeping the marlin on the side of the boat and the sharks came and took it away from him. “the old man could hear the noise of skin and flesh ripping on the big fish” (pg. 102). He then notices that the marlin is all ripped up and now he’s probably thinking that it was a bad idea keeping the marlin on the side of the boat capable of getting taken away by other animals such as the sharks. He feels sorry for the poor fish. Like he shouldn’t have done that or even stayed out looking for the marlin.
He basically makes a decision to stay out longer, when he has barely any food. “The old man could hardly breathe now and he felt a strange taste in his mouth. It was coppery and sweet and he was afraid of it for a moment. But there was not much of it. he spat into the ocean and said ‘eat that, galanos. and make a dream you’ve killed a man.” (pg. 119). As you can see he waited too long to go back in shore that he almost kills himself by starving himself. He gets this sense that he should go back because he ‘killed a man’.
That is just a few decisions Santiago went through during this book. Their was many more decisions he faced but not giving up, putting his fish on the side of the boat, and almost killing himself stood out to me.
