By Kieran B.

In the novella The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, Santiago, the main character makes many choices that all lead to different consequences. Santiago sets out on a trip to catch some fish but it ends up being a long battle with a marlin. Santiago takes some very serious risks while he is out at sea. While he is out there he is punished cruelly for his actions. Hemingway fully describes Santiago’s choices and how afterwards he lives with the consequences.

Santiago made many choices while at sea and before he went to sea. A few examples of choices that he made are: deciding to bring food on the trip, to even go fishing, to hook the marlin and to even love to fish in the first place. After every one of these events, Santiago paid in some way. It is just like cause and effect. The cause is the action (choice) and the effect is the consequence. One really big choice for Santiago was if he should or shouldn’t bring Manolin (a young friend of his) on the fishing trip with him. Manolin’s father ends up not letting him go.

The biggest and greatest decision of all that is posed in The Old Man and the Sea is: Should Santiago even have hooked the marlin in the first place? “It was noon when I hooked him, “he said. “And I have never seen him”(47). This quote proves that Santiago has been fishing a while with no luck because in previous pages Hemingway states it had been 84 days since his last catch. So, I think this is why he went through the trouble (consequences) of trying to catch the marlin because he really didn’t want to go home empty handed. Nevertheless, when he did arrive home, he didn’t have anything other than a fish carcass. The reason is because on his way back home the marlin was bleeding so badly that every shark that smelled it took a chunk of marlin only to be killed by Santiago himself.

As the author clearly states, Santiago has never seen the fish he has hooked. Hemingway describes the marlin’s beauty and such on pages 90-94. “No,” he said. “He can’t be that big”(90). Santiago is shocked at the size of the fish he has hooked. He is not sure what he has gotten himself into. This is the consequence for Santiago’s action earlier on. If Santiago had never caught the marlin in the first place than he would never have to deal with all the consequences afterwards.

In the end Santiago returns home to meet Manolin who assists the old man to recovery. “I’ll bring food and the papers, “the boy said. “Rest well, old man. I will bring stuff from the drugstore for your hands”(126).This proves that the old man went through some serous consequences just to come back home empty handed. Santiago’s hands were badly injured from holding the line the fish was on which was one of many consequences that the old man received on the trip.