The Old Man and the Sea: Tone

            The tone of The Old Man and the Sea is very monotonous. I say monotonous not in a bad way, but the way the novel is written, a straight to the point, not beating around the bush kind of way.  Hemingway’s writing is extremely straight forward and to the point. He does not really beat around corners or use expressions. The factual tone of Hemingway’s writing makes the literature easy to read, understand, and process. The reader truly gets exactly the story Hemingway wanted, without imaging something one way or the other. I personally enjoy this writing because I can understand it well without having to go back and reread parts. It makes a book a good and quick read. The only thing that gets boring about this type of writing is the lack of humor. The very tiny bit of humor in the novel is through the very dry humor filled cracks made by Santiago on the boast while he was stranded for five days (Hemingway). This lack of humor makes the emotional rollercoaster of those five days take central stage. We really feel the highs and lows of the old man as the journey carries on and on. We feel his excitement and relief when he feels the tug of the line, then his confusion and relaxed nature as the fish drags on. We then feel his exhaustion as the fish keeps him awake in the night, his worsening hunger as he struggles to find anything other than tuna to eat for the day, his struggle as he fights to save the fish from hungry sharks, and finally his defeat as he lands ashore with only the remaining bones of the once large and great marlin (Hemingway). The way Hemingway tells this story with his dry tone gives us a very defined and detailed definition of what Hemingway pictured the old man feeling on his boat for the five days.

 Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. New York: Scribner, 1952. Print.