OMS obstacles

Sean Rondeau

C Block

OMS Essay: add 12 wordds

The word obstacle comes from the Latin root obstaculum meaning to stand in front of or barrier. In life, we face many struggles. Obstacles are what make are goals harder to get towards. Whether your obstacle is an injury, a relationship, or time, they all affect us. In Ernest Hemingway’s classic, The Old Man and the Sea, the main character Santiago faces the biggest obstacles; no ordinary man could overcome what the Old Man had overcome. During his venture of bringing the marlin back to his Cuban homeland, the Old Man is battling against the size of the fish, being lonesome, and a group full of hungry Mako Sharks.

The marlin the Old Man had hooked was massive. “He is two feet longer than the skiff [18 feet and over a thousand pounds!]” (Hemingway 63). Santiago was facing the catch of a lifetime. Since the marlin was so large, the Old Man could not bring him in right away due to his strength. The process of catching the fish took three days, yet Santiago decided to stay with the hooked fish. The three-day journey created a toll on the Old Man’s body. This created a feeling like no other man has felt; he had to overcome this pain and made him fight for his life. The Old Man’s hand cramped up from trying to catch the fish. The Old Man decided to fight through the pain because he has a very strong heart and will. He will stop at nothing, even death. In addition, Santiago had to face hunger by staying with the marlin. He needed to catch fish along the way so he would have food to eat. He would not have the energy to catch the huge fish over a three-day span on an empty stomach. The Old Man may have exhausted himself to death. The size of the marlin was a challenge in itself, but along the way, it brought many other obstacles.

The experienced angler went on this journey by himself. As a result of flying solo, the Old Man played mind games on himself. He felt very lonely throughout the trip. “I wish I had the boy. To help me and to see this” (Hemingway 48). During the long trip, Santiago often referred to missing the boy. This obstacle caused a sense of depression in the Old Man. How would you feel being on a three-day trip by yourself without anything but the ocean? In addition to his loneliness, he had no one to help him. If Manolin had come along for the trip, the story would have been about fifty pages shorter because the Old Man would have faced problems such as being lonely, getting pain, and having no help.

The last thing standing in the way of Santiago and Cuba was the sharks. The sharks took all of the meat of the marlin. During the process, the Old Man decided to fight off numerous sharks for his own pride. He did this with a lack of weaponry. He had one harpoon that was taken. “He had taken my harpoon and all the rope, and now my fish bleeds and there will be others [sharks]” (Hemingway 103). Therefore, the Old Man had to beat the sharks with wooden clubs in the middle of the night. He tried to save his friend, the marlin, but was unsuccessful.

In life, it’s all about the journey we make and how we get there. Most people would think of an obstacle as a bad thing. I see an obstacle as an experience that makes a journey. Struggles are what make us stronger people and every obstacle defines us as a person and how we overcome them. After the journey, Santiago became a stronger person, gotten a stronger mind, and most importantly, had pride. “If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.”-Frank A. Clark