The importance of reading Ernest...

Uhh, I know, I am still overdue to write a wrap up on Earnest Hemingway's "The old man and the sea". I planned to get things done last weekend, but I got hit by an utterly annoying stomach flu, which made me lay in bed for almost two days. And no, I was not even able to read. No further details necessary. 

Anyways, now - Hemingway! The importance of reading Ernest. He came into my life already years ago when studying English and American literature classes. Amongst others Hemingway was on the list, and while paying more attention to Tuesday evening  Frizz-party nights and the involved pre-planning Hemingway and all the others got read - well a little bit, not with the right amount of attention I would say. Mmmh, as a twenty-something there is also so much more than literature (I just joined the club 30 earlier this week, so I can know) but I missed out great writing!! 

"The old man and the sea" is a short story about an old fisherman, a young boy and the elements. A fable about luck, dreams, pride, respect and the interconnectedness of the elements...

I was more than impressed by the accurateness and attention to detail, yes, even love to detail that sometimes, I just read the sentences 2, 3, 4 times - not because I did not understand them - but just because they were so extraordinarily beautiful. Like a perfect composition in a picture!

For example how he has described the sea, as la mar, - well it is too beautiful to not place that part here and share it with you:

He always thought of the sea as la mar which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a women. (...) the old fisherman always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withhold great favors, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a women, he thought. 

p.19f 

When I read this part which is in the first quarter of the short story, I was completely hooked by Hemingway's style of writing. 

I also liked this one: 

The clouds over the land now rose like mountains and the coast was only a long green line with the grey-blue hills behind it. The water was a dark blue now, so dark that it was almost purple. p.24

He also continue to explain how the plankton looks like and throughout the book I had the idea to take part in a colorful journey on the ocean, which - to me always tended to be more dark-blueish. Next to colors, also the senses played an important role and made me almost smell the sea and the salt. Hemingway also included a lot of naval know how, such as weather conditions and signs, or that a lot of plankton means fish. This, at least to me, serves as a kind of frame to a brilliantly told story which has, like the critics say "not a word too many"!

For me this story was a narrative master piece and definitely marks the importance of reading Ernest!