Throughout the story the old man must struggle to succeed. No task comes simple to

the old man; he must constantly endure pain and hardship. Hemingway's code states that a

main character must be strong, hard-working, quick witted and must never show emotions.

In other words, the main character must possess the typical stereotypical characteristics that

were once very important to have.

The old man definitely abides by Hemingway's code. The old man is always dealing

with the different challenges that plague him every day. The local fishermen constantly

ridicule him on his poor fishing abilities. Every day he comes back from a long day of fishing

with no fish. This must be a very tough thing to deal with psychologically. Even the boy that

goes out with him every day must leave him because of the boy's parents lack of faith in the old

man. Because of his bad luck at fishing the old man must live in a shack with less than the

essentials. He also, from time to time, must rely on the boy for supplies which must be a little

demeaning, in that a man of his age needs help from a boy. Still the old man doesn't seem to

let it get to him because he continues to talk about how his bad luck will soon end.

After the old man first hooks the fish, there is a big long struggle with the fish. During

the struggle the old man is in constant pain. He endures the pain for over a day and never

seems to let this pain get to him. The old man is determined to catch this fish no matter how

hard or long it takes. He never lets the fear of getting lost, starving or even freezing to death

affect him in any way. Even when sharks were attacking, he summons up all his courage and

attacks the sharks without even thinking of what the sharks could do to him.

The old man also shows his intelligence and quick thinking while he was out on the boat.

If the old man wanted salt he knew that if he had splashed the side of the boat with the water

in the ocean, eventually the water would run off of the salt would stay. Also, after he lost his

spear to the first shark, he was able to create his own spear by attaching a small knife to one

of the oars. He successfully used this, like he used the spear, to stab the shark in the brain and

kill it.

As you can see Hemingway believed that the old man should follow his code and have

the characteristics that were generally seen as male characteristics in the past. He fell that

strength, quick thinking and lack of emotions were good qualities for a character to have. Even

though the main character in this story was an old man, that didn't stop Hemingway from

giving the old man those qualities.