Discuss The Old Man and the Sea as a representative novel of man’s struggle with natural forces.
Answers
There are days where it's a struggle to get out of bed. We don't want to go to work, or school, or really do anything. Instead, we want to avoid all our responsibilities and spend the day at home avoiding everything.
If this scenario happened to be made into a story, it would be considered a conflict of man versus self. We're fighting with ourselves over honoring responsibilities. A fight with a coworker, partner, or parent would be man versus man. In Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, the old man, Santiago, fights against nature.
Since the marlin is a creature of nature, Santiago's battle with the fish is a conflict of man versus nature. In addition, Santiago is alone on the ocean, and in some aspects, he does battle against it and the elements, such as the sun.
Santiago mentions that ''all his life the early sun has hurt my eyes.'' He must combat other forces of nature in addition to the fish, all of which compose the central theme of this story: man versus nature