The contemporary fishermen go out to fish with nets, which is a commercially profitable practice. It, however, requires little skill. It is nothing more than a chore. After 84 days without catch, Santiago sustains himself on what little food a bartender sends him out of pity. Yet he still waits for his big fish. It is more important to him than hunger. And the big fish finally arrives.
Santiago ignored hunger to prove his fishing prowess, but he is not entitled to keep his catch. His amazing fortune is balanced against his material loss. While being able to come out on top in his struggle against the fish and against the pain and frailness of his own body, this is to be his only reward. His fortunes turn when he refocuses from passion for catching the fish to greed for profiting from it. The sea does not reward greed.
On the third day the fish tires, and Santiago, sleep-deprived, aching, and nearly delirious, manages to pull the marlin in close enough to kill it with a harpoon thrust. Dead beside the skiff, the marlin is the largest Santiago has ever seen. He lashes it to his boat, raises the small mast, and sets sail for home. While Santiago is excited by the price that the marlin will bring at market, he is more concerned that the people who will eat the fish are unworthy of its greatness.
On his way home sharks attack the fish. As the sharks tear apart the marlin bit by bit, it is as they are tearing apart his dignity bit by bit. Through all this suffering, he fights the sharks, for he alone has to endure the sufferings to fulfill his destiny. This is his mentality, he knows what he must do and so he does it. He never lets down his guard and he fights with consistent strength. That is why Santiago could not stand to look at the grisly remains of the marlin. Everything he worked for, everything he gambled his life for, everything he endured pain for was going down to deep depths in the sea in the mouths of the sharks he so furiously killed. Although the sailing became much easier without the marlin attached to the skiff. There was nothing left of the marlin but its skeleton.
Santiago’s pride also motivates his desire to transcend the destructive forces of nature. Throughout the novel, no matter how baleful his circumstances become, the old man exhibits unflagging determination to catch the marlin and bring it to shore. When the first shark arrives, Santiago’s resolve is mentioned twice in the space of just a few paragraphs. First we are told that the old man was full of resolution but he had little hope. Then, a few sentences later, the narrator says: He hit the shark without hope but with resolution. (91)
The old man meets every challenge with the same unwavering determination: he is willing to die for bringing in the marlin, and he is willing to die fighting the feeding sharks. It is this conscious decision to act, to fight, to never give up that enables Santiago to avoid defeat. Although he returns to Havana without the trophy of his long battle, he returns with the knowledge that he has acquitted himself proudly and manfully. Hemingway seems to suggest that victory is not a prerequisite for honor. Instead, glory depends upon one having the pride to see a struggle through to its end, regardless of the outcome. Even if the old man had returned with the marlin intact, his moment of glory, like the marlin’s meat, would have been short-lived. The glory and honor Santiago accrues comes not from his battle itself but from his pride and determination to fight.
Santiago, a noble hero, accepts his defeat. The fish was eaten and he has returned home with its remains. He realizes that he went out too far and that he made a mistake. He fought a tough battle and in the end, he was defeated. He even admits to himself that he has been beaten: He knew he was beaten now finally and without remedy….
Although through most of the novel he has great strength in fighting the fish and he is determined to succeed, in the end he knows what had happened. Throughout his life he had struggled and suffered and won but this was his final battle. And though he lost, he lost while fighting. He realized now that it is over for him.
He is over fighting and it doesn't matter anymore. He knew he was beaten now finally and without remedy. He knows also, that it is his fault. He realizes his mistake and that he cannot change what had already happened. He went out too far and although this caught him the biggest fish, it also caused him failure. He says it to himself, he was careless and he was responsible for his own failure. He tried to do more than he was capable of doing. He couldn’t change anything. He was defeated.
After his voyage was completed Santiago was exhausted and weak. While carrying the mast from his boat he stumbled three times under the weight of it resting upon his shoulders. He also stopped five times to take a rest before he reached home. When he was back in his shack he fell asleep on his bed.
The next morning, a crowd of amazed fishermen gathers around the skeletal carcass of the fish, which is still lashed to the boat. Knowing nothing of the old man’s struggle, tourists at a nearby cafй observe the remains of the giant marlin and mistake it for a shark. Manolin, who has been worried sick over the old man’s absence, is moved to tears when he finds Santiago safe in his bed. The boy fetches the old man some coffee and the daily papers with the baseball scores, and watches him sleep. When the old man wakes, the two agree to fish as partners once more. The old man returns to sleep and dreams his usual dream of lions at play on the beaches of Africa which were a symbol of his youth and strength.
Santiago realizes that he had completed his last challenge and that his time as a fisherman was up. He passed on the sword from the great fish to Manolin for the continuation of the skills he had taught his apprentice.
Santiago proves to be a noble hero in the eyes of Hemingway. He is a master craftsman in his enduring strength, skill, and knowledge of fishing. He knows tricks and occupies himself with improving his ability to fish. He struggles and suffers in order to stay undefeated. He beats all odds and fights all battles with the thought that he can and will win. And so he does. He goes far out and acts on what he thinks is right. He does not fear his actions nor does he regret them. He fights every battle as if it were his last and therefore comes out on top. Finally, he accepts defeat. This is the most honorable characteristic. No matter how hard he had fought, once it is over, he does not look back wishing he could have acted differently. He accepts his mistakes and recognizes that he had overstepped the boundary of man's finite and limited nature. His actions and the consequences of them are easily noticed and should not be looked down upon. In the long run, Santiago answered his calling, fought his battles, and when he was finally defeated by his own pride, he recognized it and accepted it. This makes Santiago a noble hero.
The action of the novella takes place in Cuba, and all the characters are Spanish-speaking.
To convey the atmosphere of Spanish speech (in the dialogues of Santiago, in his monologues – both verbalized and interior) the author occasionally uses Spanish words.
According to the English language literary tradition, foreign words are printed in italics which immediately emphasizes them on the page.
To find out their functions in the text, their structure and frequency, we have carried out our research of unassimilated borrowings (foreign words, barbarisms) in The Old Man and the Sea. To proceed, we will introduce a short survey of the study of borrowings in the English language.
2. Borrowings in the English language and in the old man and the sea
In its 15-century-long recorded history, the English language happened to come in long and close contact with several other languages, mainly Latin, French, Old Norse (Scandinavian). The great influx of borrowings from these sources can be accounted for by a number of historical causes. Due to the great influence of the Roman civilization Latin was for a long time used in England as the language of learning and religion. Old Norse was the language of the conquerors who were on the same level of social and cultural development. French was the language of later conquerors who brought with them a lot of new notions of a higher social system – developed feudalism, it was the language of upper classes, of official documents and school instruction from the middle of the 11th century to the end of the 14th century [5].
In the study of borrowed elements in English the main emphasis is as a rule placed on the Middle English period. Borrowings of later periods became the object of scholarly interest only in recent decades and research has shown that the flow of borrowings has been steady and uninterrupted. The greatest number of them has come from French. They refer to various fields of social-political, scientific and cultural life.
The number and character of borrowed words tell us of the relations between the peoples, the level of their culture, etc. It is for this reason that borrowings have often been called the milestones of history [5]. Thus if we go through the lists of borrowings in English and arrange them in groups according to their meaning we shall be able to obtain much valuable information with regard to England’s contacts with many nations. Some borrowings, however, cannot be explained by the direct influence of certain historical conditions, they do not come along with any new objects or ideas. Such were the words air, place, brave borrowed from French [5].
It must be pointed out that while general historical reasons for borrowing from different languages have been studied with a considerable degree of thoroughness, the purely linguistic reasons for borrowing are still open to investigation [5].
The number and character of borrowings do not only depend on the historical conditions, but also on the nature and length of the contacts. The closer the languages the deeper and more versatile is the influence.
Borrowings enter the language in two ways: through oral speech (by immediate contact between people) and through written speech (by indirect contact through books etc.).
Though borrowed words undergo changes in the adopting language, they preserve some of their former peculiarities. In some cases the pronunciation of the word (strange sounds, sound combinations, position of stress etc.), its spelling and the correlation between sounds and letters are an indication of the foreign origin of the word. Such as the case of waltz (G.), psychology (Gr.), soufflй (Fr.)The initial position of the sounds [v], [dz], [z] or of the letters x, j, z is a sure sign that the word was borrowed.
The morphological structure of the word and its grammatical forms may also bear witness to the word being adopted from another language. Thus the suffixes in the in the words neurosis (Gr.) and violoncello (It.) betray the foreign origin of the words.
These criteria are not always helpful. Some early borrowings have become so thoroughly assimilated that they are unrecognizable as adoptions without a historical analysis, e.g. chalk, mile (L.), ill, ugly (Scand.), enemy, car (Fr.).
It must also be taken into consideration that the closer the relation between the languages, the more difficult it is to distinguish borrowings.
The volume of borrowings in English left its imprint upon the language. The first effect of foreign influence is observed in the growth of the vocabulary. Due to its history the English language, more than any other modern language, has absorbed foreign elements in its vocabulary [5].
It has been mentioned that when borrowed words were identical in meaning with those already functioning in English, the adopted word very often displaced the native one. In most cases, however, the borrowings and synonymous native words both remained in the language, becoming more or less differentiated in meaning and in use – for instance the sphere of application and meaning of feed and nourish, try and endeavour, meet and encounter. As a result the number of synonymic groups in English greatly increased. This brought about a rise in the percentage of stylistic synonyms.
As said earlier, many borrowings have undergone changes and have adapted themselves to the peculiarities of the English language. All the changes that borrowed elements undergo may be divided into two large groups.
On the one hand there are changes specific of borrowed words only. These changes aim at adapting words of foreign origin to the norms of the borrowing language. Thus the combinations [pn], [ps], [pt] in the words pneumatics, psychology of Greek origin were simplified into [n], [s], [t], since the consonant combinations [pn], [ps], [pt], frequent at the end of English words (as in sleeps, stopped, etc.), were never used in the initial position.
On the other hand we observe changes that are characteristic of both borrowed and native words. These changes are due to the development of the word according to the laws of the given language.
When the highly inflected Old English system of declension changed into the simpler system of Middle English, early borrowings conformed with the general rule. Under the influence of the so-called inflexional levelling borrowings like disc, (MnE. dish), strжt (MnE. street) that had a number of grammatical forms in Old English: common case and possessive case singular and plural (street, streets).
It is very important to discriminate between the two processes – the adaptation of borrowed material to the norms of the language and the development of these words according to the laws of the language.
Since the process of assimilation of borrowings includes changes in sound-form, morphological structure, grammar characteristics, meaning and usage most linguists distinguish phonetic, grammatical and lexical assimilation of borrowings.
Phonetic assimilation, comprising changes in sound-form and stress, is perhaps the most conspicuous.
Sounds that were alien to the English language were fitted into its scheme of sounds. Familiar sounds or sound combinations, the position of which was strange to the English language, were replaced by other sounds or sound combinations to make the words conform to the norms of the language. Substitution of native sounds for foreign ones usually takes place in the very act of borrowing.
In words that were added to English from foreign sources, especially from French or Latin, the accent was gradually transferred to the first syllable. Thus words like honor, reason were accented on the same principle as the native father, mother.
Usually as soon as words from other languages were introduced into English they lost their former grammatical categories and inflexions and acquired new grammatical categories and paradigms by analogy with other English words as in:
Com. sing. Sputnik
Poss. sing. Sputnik’s
Com. pl. Sputniks
Poss. pl. Sputniks’
All borrowings that were composite in structure in their native language appeared in English as indivisible root-words, unless there were already words with the same morphemes in it. Thus in the word saunter the French infinitive inflexion – er is retained (cp. OFr. s’auntrer). But they have changed their quality, preserved in all other grammatical forms of the word (cp. saunters, sauntered, sauntering), which means that it has become part of the stem in English.
When a word is taken over into another language, its semantic structure as a rule undergoes changes. In the process of its historical development a borrowing sometimes acquired new meanings that were not to be found in its former semantic structure. As a rule, the development of new meanings takes place 50–100 years after the word is borrowed.
The semantic structure of borrowings changes in other ways as well. Some meanings become more general, others more specialized etc. For instance, the word terrorist, that was taken over from French in the meaning of «Jacobin», widened its meaning to «one who governs, or opposes a government, by violent means.» The word umbrella, borrowed in the meaning of a sunshade or parasol (from It. ombrella < ombra – «shade») came to denote similar protection from the rain as well. Usually the primary meaning of a borrowed word is retained throughout its history, but sometimes it becomes a secondary meaning. Thus the Scandinavian borrowings wing, root, take and many others have retained their primary meaning to the present day, whereas in the Old English fēōlaze(MnE. fellow) which was borrowed from the same language in the meaning of «comrade, companion», the primary meaning that appeared in New English only «a man or a boy». Sometimes change of meaning is the result of associating borrowed words with familiar words which somewhat resemble them in sound but which are not at all related. This process, which is termed folk etymology, often changes the form of the word in whole or in part, so as to bring it nearer to the word or words with which it is thought to be connected. Thus the French verb sur(o) under had the meaning of «overflow». In English r(o) under was associated by mistake with round – круглый and the verb was interpreted as meaning «enclose on all sides, encircle».