Independent Reading Assignment Character Profile

 

‘Santiago (The Old Man)

Physical Description:

He is thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. He has brown blotches of skin cancer on his cheeks and down the sides of his face due to the reflection of sunlight on the tropic sea. His hands have deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on cords. None of them are fresh scars. Everything about him is old except for his blue eyes. His eyes remain cheerful and undefeated.His aged neck and shoulders are still strong and powerful. His shirt has been patched many times and the patches have all faded to different shades due to the sun. When he sleeps you would not know whether he was still alive by looking at his face. He calls himself ‘old man’ due to his appearance and Manolin and the narratorof the novel do as well. The harsh sun has always hurt his eyes. Even though he had been turtling for many years, his eyes had never suffered any medical problems. He used to be called ‘Santiago The Champion’ by all those who knew him due to his physical strength which was proven by his arm-wrestling match against the strongest man in the docks of where he used to work.

Personality Traits:

He has extraordinary patience, tolerance, endurance, bravery and determination which are shown by the eighty-four days without catching a fish and his three day struggle with the marlin. Any other fisherman in his village would probably let the giant marlin go if they were fishing alone. He has pride in his fishing skills and his strength which is essential to all that he does. His bravery is best displayed during his epic fight with the ferocious and deadly sharks. He is a fisherman like none other. Even when young fishermen made fun of him, he did not get angry. He did get frustrated at his left hand when it cramped up into a claw shape. That was natural and shows that he is a human being and cannot be perfect.

Lives in (Description):

He lives in a shack that is part of a small fishing village (town) in Cuba. It is located on the side of a worn coral rock road which starts from a small harbour and passes through the village water supply. There is a door and there arefour brown walls on which he leans the mast for his skiff and hangs colour pictures of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Virgin of Cobre which are relics of his wife. One side of the shack is nearly the same length as the mast. The walls of the shack are made of overlapping flattened tough bud-shields of the royal palm and guano. In this one room shack, the old man has a bed to sleep in, a table to eat on, one chair to sit on and a place on the dirt floor on which the old man cooked in the past using charcoal or wood. He is bored of eating and rarely takes lunch with him while fishing during the day. He rarely eats supper as well. There is a shelf in one corner of the shack on which the old man keeps a tinted photograph of his wife underneath his clean shirt. He keeps newspapers given to him by a man at the bodegawhose name is Perico under his bed.

Occupation:

His occupation is a fisherman of Havana, Cuba. He sometimes wonders whether he should have been what he is but resolves the question by believing that he was born to be a fisherman.

Relatives:

·         His deceased wife is mentioned in the book two times. However he feels lonely when he thinks of her or sees her photograph and therefore tries not to do so. It also probably reminds him of his past, which was completely different to everything described in the novel.He doesn’t want to think about his good days.

·         He has no offspring apart from Manolin, who is like an apprentice or disciple to him.

Role in the story:

Santiago is the main character of this novel and is always present throughout the novel. After enduring eighty-four days without catching a single fish, he resolves to go further out than usual for the eighty-fifth day based on his experience. He catches a marlin of legendary proportions but is unable to make it rise to the surface of the sea where he can then use a harpoon. The powerful marlin tows the old man for three days before it starts circling around the boat. During each circle the marlin swims, the old man gains some line. He manages to pull the marlin to the surface alongside the skiff and pushes the harpoon with all his strength into the area behind the chest fin.  During his return home, sharks attack the skiff and leave the old man with only the meat of the head. He proves to himself and everyone else in the village that he is an accomplished fisherman. He is able to teach Manolin again and most of his problems are solved. Manolin cares for Santiago even more assiduously than before and the novel is able to end on an optimistic note with the old man dreaming in his shack about the lions of Africa.

Manolin (The Young Boy)

Physical Description:

He is presumably in his late adolescence. Gathering from his attitude and actions, he is a bright, energetic and mature boy. He is a teenager but does not have the characteristics that typify it. Most teenagers are not so easy to interact with, and will probably not treat the old man like Manolin does. He plays baseball in his spare time and has enough muscle strength to handle medium sized fish. His family provides enough food for him and he is neither skinny nor overweight. 

Personality Traits:

He is a very nice boy anddoes not go against his parents and respects Santiago at the same time. He cares about people around him. This is shown in the end of the novel where he brings some coffee to the old man and heats it up to keep it warm. He makes sure that no one disturbs or bothers Santiago as well. The sight of Santiago’s hands make him cry and we know that he regrets not having been able to accompany the old man and how important the old man is to him. This leads to abandoning his duty to his family and choosing to fish with Santiago again.

Lives in (Description):

Manolin lives in a house with his father and mother. The house is on the same road as Santiago’s shack but is further from the harbour. He sleeps in a cot in the bedroom nearest to the front door. He has a chair on which he puts his trousers when he sleeps. Compared to Santiago’s shack, he lives in a more comfortable accommodation. If his parents were rich, Manolin would not have been allowed to start fishing with Santiago at the age of five. It is unclear what his father’s occupation is. The story is set in the late 1940s, which is just after the war has ended. The events going on in Cuba at that time are not mentioned in the novel.

Occupation:

Assistant and apprentice of an aged, experienced fisherman. Living in a fishing village where most people are fishermen, Manolin obviously has no choice and accepts the fact that he was born to be a fisherman. He believes that Santiago is the best fisherman in the village, which turns out to be true in the end. At first, he liked Santiago because he was the person who had taught him how to fish. By the end of the novel, Manolin understands the fact that he has much to learn from the old man.

Relatives:

·         Father- Manolin obeys his father although he does not want to.

·         Mother- A typical person living in a Cuban fishing village.

·         Santiago- Readers of the novel will comprehend the value and greatness of the old man just by knowing the care and devotion of Manolin.

Role in the story:

He is only present in the beginning and the end of the novel. He did say that he would try to get his new fisherman’s group with a blind man as leader far out so that they could assist Santiago. They did not go anywhere near Santiago’s skiff, which explains why Manolin does not appear in the middle section of the novel. The old man repeated many times to himself that he wanted the boy to be next to him to see and assist. Manolin will replace Santiago as a fisherman in the future.

Marlin (The Giant Fish)

The marlin of this novel measures eighteen feet  (approximately 5.4864 metres)  from nose to tail. It is two feet longer than Santiago’s skiff. The fisherman who was measuring the marlin near the end of the novel was using a length of line. Therefore the exact length is unclear. Unfortunately the weight of the fish could not be found because sharks had already taken all of the meat from the body. It is heavier than any fish that Santiago had ever caught or heard of, so it must be over a thousand pounds  (454kg).It may have weighed between 700kg and 800kg. The spine and the tail of the marlin is all that is left of the fish after the meat of the head is given to a kind fisherman. No one in the village wanted the skeleton of the longest marlin of the Gulf Stream. It became garbage and was washed out with the tide. The bill of the marlin was given to Manolin because he wanted it.

The marlin is most likely to be a male, due to the way it took the bait, how it pulled the boat and the calmness of its actions. The colour of its head and back is dark purple and silver with light lavender coloured stripes on the sides of its body. The body colour of the fish changes to silver and the stripes change to pale violet after it is killed. The width of the stripes are over fifteen centimetres each. The eyes are huge and are probably accustomed to seeing things in the deep sea. The bill is as long as a baseball bat. The tail is a very pale lavender. Several grey sucking fish accompany the marlin to feed on what the marlin eats and disposes. They are all three feet long.

Compared to swordfishes, marlins have a sword with which they can fight with but are not aggressive. They have beautifully shaped spines and tails. Male marlins are also calmer than most males of other types of fish. The giant fish that Santiago caught was not any male marlin. It was a worthy opponent of Santiago. It was Santiago’s greatest feat. It was a fish with dignity, nobility, intelligence and endurance.

The giant marlin lives far out in the Gulf Stream away from the blue hills and the green of the shore. Since it is huge, it normally stays at over one hundred fathoms deep unless it wants to fill its gills and sacs with air. When it wants to have a deep breath, it emerges from the surface and enters it again. There are many types of weeds on the surface of the water where sunlight is abundant. All sorts of fish congregate away from the shore. Dolphins swim in packs. Turtles eat bubble-shaped poisonous fish.

Marlins are fast swimmers and can reach speeds of around 80 km/h. They eat small to medium sized fish and certain types of squid which vary between different species and environment. Atlantic blue marlins and black marlins are all capable of growing to over five metres. They will sometimes swim in groups of two, however they swim alone most of the time.

The giant marlin is the fish that Santiago desperately wants to catch. If the marlin had obeyed the old man’s wishes, it would have given up and risen to the surface, where it would have been killed. Santiago would not have respected it or felt bonded and connected to it. The marlin’s great size was due to its age. If the marlin was not the largest that had ever been caught, Santiago would not have been able to gain the attention of the village fishermen. The marlin proved to Manolin that Santiago was the greatest fisherman in the village, which enabled him to gather the courage to disobey his parents. Santiago finds himself lucky to have been able to face this marlin. A fisherman’s life would not be so interesting if everything was easy and there were no obstacles. The challenge and the victory that is experienced during the process of fishing is what a fisherman finds most interesting and enjoyable. The old man is able to fight aggressive and terrifying sharks with limited resources for the last time in his life. He would not have fought them if it was not for saving the marlin. Even a powerful young man would not have been able to fight the sharks like Santiago did.