Skip to main content

What is Santiago's role as fisherman? What is the relationship between Santiago and Manolin?

The Old Man and the Sea is set in Cuba in the mid-twentieth century. Santiago is a poor and elderly fisherman. He is independent, owning his own boat and selling his catch to earn money, rather than working for a big company. Although is is very skilled and careful, and has earned respect for that, he has gone for 84 days without a catch and is considered unlucky as a fisherman, although the villagers still care for and respect him to a degree.


Manolin is a young boy who was once apprenticed to Santiago. Because Santiago has not caught fish for so long, his parents have apprenticed him to a luckier fisherman, but Manolin still respects and loves his mentor and brings him food. Santiago loves Manolin almost as he would a son and still mentors the boy even though the boy is no longer his apprentice. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.
Post a Comment
Read more