Ernest Hemingway’s novel, The Old man and the Sea provides one with an insight on man’s continued role in maintaining a balanced ecosystem. For a long time, we have often looked at one’s final achievement to qualify them as either successful or not, without looking at their journey. While being successful is the ultimate target, different people follow different paths to achieve the target. Some people have it the easy way while others have to toil their way up. Does the end really justify the means or is being successful enough regardless of the journey? Success is also to a great extent relative and defined differently from one person to the other. What makes a fisherman successful besides catching fish? What makes a student successful besides passing an exam? This book reveals the struggles Santiago goes through in his bid to make a living as a fisherman in his old age. Through his relentless and stoic nature, the novel shows the efforts a man must make to be successful in life but at the same time, putting into consideration the role we have to play to maintain a balanced ecosystem.
This book reveals the relationship that exists between Santiago (the old fisherman) and Marlin (the fish). It starts as a case of the hunter and the hunted but eventually progresses to something else. Unexpectedly, Santiago treats Marlin with a lot of respect and humanity although he solely depended on fishing as his primary source of income. Santiago refers to Marlin the fish as his ‘brother’ even though he is not a human being. This was due to the unfortunate experiences he has faced in his fishing escapades.
Santiago has gone several days without catching any fish while the other fishermen were lucky enough to get fish. He experiences the worst of dry spells in his fishing career, otherwise “salao,” to the extent of being marked as unlucky and unsuccessful and even having his fishing partner, Manolin alienating him. The challenges that the fisherman has faced makes him change his mind on killing Marlin. This can be attributed to the fact that he has really grown fond of the fish, a bond that has been created due to their suffering (Hemingway, 2012).
The central theme in this novel is the conventional understanding of success by many people and the various iterations possible in defining the term. While success has for a long time been the accepted form of evaluating a person’s value, the journey one has taken to get there, and the various decisions they had to make along the way is not reflected in the final achievement. Many a time, especially in times of hopelessness and dire distress, we often forget about the value the ecosystem and everyone else can bring and end up doing anything to ensure we elevate ourselves from our poor conditions. The state of hopelessness has made the fisherman to express a lot of ecocentrism towards the animal. He even at some point questions whether Marlin should be eaten. He kills sharks in an effort to safeguard the fish he had caught, marlin but eventually resigns to let the sharks eat him even though that was his only catch in a long time. Santiago finds a friend to rely on after spending several days of loneliness. He then treats the fish with a lot of respect and humanity despite the fact that he has hunted it down to kill and sell it. In conclusion, success is something to be desired. There are a few lessons to be learned from this story with regards to man’s effort in succeeding such as; not giving up, we should not depend on luck but instead, make it our motivation. However, our effort to succeed should put into consideration the existence of other people. This emphasizes on leaving a legacy through maintaining integrity.
The Wilderness
Thesis
According to Leopold's essay, the wilderness is a stage that is attributed to the presence of modern civilization. He refers to the wilderness in a manner that makes it able to provide life to the humans and thus, to make them responsible for the developments that the humans have achieved and can now boast of. He looks at the changes that the wilderness has gone through as a result of humans’ modernization. This stage is of significant influence on the improvements that have been realized either technically or socially. The excerpt looks at the invasion of the wilderness through human activities all across the world whether well intended, unintended or maliciously.
The wilderness like any other raw material, can only be reduced but not regrown. With the growing population the world over, the humans have encroached on the wilderness land for settlement schemes, entertainment parks among others. For instance, coastlines are among the highest reducing stretches of the wilderness with most parts of the coastlines being used to set up cottages, holiday hotels on both oceans and lakes. However, in so doing, it is essential to understand that it is actually okay to develop parts of the wilderness and put them into better usage. Dry and abandoned pieces of land and sand deserts, for instance, we would instead build an industry in such an area than just leaving them idle; for what purpose would be a land without vegetation?
As a result of various advantages that man is gaining from the wilderness, the text implores man to rethink their approach to nature to a more humane one. The wilderness provides an array of advantages to the humans. Starting from a good environment that gives the world its beautification, food, clean air, raw material for industrial productions among others. This, therefore, calls for its protection by man hence leading to the existence of ecocentrism. Secondly, the wilderness is also critical in providing a home for wildlife. Man on the other hand gains directly from the animals that are reserved in the wilderness Leopold (2009).
Moreover, the wilderness continues to provide diverse benefits such as food, shelter which can be used by man to advance even more. Conversely, have utilized their inborn skills to harness the process of civilization by using the freely available resources from the wilderness. However, ecocentrism has not been fully achieved. Humans a times have come up with ideas of personalizing the freely existing nature and interfering with the entire habitat in this quest. Continued disruption of the ecosystem is definitely going to lead to detrimental effects. Infertile lands for instance would translate to low production of food which would not only impact our overall health but also lifestyles.
In conclusion, the humans need to come up with ways of protecting the wilderness and the ecosystem at large. Areas that are entirely reserved to support the life of the wildlife need to be protected from any interference in order to promote coexistence and natural balance. In addition, such areas should be implemented from one state to the other. This would, however, work on the areas that have not yet been interfered with. Therefore, how do we then deal with the already invaded areas? Man should come up with ways of restoring the ecosystem. What would eventually happen in a situation whereby only gazelles exist in an enclosed area? The gazelles’ population would definitely outgrow the area and thus lead to overbrowsing of the vegetation. Predator control would work in this case whereby hunters are brought in to reduce the gazelle population. Alternatively, the overpopulation could be transferred to another region. Whatever method is employed, it should be dependent on its effectiveness. Recent research on restoration of land fertility questioned the use of fertilizers and crop rotation. While the two options have always worked, the land’s fertility can never go back to its original state which leads to the question, what else can be done? Researchers think that the land’s original flora may be the answer. In that research, the researchers discovered that tobacco crops depend on ragweed preconditioning on the soil’s fertility to attain optimal growth. All the cases trickle down to the importance of preserving and restoring the ecosystem balance. After all, a balanced ecosystem goes a long way in serving not only the wildlife but also the humans through the provision of resources.
Works Cited
Burhans, Clinton S. "The Old Man and the Sea: Hemingway's Tragic Vision of Man." American Literature, vol. 31, no. 4, 2012, p. 446.
Visser, Wayne, and Aldo Leopold. "A Sand County Almanac." The Top 50 Sustainability Books, vol. 3, no. 2, 2009, pp. 10-13.
