Discussing The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway has this effect on readers! When my students arrived, they all seemed unexcited about the "boring" book we had just finished... and yet, one hour later, they had not only discovered a lot of interesting things about the book and the author, they were planning excitedly about writing essays! On their own accord!

I was very pleased with the Kolbe set of discussion questions/ themes for this selection: it may have been the best set yet, at least for our class discussion. Of course I had to bring up some others. I told them about a young friend in Nebraska and a personal essay she wrote once, all about all of two minutes of a track meet in which she ran: how she described her breathing, her sweat, her heart pumping, the pain on her feet, her way of finding more energy, what went through her mind.

We talked about how Hemingway had obviously lived all through what he recounts in the book, or he could have never taken us there with him.

Interestingly, on NPR yesterday afternoon there was a long story on the character Ahab in Moby Dick and how that novel takes the readers to the world of whale hunting: the journalist acted as if he was afloat with Ishmael & crew as he narrated his piece on the development and distorting of Ahab in film through the decades.

I had each student tell in turn what they would write about if they wrote something similar to The Old Man and the Sea--something they are passionate about, something they have experienced and are very familiar with. And the scenarios came: wearing pointe shows for the first time, monarch-hunting, playing golf, driving for the first time. I may not get all of those promised essays next week, but I know my students understood and took to heart yesterday a huge concept of what makes a good writer.