"Defeat" Quotes

In the novel The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, the protagonist and main character, Santiago, faces a lot of defeat in a relatively short ammout of time. First, he has not caught a fish for eighty four days, as he states as the novel begins. Then, after wrestling with a giant marlin and finally being able to catch and kill it, the old man faces an even bigger defeat as sharks eat all the meat off of the marlin before he can get the fish back home. There is a great deal of defeat in the novel, and there are also a lot of quotes that go along with the theme:

"But a man is not made for defeat." He said. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated." -Day Four

The old man is not really clear if he is eve truly defeated. For all the reader knows, he can just be destroyed. But either one sounds not very pleasant, and it is true that the old man has been shut down while trying to do several things.

"Now they have beaten me, he thought. I am too old to club the sharks to death. But I will try it as long as I have the oars and the short club and the tiller." -Day Four

This is the point when the old man is basically admitting defeat, even though he does not say it straight out. The old man does not want to acknowledge that he has been defeated, at least not at that point when he is still battling with the sharks even though he knows he probably will not be able to fight them off.

"I know how to care for them. In the night I spat something strange and felt something in my chest was broken." -Day Five

Even though the old man will probably not admit complete defeat, he cannot deny that he is physically defeated, at least. His body was too old to do what he did while out at sea fighting the marlin and the sharks, so his body is going to have to pay for it and suffer.