Motifs - The Old Man and The Sea

So I was thinking of some more topics that I could blog about and I was beginning to run out of ideas.  So I am not going to lie I looked at other people's blogs to get some ideas.  I found a topic that I had not done and began wondering what is it?  I saw the topic that is called a motif.  What is a motif?  So I looked it up and found that a motif is a recurring subject, theme, idea, etc., especially in a literary, artistic, or musical work.
So I thought that I would do this blog on motifs.
The first motif that came to my mind was the reoccuring dream of lions on the beach, that Santiago dreamt three times.  "He was asleep in a short time and he dreamed of Africa when he was a boy and the long golden beaches and the white beaches, so white they hurt your eyes, and the high capes and the great brown mountains." (Hemingway, 24).  This is when he dreamed of the lions in the beginning of the book, he also dreams of them when he is sleeping while on the boat and at the very end of the book.  "Up the road, in his shack, the old man was sleeping again.  He was still sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him.  The Old man was dreaming about the lions." (Hemingway, 127).  The last sentence of the book was about the lions.  It leaves a lasting image about the lions playing on the beach.  The other motif that I came upon was life from death.  The one situation that comes up in my mind right away is part in the book where Santiago kills the marlin.  This is associated with life from death because when the marlin was killed, Santiago came alive with the kill and gave him a resurgence of life, when he was beginning to feel down about himself.

"Motif | Define Motif at Dictionary.com." Dictionary.com | Find the Meanings and Definitions of Words at Dictionary.com. Web. 27 July 2011. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/motif.

 

Bibliography

Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. New York: Scribner, 1996. Print.