d with the swordfish latched to the side of the boat. To him, this fish is the last proud, beautiful secret of life. However, the sharks are aware of his recent prize. They devour every remaining piece of the prize, despite every effort made by this unyielding fisherman. When he sails into Cubas harbor at night, nothing but the skeleton remains of the fish (Brenner 72). The story of The Old Man and the Sea is the truest and deepest portrayal ever achieved of Hemingway and his writings. It is the first victory signal he has sent, and it tells us everything we can know about Hemingway: No one has been further out to sea, no one has caught a bigger fish, and no one has brought less home with him.Besides life, death and fishing, there is bullfighting. Hemingway was always a passionate observer, until he turned the tables and tried his luck as an amateur bullfighter (Bloom 37). The accounts of his own efforts in the arena belong to the book wholly devoted to bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon. One of Hemingways main points he tried to deliver in this book is that bullfighting is not a sport, however it is a tragedy, where every minute detail is determined in advance. Accidents, deaths, exaggerated foolhardiness or visible fear and cowardice hold no place in the arena. It is predetermined incorrect for the bullfighter to die instead of the beast itself. Along with the bull and the matador there is a third party that enters onto the dusty stadium floor: Death. This Death is not a visible Death, not a theatrical Death, but the living, invisible Death, the majesty itself. However, Death decides to end the life of the animal, not the matador (Hemingway 91). Both in the hunting and fishing stories and in the bullfighting book, it is clearly evident that, as a rule, Hemingways sympathy is sometimes one-sided, wholly with the beast or with the man, however he most often identifies with both. This gives the whole an inner and distinctive ambigui...
