Being true

Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea has a number of lessons in it.  It's the story about a fisherman who always dreamed of catching "the big one."  One day, late in his life, he went far into the sea and finally caught the fish of his dreams.  He hooked the fish to his boat and began his long trip back to shore.

This point in the story is where all the lessons begin.  As the man returns, the fish begins to be eaten by other larger predators in the sea.  By the time the fisherman reaches shore, he is only dragging the skeleton of the big fish of his dreams.

The most obvious theme of the book is that dreams achieved are not all they are cracked up to be.  But a number of other lessons exist.  One could be about the loss of idealism as a person matures from his/her teens to late life.  Another could be about the myth of catching the big one.  Even if you think that you have, life mitigates and diminishes the experience until you know your dream wasn't worth it or that your dream didn't ever really exist in the form you thought it did.

Other details in the story that aren't included here also bear on some of the lessons learned from the story, but the overall lessons are the most important ones.  One interpretation of the events lends itself to echoing the Socratic wisdom of "being true to yourself."  The old man couldn't let the fish go even though he knew the fish was being eaten.  He had to be true to himself (his dream represents who the man really is).  People should always be true to themselves or they can't help but be themselves.

None of the lessons really deal with happiness or happy endings.  To use this last lesson above, I suppose life is really a series of events that tell us who we are.  At every stage, our characteristics (our true colors) always show through.  But I wonder, also, what it says about us if we try to hide our true feelings.  I guess, sooner or later, the fish gets eaten.