The old Man and the Sea The Dreams

Throughout the novel the Old Man has dreams. Not just any dreams, but a dream filled with lions. To top it off, it is a special dream that he has every night.In the novel he has this dream a total of three times. "He no longer dreamed of storms, nor women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor his. He only dreamed of places now and of lions on the beach." (Hemingway 25) "After that he began to dream of the long yellow beach and he saw the first of the lions come down onto wife it in the early dark and then the other lions came and he rested his chin on the wood of the bows where the ship lay anchored with the evening off shore breeze and he waited to see if there would be more lions and he was happy." (Hemingway 81) "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) So before I go on to elaborate on the dreams and what they symbolize, I want to point out a couple things in these quotes. Firstly, why was the boy staring at the old man as he slept, this only further proves my obsession theory that I brought up in another entry. It isn't natural for a boy to be so obsessed with an elderly man. Secondly since when did the old man have a wife, and why is she only mentioned once in the entire novel. This seems like important information. That is all, back to the dreams. These dreams symbolize that the old man is happy in life. He doesn't have a care in the world, as long as he can fish and dream about lions he will be content with life.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the sea. New York: Scribner, 2003. Print.