If you’ve ever read “The Old Man and The Sea” then you should definitely know about Ernest Hemingway. His book made me ever so curious, especially when the old man went out alone to fish and battled for long, hard and sweaty days with a giant, purple marlin in the Gulf Stream near Cuba.
Then there is Armstrong Sperry who is famous for his novel “Call It Courage”, in which a likewise male (but much, much younger) human figure named Mafatu also sailed out only with his dog, Uri into the ocean to fight and overcome his fear of the ocean. This fascinating story happened near New Zealand in the Pacific Ocean.
Mafatu later
landed on an unknown island and then met the evil eaters-of-men, these didn’t
happen to the old man though. While he was trying to survive alone with his dog
on the island Mafatu killed a wild boar, a shark and a giant octopus, and when
he finally returned home he was no longer The Boy Who Was Afraid.
The old man
wasn’t so lucky. He battled of almost 16 sharks that left him with nothing but
giant marlin skeleton. Hmmm, I wonder if he could feed those bones to his dog,
if he had one.
I have found
out that the old man and the boy were both very brave and they gave me the
feeling that giving up is never their plan and my brain will see in awe that it
is certain that any of these two can conquer any challenge and I am dumbfounded
by their courage and resistance, mostly because of the boy. If I were stuck in
a very hard challenge I would put forth and deal with it!
While I was
working on this essay, Mom happen to be reading a book called “Grit The Power
of Passion and Perseverance” by Angela Duckworth. When Mom told me what this
book is about, I thought the most common and important characteristic of the
old man and Mafatu is after all, grit.
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