Guest Post: Hemingway’s Dilemma by Scott Kauffman

Wondering if it had improved any with age in the forty-five years since I garnered my gentleman’s “C” on a book report from an English teacher likely being generous, I again cracked open The Old Man and the Sea. While my first reading of a fish story about the one that got away bored me to tears, or maybe only to Bonanza that evening, my second left me unsettled for Old Man I see now is Hemingway’s brooding meditation on approaching death.

Like Santiago who catches the biggest fish of his life only to lose it to sharks and in that moment knows his best days as a fisherman are forever behind him, so too Hemingway saw his best days as a writer slipping fast as fish line through his fingers. Old Man proved to be his last novel, and he wrote little thereafter that did not require heavy editing. In its pages he foreshadows his own suicide ten years later on an Idaho mountaintop where, ever the showoff, he unloaded both shotgun barrels into the back of his mouth. A not surprising death for a man whose is father took his own life as did two siblings and at least one grandchild. A death foreshadowed even earlier in The Sun Also Rises, set almost 30 years to the day before his suicide, and later in For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Hemingway leaves us with the question of how should one meet death?  Santiago’s answer is by struggling on come what may: A man, he insists over and over, can be destroyed but should never allow himself to be defeated. Old Santiago fought the good fight until he had nothing but a skeleton of a great fish left to defend and sailed home to die dreaming of the lions he once saw in his youth as they played on a beach in Africa.

So what to make of Hemingway in the end giving in to the despair of defeat? His failing in the fight he wanted most to make, feared his whole life he would not make, and in the end did not. Perhaps this final tragedy, of not going down with both fists swinging, is a fate awaiting us all unless we have lived without ideals, which, Hemingway says, would for us be the greater tragedy. Hemingway’s Dilemma tells us that life gives us a choice between two tragedies: Living a life absent of ideals or living one with ideals but in the end failing to live up to them.

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Review by Shwetha H S

Robinson Crusoe is a story of a shipwrecked man, having the same name as the title of the book, stranded alone on a far away island. This review is of an unabridged version, so it is obvious that you need a lot of patience and time to read this. This almost 300 years old story can find similarities with Castaway and Wall-E. To start with, the last surviving son of a German-English couple, Robinson Crusoe runs away from his home in search of an adventurous life. Unlike now, when we get numerous options for adventure, the only adventurous life in those times was of a sailor’s. So, this young man goes away with his friend on a voyage where the friend’s father is the captain of the ship. This voyage meets an unfortunate end due to a sea storm. Rejecting everyone’s advice to go back to his parents, Robinson embarks on another voyage, but this turns out to be even more horrible than the previous one as the pirates of Sallee capture the ship he is on and he is taken as a slave of one of the pirates. He gets treated well there though he is a slave. He escapes from there on a boat with the help of a boy named Xury, and gets picked by a ship heading towards Africa and then to Brazil. Due to a friend he finds in the captain of the ship, good business and favourable conditions, Robinson becomes one of the best planters in Brazil and also buys an African slave for himself. His neighbouring planters ask him to get slaves for themselves too for their plantations. And thus, this man who thinks himself a hero, leaves his well settled life in Brazil to board a ship to Africa and bring back slaves. He thereafter loses himself to life and destiny on the island where he gets stranded.

Had he been successful in his voyages, maybe he would have appeared to be brave. He wasn’t successful, so he appears to be stupid in the beginning. But he survives and lives for twenty eight years on the island, a total of 35-36 years away from home. There is an ambiguity about this duration, so the least we can do is acknowledge his ability to think on his feet. More than feeling bad for him, I feel bad for the kid that follows him after he kills and takes away the mother goat. He runs his errands making the island his home and cries for not praying enough to God. He also cribs about having no company, but kills and drives away cat and kittens when they pester him.

It is understood that Robinson Crusoe was written to make people understand not to take things for granted. Back home, he had everything he didn’t even ask for, but stranded on the island he slogs for everything. He even grows his own food and makes fire. He reflects upon his situation and is initially thankful for not being dead, and later thankful for having a life instead of being dead like his shipmates. He calls upon god and thanks him enough every day for keeping him alive despite neglecting his father’s compassion. He longs for a known land and plans to go out of this island, but is scared to leave as he might again get caught by savages and beasts or get lost again. He eventually makes a canoe to try and sail. In a bid to have someone to talk to, he trains a parrot to talk and names it Poll. He later finds cannibals visiting his island rarely. From a shipwreck, he also finds a dog to replace all his previous pets and also finds wealth, liquor, clothes, shoes and gun powder. He toils away his time fruitfully until he returns to England. How does he return? What does he do after returning? What happens to the island in his absence? To find answers to these questions, read Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.

It is shown during the sale of faithful Xury how religion is forced upon people who actually don’t need it.

During Crusoe’s stranded duration on the island, he keeps praying god to help him get back to the mainland. Years pass during which he has his full-fledged plantations, tame goats and everything he needs that he made on his own from the scratch. Suddenly one day, he finds a footprint along with some bones and skulls on the other side of the island and is scared that there might be cannibals. But more than cannibals, he is petrified of other mainland people finding him and his livestock, and looting him. This is an epic irony. Crusoe’s era was of English plundering other nations. Here, an Englishman is worried of others plundering him.

On one occasion, Crusoe saves a cannibal from others and makes him his slave. Why not consider making him his friend? Anyway, he names the cannibal Friday because he saves him on a Friday. This reminds me of how I named my pet squirrel Sunday Morning because I found and rescued it on a Sunday morning.

Towards the last quarter of his stay on this island, Crusoe finds another shipwreck and soon after a boy’s dead body floats to the shore. Seeing it, he calls him naked saying “He had no clothes but a seaman’s waistcoat, a pair of open kneed-linen drawers and a blue linen shirt.” My question is, if this boy is considered naked, then what is the state of being clothed? I feel I am naked now as I write this review though I am decently clothed and seated at my table. Maybe Crusoe had gone mad by then.

The cannibal’s language is pleasant to pronounce and listen. Oroonoko is a river, Benamuckee is god and Oowokakee is an old priest.

There is good discussion between Friday and Crusoe about why god, who is the most powerful and the maker, doesn’t destroy the Devil. This is an incident supposed to be a preaching session by Crusoe to Friday, but turns into a discussion and leaves Crusoe perplexed and dumbfounded.

As mentioned earlier, this is a review of an unabridged version. This book is meant for leisure read and not for quick read. Pick unabridged version only if you are brave enough. Else, go for abridged version and have a good time.