Quote from TOM, p. 29

"He always thought of the sea as 'la mar' which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman. Some of the younger fishermen,those who used buoys as floats for their lines and motorboats, bought when the shark livers had brought much money, spoke of her as 'el mar' which is masculine. They spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or witheld great favours,and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman,"

Skiffs and boats and Motorboats

On pages 9, 10, 12, 13 15, 22, 26, 27, 28, and 31, in the novel, skiffs and sailing boats are mentioned 18 times, in reference to the simple, old-fashioned way of going fishing. Skiff and boat are used interchangeably. There is one occurrence of motorboat on page 29. The old man considers the younger fishermen who use motorboats too competitive.

The Environmental Group - social criticism and fishing in modern times

Collocation is "the tendency of certain words in spoken and written texts to appear in the vicinity of certain other words". Using Marcia Pally's guidelines for "data-driven, corpus-based grammar in a sustained text" in identifying the occurrences of fishing skiffs and modern fishing boats, it is clear that all language is based on its use in context, and that it is possible to learn the English language thoroughly through analysis of text in this way. Rather than simply memoriziing isolated vocabulary words, reading and internalizing the details of grammar in this way reinforces concepts of meaning and enriches language comprehension and linguistic awareness.

Reading The Old Man and the Sea

It was such an experience reading this book, with Santiago and all of his courage, facing the ocean and having to go for so many days without human contact. The odds were set against him with only a small wooden skiff, a harpoon, some rope, the patched-up sail on its wooden mast. Fishing has changed a lot since those days. Now it is the fish who are outdone by overfishing.

Environmental Group - TOM

Hi Amy, Nancy R. and Betzy,
This is a place for our group to plan and discuss the questions we have been given about the old man and the sea.
Please let me know if this is OK.
Thanks,
Nancy T.