How Does Santiago Show Endurance

Every single person endures, it’s how much you can endure until you break that makes people’s endurance different and unique. Weather you’re mentally enduring talking politics with your opinionated family on Thanksgiving or you’re enduring the physical pain of a gunshot wound, you continue to endure the pain and see the day through. Endurance is the ability or strength to continue, especially despite fatigue, stress, or other adverse conditions. In Ernest Hemingway’s book, The Old Man and the Sea, an old man named Santiago does just that. Santiago goes through many grueling challenges that make him endure physically and mentally. He not only endures the pressure and stress of catching and bringing the fish back to shore, but does so with grace. Santiago endures until the end, and he never gives up. Hemingway made Santiago the person he himself strived to be. It is Santiago’s perseverance, will to endure and grace under pressure that makes Santiago Hemingway’s hero.

Endurance is critical; without endurance the smallest thing would destroy us mentally and/or physically. Santiago uses endurance constantly, from staying happy and dignified when being made fun of, to winning an arm wrestling match
Giving up is effortless, it’s easy to give up, but almost impossible to keep going. Santiago did just this, he was given an almost incompatible task but pursued to persevere and continue his journey even though he was under a ton of pressure. All while trying to catch a Marlin bigger than his boat, going through physical and mental pain, Santiago managed to catch a whole other fish, gut, and eat it. This proves that Santiago has Grace under pressure. If he would have let the stress consume him, he would have failed on his journey but he didn’t. He changed stress into grace and strength and didn’t let the pressure of his journey destroy him. “But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not