【正文】 not likely to win in this cruel battle, but he cares little about it. What he really cares in the fight is that he continues to fight and struggle. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” 14 When he returns with the skeleton of Marlin, he has proved his worth both to himself and his fellow fishermen. He loses but performs like a champion. It helps him earn the deeper respect of people. C. Santiago’s Optimism and Hopefulness 1. Santiago’s Attitude Towards His Fate In the beginning paragraph, Santiago has gone eightyfour days without catching a single fish. He is really in bad luck。 it is not for that he does not catch any fish, but for he has continued to ply the waters for eightyfour days. Though he used to be a very skillful and successful fisherman, now he is a loser. This time he has two roads: to give up fishing or to keep on trying. He has to choose one from them. Under such situation people usually think that he should choose giving up fishing because of his bad luck. But which one does he choose actually? Santiago refuses to be discouraged. To him the first fruitless eightyfour days means nothing, and his optimism and hopefulness have never gone. In his mind he never abandons the chance of success. If he cannot go out into the sea, his life will bee meaningless. Still firm in trying for big success, he makes his resolution to struggle against his misfortune in order to be recognized by his fellow fisherman as a professional. Full of hope and confidence, he firmly believes in what he is doing now and what he will do, so he chooses the latter firmly and decides to go far out into the sea. When he faces the failure, he refuses to be rejected and bitter, instead he remains cheerful and confident. He struggles against defeat bravely and never gives up. These characters and spirit of him just reflect Hemingway?s philosophy of life: when faced with the misfortune and miserable fate, man should not be discouraged, instead, he should be optimistic and hopeful and struggle against them. “But,” he thought, “only I have no luck any more. But who knows? May be today every day is a new day.” 15 This sentence shows that Santiago is an optimistic man, he maybe luckless, but he is not pessimistic. He believes that everyday is a new start, and the new start will bring him better luck. Though his sail looks like the flag of permanent defeat, he does not accept it. So he makes up his mind to go far into the deeper sea and try his luck, being optimistic that he will catch a really large fish. Santiago was all hurt in some way, yet he was not defeated. However, there are some differences in the characterization of Santiago. He is active and chooses to be injured. Unlike the others he suffers only physical harm, not mental pain, and as a result retains his optimism until the end of the story. Santiago accepts his fate with great tranquility and his injuries he regards as insignificant occurrences. The threat of destruction is always there for Santiago to face, and it is because of this that the life attitude of Santiago towards his fate bees something pure and definite, his life being more meaningful as a result of destruction, and it is this obstacle, destruction that he has to overe. As one critic said, the world is always testing us, threatening us and presenting us with obstacles. The important thing is to persist when confronted with them, then we will succeed. Dream of the Lions on the Beach Most of the time, the lions appear to be mere cubs, playing like young cats in the dusk, and Santiago loves them as he loves Manolin. The cub lions are symbols of youthful possibility, a foreshadowing of great things to e. The image of them always makes the old man happy。 they are good pany just like Manolin, more often than not, the old man dreams of the lions and thinks of the boy almost simultaneously. Then, the lions appear in the old man?s dream: “He began to dream of the long yellow beach and he saw the first of the lions e down onto it in the early dusk and then other lions came， and he rested his chin on the wood of the bows where the ship lay anchored with the evening offshore breeze and he waited to see if there would be more lions and he was happy. ” 16 The adult lions suggest and signify great strength and courage. They provide Santiago with inspiration, a sense of nobility and vitality that encourage him to struggle for fulfilling his ambition. Whenever he dreams of the lions, he is happy and relaxes, for the lions seem to be in control. They can inspire him to be confident. And because the lions in his dream always appear out of their natural environment and on the beach, they also suggest there is a harmony in all of life. At the end of the story, the old man is again dreaming of the lions, up the road, in his shack. He was still sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him. The old man was dreaming about the lions. Santiago is undefeated just because he keeps on trying. His resolution and action help him to take whatever he wants. At the end of the story, the dream about lions not only shows he is truly a guy beyond normal man, b