Preservance/Resistance to Defeat

Despite 84 days without fish, the old man continues. He even sailed further into the ocean in hopes of catching bigger fish. The struggles with poverty, the constant criticism from other fishermen, or whenever the situation gets particularly difficult, the old man continuously comes up with tactics to resistance the threat of defeat. As the story goes through the old man's struggle to survive and through his struggles, I feel that Hemingway wants the reader to know that the inevitability of death, for example, does not define him. The old man chose to go deep sea fishing because the more difficult the struggle, the more worthy the opponent/fish. In some way, Hemingway wanted to face something that may have been bigger than he chew in order to prove himself.