Patched up heart

"His shirt had been patched so many times that it was like the sail and the patches were faded to many different shades by the sun."

Hemingway in this quote could be talking about how his heart and soul is starting to be very faint and is fading away. We have learned that Hemingway had been in a couple relationships and marriages, due to the many relationships it could have affected him to the point where he feels like his heart has been "patched" up after breakups and/or divorces. His soul could be affect being that he is finding it faint to be able to continue on which might have been leading towards his suicide.

And this was all just something that for some reason stood out to me.

I do agree.

The quote remind me of a previous quote: "the sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of defeat." I think the quote "His shirt had been patched so many times that it was like the sail and the patches were faded to many different shades by the sun" was suppose to be a parallel to the previous.

I noticed the repetition of the word "patches." (might be a recurring theme) I do agree that it might be refering to the breakup and/or divorces that Hemingway experienced. I think it could also be Hemingway trying to patch up the feelings of these 'scars' or him trying to patch up his writing career.

Overall, these quotes made me feel sorry, sorry that such an old man still had to set out to sea inorder to survive, sorry that there wasn't a person to take care of him and do the fishing for him.

Yes I totally agree. I hadn't thought about it in the sense of him talking about his writing but I can see how that can also relate and even more so being that this was one of his last pieces of writing. I had also been thinking of the electroshock therapy he had been having and one of the main side effects was memory lost. I could also mean he was struggling to piece together certain memories and events in which he had to "patch up".