"Fitzgerald's hero puts everything to a test of an overactive imagination, while Hemingway's hero puts it to the test of experience"
             The most notable Hemingway hero to put everything as a test to his knowledge and experience is Santiago from "The Old Man and The Sea." Santiago is a prime example of how Old age is a richness of experience and wisdom. Santiago, has fished his whole life and knows from experience almost everything there is to know about fishing. This gives him a sense of self superiority and much heroism, evidenced when he is sitting on the terrace and "fishermenn made fun of him", he was undisturbed by this and was "not angry"(11). At the beginning of the story, he has "gone eighty-four days ... without taking a fish"(9). Yet, He is still "cheerful and undefeated" because in the past he has gone "eighty-seven days without a fish and then caught big ones every day for three weeks". (10) Everything Santiago does in the story is almost ritualistic of his past experience. There is no experience that he enters into that he is not fully aware of the situation, even if it dangerous or risky. Santiago's over confidence in his experience is seen when he takes his boat "further out" then he is supposed to, testing his abilities. (30) Santiago uses his knowledge to find the great fish. When he sees the "man-of-war bird" "circling in the sky ahead of him" he knows that "he's got something."(33) He uses these birds to steer intuitively to where the fish are and he also conscientiously sets his "bait" and "lines"(34) to depths that he knows are conducive with catching larger fish. Once Santiago has hooked the large fish he knows very soon afterwards, that he is not in total control of the situation any longer, "His choice had been to stay in the deep dark water far out beyond...