t he must not be afraid to die. "Death is no the ultimate fear: the Hemingway hero knows how to confront death. What he truly fears is nada (the Spanish word for nothing)-existence in a state of nonbeing" (Contemporary Authors, 34:194).
             Most of Hemingway heroes are very masculine, strong men in places of action, a battlefield, a bullfighting ring, or the wilds of Africa. He sets these scenes to test their manhood and discipline under pressure. "The man who never encounters death, who never faces any danger at all, this man has not yet been tested; we don't know whether he will withstand the pressure, whether he will prove to be a true Hemingway man" (Baker, 157).
             In The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway's hero is an old Cuban fisherman named Santiago ("Spanish for St. James, the fisherman, apostle and martyr") (Lewis, 200). Unlike Hemingway's other heroes, Santiago is very old and weak. Santiago faces death when he risks his life by going too far out to sea to catch a big fish.
             "He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish" (Hemin
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