Topic: In The Old Man and the Sea, Santiago repeatedly identifies the marlin as a “brother.” What is the significance of this identification of the marlin? How does it connect to the way in which Santiago’s and the marlin’s roles at some points seem to become blurred? Most importantly, how does it connect to the larger themes of the novel?
***The important idea in this topic is ecocentrism (a belief that ecosystems and their interests should be valued intrinsically and placed before human interest). Our class focuses on how nature depicted in the work. I also uploaded a file about the ecocentrism (Wilderness by Leopold) for your reference. Also note that I’m a non-native speaker so please write that is easy to understand it.

Book link: https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/hemingwaye-oldmanandthesea/hemingwaye-oldmanandthesea-00-h.html

Please read carefully for the additional instructions.
Additional Stipulations:
 Use the present tense when you are analyzing a literary text.
 Begin your essay with a title that clearly indicates the essay’s subject matter, including the title of the book you will be discussing (e.g. Wilderness and Hunting in Leopold’s Sand County Almanac).
 This essay, like any academic essay, should contain a strong one-sentence thesis statement at or very near the end of the opening paragraph. Each supporting paragraph should begin with a topic sentence that makes a claim about the text and then proceed to give evidence for that claim and to discuss that evidence.
 The thesis statement and topic sentences must make claims about the text (e.g. “In Leopold’s essay, the wilderness is a stage on which men use traditional skills to prove themselves,” NOT just “The wilderness is a stage on which men use traditional skills to prove themselves”).
 Your evidence should include a good balance of direct quotation from the text and paraphrase. Remember to integrate direct quotations in the way you were taught in class (and in MLA style) and to include a works cited list.
 Each body paragraph must contain multiple pieces of evidence. For the essay to achieve a passing grade, at least one of those pieces of evidence in each body paragraph must be quoted directly. Please do not rely on previously chosen online lists of quotations from famous works. Students who do this miss the most important pieces of evidence, fail to make original arguments, and generally fail to demonstrate deep enough knowledge of the text that they are discussing
 Avoid plot summary altogether, even in your introduction. Focus on argument and analysis.
 No reading of secondary material is required or expected. This is not a research paper.
 Do not rely on ready-made online analyses of the book for your ideas. The best essays result from making your
own observations and developing your own opinions.
 If you do use secondary sources, including any of the many freely available sources on the internet, please cite
your sources fully in both in-text citations and the works cited list. Failure to do so is plagiarism, even if you are
only drawing on the ideas, not the actual words, of the sources you have consulted. See the MLA Style
Guidelines handout for detailed information on how to give proper credit to your sources.
 If you really want to find good quality secondary sources on literary texts, remember that the best place to
search in the MLA International Bibliography (available under Databases on the library website).
 Your essay should be formatted in MLA style (this includes both the layout of the paper as a whole as well as the
format of the in-text citations and works cited list). Good online resources for MLA style may be found by
searching for “OWL Purdue MLA format” on the internet.