Hemingway utilizes a great variety of images, symbols, and archetypal patterns which makes the novel a rich one and allows many interpretations. The most obvious pattern in the structure of the novel is that of the alternation of dream-memory and actual experience. This is also the device, as any reader of Hemingway may notice, that is employed in such a story as “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”. This device is generally an attempt to clarify man's present conditions by contrasting the past with the present. The most recurrent image in the dream of Santiago is that of lions. Whenever he dreams, they almost always appear. Another important image is that of DiMaggio. It does not live in his memories and dreams as the lions do, but it is fully alive in his consciousness. The significance of the image of the “bone spur”. The classic analogy of the image is fairly obvious, the tradition of which, I believe, underlines the theme of the novel in many ways. It reminds us, for instance, of Odysseus scar, Achilles wound, or of one of the anagnorisis scenes in Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannus.
Santiago, exploitation, gulf stream, snows of Kilimanjaro, discriminating, organizing, anagnorisis scenes, Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus-exhilaration, predicament, motivation, deterministic, transcendental, nevertheless, consciousness, fisherman, Santiago, motivation-multi-layeredness, Manolin
