As the old man is working the lines, his hand cramps up, clamping uselessly shut like “claw of an eagle” (63).  This image represents the man’s impotence.  It is the betrayal of his body.                                                                         Once Hemingway sufficiently depicts the old man’s inadequacies and their subsequent solutions, he offers him the opportunity to regain his lost masculinity.  Hemingway separates the man’s quest from the average day out fishing by describing the setting in absolute, glorified terms.  The man rises earlier than everyone else in the month when “the great fish come”(18) to set out on his fishing expedition, where he will choose “to find him [the marlin] beyond all people.  Beyond all people in the world” (50).