He was asleep in a short time and he dreamed of Africa when he was a boy and the long golden beaches and the white beaches, so white they hurt your eyes, and the high capes and the great brown mountains. He lived along that coast now every night and in his dreams he heard the surf roar and saw the native boats come riding through it. He smelled the tar and oakum of the deck as he slept and he smelled the smell of Africa that the land breeze brought at morning.
Note how the old man’s dreams emphasize his loneliness and isolation: he dreams of sights, sounds, smells but not of people.
“I told the boy I was a strange old man,” he said. “Now is when I must prove it.”
The thousand times that he had proved it meant nothing. Now he was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it.
I wish he’d sleep and I could sleep and dream about the lions, he thought. Why are the lions the main thing that is left?
Tired and exhausted, Santiago is in dire need of help, but understands that there will be none. So he just wishes to sleep a little and see his favorite lions – a common symbol of pride which he values so much. Note the sentence about the need to prove himself worthy again; Santiago is humble enough to acknowledge that his previous deeds are insignificant now.
For an hour the old man had been seeing black spots before his eyes and the sweat salted his eyes and salted the cut over his eye and on his forehead. He was not afraid of the black spots. They were normal at the tension that he was pulling on the line. Twice, though, he had felt faint and dizzy and that had worried him.
Santiago is strong and durable even without taking his age into account, but at the same time, he is wary enough to note that something is wrong and this something can lead to his defeat and even death; it is a simple but beneficial skill for those who face a challenging situation alone.
“They beat me, Manolin,” he said. “They truly beat me.”
“He didn’t beat you. Not the fish.”
Here Manolin’s words are echoing the opinion of the author himself: Santiago won his greatest victory and sharks had taken only its material evidence.
“But man is not made for defeat,” he said. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
These two short sentences are the essence of the old man’s philosophy.