Choosing an essay topic for The Old Man and the Sea seems like it should be simple given how short the book is, but a poorly worded prompt can quietly sabotage an entire class's writing before a single student picks up a pencil. Vague prompts like "discuss the theme of perseverance" invite generic responses that could apply to almost any story about struggle.

The strongest prompts on this novella tend to narrow the focus to something specific and arguable, forcing students to engage with particular passages rather than restating themes they could have picked up from a summary online without reading closely at all.

Good prompts also tend to build in a built-in requirement for evidence, either by asking students to compare two specific scenes or by requiring them to take a defensible position that a reasonable reader might disagree with.

Below are topic categories that consistently produce stronger writing than open-ended thematic prompts, organized by the kind of thinking they demand from students.

Categories That Work Well

Comparative prompts, close reading prompts, and argumentative prompts that require a defensible position tend to outperform broad thematic prompts across every grade level where this novella is taught.

• Compare Santiago's relationship with the sea to his relationship with Manolin
• Argue whether Santiago's suffering earns him dignity or simply exhausts him
• Analyze how Hemingway's short, declarative sentences shape the reader's experience of exhaustion
• Evaluate whether the marlin functions more as an opponent or as a kind of companion
• Assess whether the novella's ending is ultimately hopeful or bleak, using specific textual evidence

Adjusting Difficulty by Grade Level

Middle school and early high school prompts benefit from more scaffolding, such as sentence starters or a required number of textual citations, while upper-level and AP courses can handle more open-ended argumentative prompts that leave room for genuine interpretive disagreement.

College-level seminars often push further, pairing the novella with Hemingway's own writing about the iceberg theory of omission, which opens up prompts about style and technique rather than just theme and character.

Avoiding Prompts That Backfire

Some prompts sound sophisticated but actually produce weaker writing in practice. Asking students to "analyze the symbolism throughout the novel" without narrowing the scope tends to generate scattered essays that touch on five different symbols shallowly rather than one symbol in depth.

Similarly, prompts phrased as yes or no questions without requiring nuance, like "is Santiago a hero," often produce essays that assert an answer in the first sentence and spend the rest of the paper restating it rather than developing a genuine argument.

Testing a Prompt Before Assigning It

One useful check before finalizing an essay prompt is to try writing a thesis statement for it yourself. If the thesis feels obvious or unarguable, students will likely produce essays that simply restate the obvious point at length rather than building a real case.

A prompt that generates at least two or three plausible, competing thesis statements is usually a sign that it will produce genuinely varied, more interesting writing across the class.