Perseverance is arguably the single most predictable theme students associate with The Old Man and the Sea before they've even finished reading it, since it's often previewed in class introductions or study guides well before the novella's more subtle ideas come up. That predictability creates a specific grading challenge.

Because students arrive at this theme so quickly, a lot of essays treat it as self-evident and spend most of their length simply cataloging examples of Santiago enduring hardship, rather than making an actual argument about what his particular kind of perseverance reveals about his character or the novella's worldview.

A stronger prompt narrows the focus, asking students to argue what specifically motivates Santiago's perseverance, whether it's pride, love for Manolin, professional identity, or something else, rather than simply asking them to identify perseverance as a theme in general.

This narrower framing forces engagement with the text's more specific details rather than allowing students to write an essay about perseverance in the abstract that could apply almost equally well to a completely different book.

Grading Criteria That Reward Specificity

The rubric for this theme should explicitly reward essays that connect perseverance to a specific underlying motivation rather than treating it as a free-floating character trait disconnected from Santiago's particular history and circumstances.

• Identifies a specific underlying motivation for Santiago's perseverance
• Distinguishes this motivation from a generic "never gives up" reading of the theme
• Uses evidence from Santiago's memories and internal monologue, not just the marlin fight
• Considers whether Santiago's perseverance has any limits or costs
• Connects the theme to the novella's broader statement about dignity or purpose

Handling Essays That Stay Too General

When an essay stays at the level of "Santiago never gives up," the most useful feedback pushes toward the why behind that behavior, asking the student directly what specifically drives Santiago rather than simply noting that his perseverance is present throughout the text.

This kind of targeted question in the margin tends to produce better revisions than a general comment about needing more depth, since it gives the student a concrete direction to pursue rather than an abstract standard to meet.

Connecting Perseverance to Santiago's Costs and Limits

The strongest essays on this theme often acknowledge that Santiago's perseverance comes at a real cost, physical exhaustion, the loss of the marlin's meat to the sharks, and arguably a kind of quiet defeat despite his effort, rather than framing perseverance as an uncomplicated virtue.

Rewarding this more complicated reading in the rubric encourages students to move past a simplistic, inspirational-poster version of the theme toward something closer to what the text actually supports.

Comparing This Theme Across Multiple Texts

For classes studying perseverance as a recurring theme across several texts in a unit, essays that compare Santiago's motivation to a character from a different assigned work can push students toward more original analysis than a standalone essay on this novella alone tends to produce.

Grading these comparative essays requires a rubric that accounts for how well the comparison illuminates both texts, rather than simply confirming that perseverance shows up in each one independently.