In the book of Genesis in the Old Testament, the metaphor of human beings going from dust to dust appears: "By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return." This means that humans came from the earth and will return the earth. The phrase "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" is also...
In the book of Genesis in the Old Testament, the metaphor of human beings going from dust to dust appears: "By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return." This means that humans came from the earth and will return the earth. The phrase "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" is also often used in the English burial service to denote the idea that we are buried where we began and that life has a cyclical nature in which we are reduced to being part of the earth.
At the beginning of The Old Man and the Sea, Santiago is described as being so ancient that he is almost dust: "Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated" (page 1). Santiago has gone 40 days without catching a fish; though he has put forth great effort, he has nothing to show for it. In the end, the marvelously long marlin he catches is eaten by sharks. Hemingway writes, "the long backbone of the great fish that was now just garbage waiting to go out with the tide." Even the great fish is dust, as it has been reduced to garbage. Santiago started out with dust and ended with dust, meaning that he began with nothing and ended with nothing, similar to the life cycle of all human beings.
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