Introduction
The Old Manand the Sea, short heroic novel by Ernest Hemingway,
published in 1952 and awarded the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
It was his last major work of fiction. The story centers on an aging
fisherman who engages in an epic battle to catch a giant marlin.
Santiago was anaging Cuba fisherman who fished
alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone
eighty-four days now without taking a fish.
In the first forty days a boy, Manolin, had been with
him. But after forty days without a fish. The boy’s
parents had told him that the old man was now
definitely and finally unlucky. The boy had gone at
their orders in another boat which caught three good
fish the first week.
5.
On the eighty-fifthday of his unlucky streak, Santiago did
as promised, sailing his skiff far beyond the island’s
shallow coastal waters and venturing into the Gulf Stream.
He prepared his lines and dropped them.
At noon, a big fish, which he knew was a marlin, took the
bait that Santiago had placed one hundred fathoms deep
in the waters. The old man expertly hooked the fish, but
he cannot pull it in. Instead, the fish began to pull the
boat. The fish pulled the boat all through the day, through
the night, through another day, and through another
night.
6.
With all hisgreat experience and strength, he struggled with the fish
for three days, admiring its strength, dignity, and faithfulness to its
identity; its destiny is as true as Santiago’s as a fisherman. He finally
reeled the marlin in and lashed it to his boat.
7.
As Santiago sailedon with the fish, the marlin’s blood
left a trail in the water and attracted sharks.
The old man fought off the successive vicious
predators as best he can, stabbing at them with a
crude spear he made by lashing a knife to an oar, and
even clubbing them with the boat’s tiller.
Although he killed several sharks, more and more
appear. They devoured the marlin’s precious meat,
leaving only skeleton, head, and tail.
8.
The next morning,a crowd of people amazed
fishermen gathered around the skeletal carcass of
the fish, which was still lashed to the boat.
Manolin, who had been worried sick over the old
man’s absence, was moved to tears when he found
Santiago safe in his bed. When the old man woke, the
two agreed to fish as partners once more.
