Summary “The Old Man and the Sea” of Hemingway


The old man is fishing alone in the sea. For eighty-four days, he has not yet caught a single fish. In the first forty days a boy was fishing with him. Then the parents sent him to work for another, more “lucky” boat. The old man looks thin, emaciated and very old. Young at it only eyes – eyes of color of the sea.

A boy who caught several fish on another boat, offers Santiago (old man) to go with him again to sea. The old man is against the child leaving the lucky boat.

The boy treats the old man a beer on the Terrace. They remember how Santiago took the child for the first time into the sea and saved him from the big fish. After the beer, the boy helps the old man to take the fishing gear to the hut. Santiago falls asleep on a chair reading a newspaper. The boy brings him dinner. Friends eat and discuss baseball. At night, the old man dreams of Africa, in which he sailed as a cabin boy, and the lions coming ashore.

In the morning the old man wakes

up the boy (his name is Manolin), they drink coffee and go to the sea each on their boat. The old man sails away from the shore. He feels sorry for the sea swallows, who with great difficulty get their livelihood; thinking about the sea, the old man uses for his verbal designation of the female gender, seeing in him a woman. Before sunrise, Santiago manages to lower the bait into the water. Unlike other fishermen, he does it accurately, but for some reason he is always unlucky.

The sun rises over the sea. The old man watches in the water flocks of golden mackerel, flying fish, plankton, poisonous fisalias, recalls the turtles who eat them. Following the frigate bird, the fisherman encounters a flock of tuna. When the shore is lost sight of, a large fish begins to peck. He persuades her to eat, talking to herself. When the fish is tightly attached to the hook, the old man does not have enough strength to pull it out of the water. The extraction goes into the sea, dragging the boat behind it. Santiago waits for the fish to die. They swim for half a day and all night.

The old man thinks about fish, pities

her and remembers how he caught a female marlin, whose male was with his girlfriend until his death. Santiago frees his boat from excess lines and begins to pray for the fish to appear on the surface. In the morning a small bird sits down on the string, stretching from the fish to the boat. The old man is talking to her. The fish pulls the line, and hurts the working, right arm of Santiago. For breakfast, the old man eats tuna, trying to give strength to his left hand.

When the fish leaves the water, the old man sees a dark purple with gently lilac stripes on the sides of the body, two feet longer than his boat. Instead of a nose at extraction – long, as a baseball stick, and sharp as a rapier, a sword.

Not believing in God, the old man reads “Our Father” and “Theotokos” ten times, asking them for help. He worries that they can be attacked by sharks and remembers how he fought with the Negro force – the strongest man in the port and defeated him. The day is coming to an end. At night, Santiago catches mackerel, gutted it, supper. At night, he sleeps and wakes up from a sharp jerk of fish. In the morning the prey begins to circle around the boat. The old man tries in vain to kill the fish. His thoughts start to get confused. When the fish gets tired of fighting, Santiago, having collected the remaining strength, kills her with a harpoon blow to the heart.

The dead fish Santiago tied to the boat. From yellow algae, he extracts shrimp and eats them. He begins to feel that he caught a fish. At some point an old man with a fish is overtaken by a shark. The old man kills her by plunging a harpoon into his head. A dead shark carries forty pounds of fish, a harpoon and the rest of the ropes to the bottom.

Trying to cheer up, Santiago begins to think and speak to himself. His thoughts revolve around sins. He asks himself whether it was a sin to kill a fish, and realizes that it’s not – it’s no sin, because he was born a fisherman, just like a fish was born a fish. The old man thinks about what he killed for food. Then he comes to the conclusion that when he killed a big fish, he felt pride, and pride – a sin. He already killed the shark with pleasure, but in this case he fought for his life.

After a while the boat is overtaken by two more sharks, broad-billed, eating carrion. The old man kills them with a knife. These sharks carry with them a quarter of the fish, with the best of its meat. The old man apologizes to the fish.

The next shark breaks the knife of Santiago. With the predators that swam at sunset, the old man tries to fight with a baton. Half of the fish remain. It’s hard for the old man to look at her.

At ten o’clock in the evening, Santiago sees the lights of Havana. At night, he is attacked by a whole flock of sharks. They eat the remains of fish. Having reached the village, the old man goes to sleep. In the morning the boy visits him in the hut. Fishermen on the shore measure a fish skeleton. The boy brings the old man coffee and says that from now on he will fish with him.


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Summary “The Old Man and the Sea” of Hemingway