The story of the story “The Old Man and the Sea”


For the first time the history of the old man and the sea of ​​Hemingway was briefly described in the essay “On the Blue Water: The Gulf Stream Letter” published in the Esquire magazine back in 1936. The writer himself was very fond of fishing, was friends with Cuban fishermen, knew their laws and customs well. The basis of the narrative is a real case from the life of a Cuban fisherman who spent about eighty days fishing off the coast of Havana. He was lucky enough to catch a giant fish, but he could not get her ashore. The extraction was stolen into pieces of a shark, only one skeleton remained. This story Hemingway sated with new details, enriched with a deep vital and philosophical meaning. In October 1951, in a letter to the publisher, he wrote: “This is the prose over which I worked all my life, which should be easy, simple and concise and at the same time transmit all the changes of the visible world and the sphere of the human spirit. This is the best prose that I am capable of now. “In September 1952, the story” The Old Man and the Sea “was published in the Life magazine.

Literary critics wanted to find out who became the prototype of the main character of the story – Santiago. Quite often called the famous Cuban fisherman and friend of the writer Gregorio Fuentosa, who lived to 104 years. However, most researchers tend to think that this image has absorbed the features of different people with whom Hemingway communicated in the fishing village of Kohimaré, located near Havana.


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The story of the story “The Old Man and the Sea”