2

Book review: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA by Ernest Hemingway. Penguin Books.

Hemingway wrote this classic a little over seven decades ago. I first read it a little over four decades ago. Now, thanks to my book club, I did a re-read, and OMG, was blown away – again – by the powerful story.

For those of the newer generations who might not be familiar with this story, it is the tale  of an old fisherman who heads out off the coast of Havana in search of a good haul of fish after several months of no catch. A monster marlin takes his bait, and is powerful  enough to pull the old man`s skiff deeper into the Gulf Stream  for two days and two nights. Eventually, the fisherman catches and kills the giant fish, which turns out to be longer than his boat, and ties it to the side of his boat. He`s still some considerable distance from the shore, and with the fish acting as perfect shark-bait, he has a new horrific struggle to face before he gets home.

How he does that makes up the slim volume. The tale is told in a laconic fashion, typical of Hemingway, but is a  powerful  story of survival and beating the odds that holds the reader enthralled all through.

Old man Santiago’s affection for a young protégé, his stoic acceptance of his left hand slowly losing its motility, his deepening respect for this huge fish that`s towing his boat further out in the sea, his keeping a cool head when surrounded by sharks…  it`s a gem of a tale which took Hemingway a mere six weeks to write.

In 1953, The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 1954, it was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to Hemingway getting the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Read it – re-read it — and you`ll know why.