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The Oldman and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway Summary

 SETTING 

The narrative takes place in the 1940s. Although the opening and closing scenes take place on land in a small Cuban fishing village, the dominant setting is the Gulf Stream of the beach of Cuba. Hemingway believes the sea to be the last great unexplored area on earth, and this work travels deeply into the nature of this mysterious setting. 

Plot summary 

      The Old Man and the Sea is the story of a battle between an old fisherman and a large marlin. The novel opens with the fisherman, who is named Santiago who spent 84 days in the sea without catching a fish. In fact, he is so unlucky that his young learner, Manolin, was forbidden by his parents to sail with the old man and was ordered to fish with more successful and lucky fishermen. However, the boy visits Santiago's shack each night, carrying his fishing gear, getting him food and discussing American baseball and his favorite player Joe DiMaggio. Santiago tells Manolin that on the next day, he will venture far out into the Gulf Stream to fish being confident that his unlucky past is near its end. Thus on the eighty-fifth day, Santiago ventures alone, taking his skiff far onto the Gulf Stream. He sets his lines and, by noon of the first day, a big fish that he is sure is a marlin takes his bait. Unable to pull in the great marlin, Santiago instead finds the fish pulling his skiff. Two days and two nights pass in this manner, during which the old man bears the tension of the line with his body. Though he is wounded by the struggle and in pain, Santiago expresses a sympathy for his antagonist (marlin), often referring to him as a brother. He also determines that because of the fish's great dignity, no one will be worthy of eating the marlin. On the third day of the battle, the fish begins to circle the skiff, indicating his tiredness to the old man. Santiago, now completely exhausted and almost in delirium, uses all the strength he has left in him to pull the fish onto its side and stab the marlin with a harpoon, ending the long battle between the old man and the fish. Santiago straps the marlin to the side of his skiff and returns home, thinking about the high price the fish will bring him at the market and how many people he will feed. While Santiago continues his journey back to the shore, sharks are attracted to the blood left by the marlin in the water. The first, a great  shark, Santiago kills with his harpoon, but then he loses that weapon. He makes a new harpoon by fixing his knife to the end of an oar to help killing of sharks; in total, five sharks are killed and many others are driven away. But the sharks kept coming, and by sunset the sharks have almost eaten the marlin entirely, leaving a skeleton consisting mostly of its backbone, its tail and its head. Finally reaching the shore before dawn on the next day, Santiago struggles on the way to his shack, carrying the mast on his shoulder. At home, he slumps onto his bed and falls into a deep sleep. A group of fishermen gather the next day around the boat where the fish's skeleton is still attached. One of the fishermen measures it to be 18 feet (5.5 m) from nose to tail. Tourists at the nearby café mistakenly take it for a shark. Manolin, worried during the old man's venture, cries upon finding him safe asleep. The boy brings him newspapers and coffee. When the old man wakes, they promise to fish together once again. Upon his return to sleep, Santiago dreams of his youth—of lions on an African beach. 


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