The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea — Selected Passages and Analysis by Ernest Hemingway (1952)

Preface: A Story About Everything

"The Old Man and the Sea" is a short book — barely 130 pages — about an old fisherman who goes out alone and catches a marlin. That is, on the surface, the entire story. But it is also a story about human dignity in defeat, the relationship between competition and fellowship, the meaning of a life lived at maximum effort, and what it means to be destroyed without being defeated. Hemingway won the Nobel Prize partly on the strength of this novella.

Part One: The Unlucky Old Man

Santiago is an old Cuban fisherman who has gone eighty-four days without catching a fish. In the village, the other fishermen pity him or mock him. His young companion, Manolin, has been ordered by his parents to fish on a luckier boat — but every evening Manolin brings Santiago food, helps him carry his equipment, and sits with him talking about baseball.

"He was an old man 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 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 salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week."

Santiago does not complain. He talks to Manolin about Joe DiMaggio, whose father was a poor fisherman from Sicily and who played through great pain with a bone spur in his heel. He talks about the great lions he sees on the beaches of Africa in his dreams. He is old and alone and unlucky — but he is not broken.

Part Two: The Marlin

On the eighty-fifth day, Santiago rows far out into the Gulf Stream, beyond where any of the other fishermen go. He sets his lines with precision and care, judging the depth of each bait exactly. Then he waits.

A great fish takes the bait. It is so enormous that it does not dive — it simply swims, pulling the old man's skiff steadily out to sea. Santiago holds the line across his back, bracing against the gunwale. The fish pulls for hours. Then for a day. Then for a night. Then for another day.

"He was comfortable but suffering, although he did not admit the suffering at all."

Santiago talks to himself, to the fish, and to his cramped left hand. He eats raw tuna to keep his strength. He sleeps in brief, violent snatches, never letting go of the line. He thinks about DiMaggio. He thinks about the great arm wrestlers he once fought when he was young and strong. He thinks about the lions on the beach.

On the third day, the marlin begins to circle. Santiago, weakened, bleeding from the line cuts on his hands, uses every remaining reserve of will to haul the fish close. He drives his harpoon into its heart.

"He hit him with his closed fist and the old man felt a tremendous shudder and then nothing, and the fish lay still."

The marlin is eighteen feet long. It is too large to fit in the boat. Santiago lashes it alongside and begins the long row home.

Part Three: The Sharks

The first shark arrives within an hour. It is a Mako — beautiful and fast, "built as a sword fish swims." It takes forty pounds of the marlin in a single attack. Santiago kills it with his harpoon — and loses the harpoon.

More sharks come. He kills them with the knife, then the tiller, then his bare hands. But they keep coming. By the time he reaches the harbour, the marlin is a skeleton — nothing but the enormous, ruined spine, the great tail, and the wide head.

He carries the mast up the hill to his shack. He lies down on his bed, face down, arms out, palms up. Manolin sits beside him, crying silently.

In the morning, the other fishermen measure the skeleton. It is eighteen feet from nose to tail. They are astonished. The tourists who walk past mistake the spine for a shark.

Part Four: The Resolution

"He was sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him. The old man was dreaming about the lions."

Santiago has lost everything material — the marlin, his harpoon, the knife. But something has been proved, against all odds, to himself and to those who love him. He set out further than anyone else. He caught what no one else could catch. He fought until there was nothing left to fight with. He was destroyed without being defeated.

Key Passages for Analysis:

"A man can be destroyed but not defeated." — This is the novel's central philosophical statement, spoken by Santiago to himself during the long struggle. It distinguishes between physical defeat and the defeat of the will. The sharks can take the fish; they cannot take what Santiago proved about himself in taking it.

"I went out too far." — Santiago says this to himself near the end, and it is one of the most haunting moments of self-knowledge in American literature. It is not regret — he would do it again. But it is honest. He went further than was practical. He went where he had to go.

The lions on the beach: Santiago's recurring dream — he is young again and watching lions playing on the beaches of Africa — is not a dream of escape. It is a dream of beauty and power that the mind returns to in order to sustain the body's effort. The lions represent what life, at its best, looks like.