Santiago is an old fisherman in a village near Havana who has gone eighty-four days without catching anything. The other fishermen consider him unlucky, and the parents of Manolin, the boy who once fished with him, have sent the boy to another boat. Manolin still looks after the old man, bringing him food and talking baseball with him.
On the eighty-fifth day Santiago rows farther out than usual and hooks an enormous marlin that is too strong to haul in. For days the fish tows his small skiff across the open sea while Santiago, his hands cut and cramping, holds the line, talks to himself and to the fish, and thinks about his youth, his strength and the great baseball player Joe DiMaggio.
Hemingway's style here is pared to the bone, with plain sentences and close physical detail of rope, water, hunger and pain. The novella is often read as a parable about endurance, pride and the dignity of struggle regardless of outcome. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and was singled out when Hemingway received the Nobel Prize the following year.
Book details
| Author | Ernest Hemingway |
|---|---|
| First published | 1952 |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Classic |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 127 |
| Setting | A fishing village near Havana and the Gulf Stream, Cuba |
| Awards | Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1953 |
Themes
- Endurance
- Pride
- Man versus nature
- Ageing
- Friendship across generations
Who should read it
Readers looking for a short, intense classic about perseverance, told in famously economical prose.