The Old Man and the Sea

Great book. I love my books that use clear fonts on white paper and are slim enough to offer easy reading. This book clicks on all fronts

The packaging was nice but the front cover is slightly bend

Very short story about an old man who lives near sea shore. It's very short book like pocket sized book you can carry anywhere you go. Old man loneliness and patience teaches a boy.

THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA ………………………………………………………… Everyone talks about it. But no one does anything about it. This is the expression attributed to ‘weather’ It applies to ‘classics’ also. Everyone talks about it. No one reads it. ……………………………………………………. The book by the title of the article fits exactly into CLASSIC. I have heard about it. I have heard about the author. I have read one of his novels in Tamil. ……………………………………………………………………… Particularly after undergoing a surgery I am instantly connected to the novel. The hero of the novel has a name . But it finds mention only in a couple of instances. The old man has a friend ,a boy, too young to be called a friend. ……………………………………………….. The old man entertains a guilty feeling that he had not got anything worth in the last 84 days in the sea. He ventures alone. He talks to his own self. When he catches a marlin (big fish) he talks to the fish. And yet he is conscious that in sea he should not talk . ………………………………………………………. The marlin entangles in the hook of the old man. But does not reach his hands before taking the old man for ride. For long hours the marlin (of the size larger than the boat) draws the boat (skiff) into the deep sea at great speed. Two nights and a day.The old man is not tired. His spirits are intact. ………………………………………………………………. Ultimately when the old man is successful in killing it , he finds it extremely difficult to tow the big fish ashore. Trade winds are his polestars at night. The return with the marlin is greatly disturbed by the attacks by sharks. The sharks eat half the catch. With several survivals he reaches the shore to fall into the arms of the boy in a semiconscious state. ………………………………………………….. Like the hero I was also sanguine about the surgery. I had rosy feelings that a new lease of life is given to me. But the post operative care in ICU was the most difficult one. Convalesing at home is also difficult. ………………………………………………. Now from the OLD MAN AND THE SEA “I am not religious,” he said. “But I will say ten OUR FATHERS and ten HAIL MARYS that I should catch this fish, and I promise to make a pilgrimage to the Virgin of Cobre if I catch him. That is a promise.” Like the hero I prayed within my mind hundred times I was chanting my favourite slogan many times I vowed in my heart to undertake pilgrimage to many of my favourite Gods and goddesses Exactly like the hero. ………………………………………….. “I could not fail myself and die on a fish like this,” he said. “Now that I have him coming so beautifully, God help me endure. I’ll say a hundred OUR FATHERS and a hundred HAIL MARYS. B ut I cannot say them now.” Hemingway, Ernest. Old Man and the Sea (p. 56). Scribner. Kindle Edition. Hemingway said that it was "the best I can write ever for all of my life". I say that “this is the best I can READ for all my life.” ………………………………………………………………………………………….. Susan Beegel had very correctly pointed out that “ he tells the truth about human fear, guilt, betrayal, violence, cruelty, drunkenness, hunger, greed, apathy, ecstasy, tenderness, love and lust.” ………………………………………………………………….. To the extent that the title could have been THE OLD MAN AND THE MARLIN, the marlin plays most part of the novel than sea.

Good 👍

I read this as a young man and was disappointed. It didn't work for me. I thought it was about a crazy old man gone off the reservation, picking a fight with an innocent fish while ranting about the New York Yankees ("I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing. They say his father was a fisherman..."). I picked it up again, after the passage of some years, and found it incredibly poignant. It's a simple story. There's an old man, Santiago, who is a fisherman fallen on hard times. He is cared for by a young boy, Manolin, who no longer works on his boat. Santiago goes into the Gulf and engages in the fight of his life with a giant marlin. What follows is a dream-like, stream-of-conscious meditation as the old man matches strength and wits with the great fish. After 84 days of no fish, Santiago takes his skiff far out to sea. He drops his line and hooks a marlin. He can't pull it in, so he takes hold of the line, beginning the back and forth: when the marlin runs, he gives the line slack; when the marlin is still, he pulls the line in. The old man's hands are cut by the rope. His muscles strain. He has no food or water. Yet he doesn't give up. The obsession has shades of Moby Dick, except at the end of this novel, I didn't feel the need to dig up Melville and punch him in the skull: I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him. I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars. Imagine if each day a man must try to kill the moon, he thought. The moon runs away. . . . Then he was sorry for the great fish that had nothing to eat and his determination to kill him never relaxed in his sorrow for him. . . . There is no one worthy of eating him from the manner of his behavior and his great dignity. I do not understand these things, he thought. But it is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers. Eventually, the marlin is hauled in and killed. The old man attaches him to the boat, and begins to row towards shore. Of course, the marlin is dripping blood, so if you've seen Jaws or read James and the Giant Peach, you can imagine that his dreams of hitting it big with this fish are probably not going to come to pass. Age teaches you a lot of things. You start to realize that you might never be the person you thought you'd be as a child. Days go by, you start to lose more and gain less. I thought about this as I thought about the old man, raging like Dylan Thomas against the night; an old man nearing the end of his days fighting against nature, time, death, a fish, able to boil all things down into one climatic struggle on the high seas. At the end, he did not succeed, at least not in the manner he'd foreseen, but he was, in an inimitable way, victorious. 'You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food,' he thought. 'You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?'

“A beautifully crafted tragedy, students will appreciate its symbolism and emotional depth;light and portable book”.

This book is earnest hemingway in its purest form about human resilience the simplicity and the mindset of moving forward when nothing goes us planned.

I’ve always believed that the best stories ever written are those that sever the veil (screen) upon which our seeming lives are temporarily projected. Through the hole/tear we see an eye looking in, and lo, it is our own! This story is about ambition, love, resistance, resilience, acceptance, and ultimate triumph, but not in the way that the conditioned mind would expect or tend to think. This beautiful little story reminded me of a time when I thought that I’d caught my own big fish. I’d been hired by a prestigious company that promised to turn my life around. As soon as they hired me, I was able to purchase a fully loaded, top of the line luxury vehicle. The latest model. Something that had never happened in my life. My first car had been a used, Orange 1973 Volkswagen Beetle. Which left me stranded more times than I can remember. And the nice thing was that the company that hired me gave me a car allowance that well exceeded my car payment! The company issued me a beautiful smart phone to conduct business, the latest model. Nothing but the best. and furnished me with all of the office supplies that I could ever want or need. They paid for my airfare and hotel stays when traveling, and had a rule that I could never stay in hotels that ran under $140 a night. They had a reputation to uphold! They paid for all of my meals when traveling and even paid for the entertainment that I had to furnish to my top buyers, from my top accounts! In other words, I got paid to take my buyers golfing and seven to strip clubs, as some preferred. I was making more than four times what I made before and the company even paid for my relocation to the most beautiful state that I’ve even stepped foot on — Oregon. I had many accounts scattered along the breath-taking Oregon coast, which I loved to call on, because it meant spending a few nights in hotels just steps from the water. Eating fresh seafood while marveling at the in and out breaths of the mighty Sea. However, like Santiago in the story of The Old Man and the Sea, I became tethered to this huge fish. It was so big that it took me wherever it wanted. And my life became a tempest of temporal highs interspersed with tremendous pressures. Since I had never made so much money before, I began to spend as if I was a millionaire! As if money was infinite rather than finite. Little by little, the sharp teeth of sharks all around me began to eat away at my big fish and I couldn’t do anything about it. My great joy began to dwindle, daily. Eventually, when I could take it no more, I emailed my letter of resignation and sailed back home with only a carcass of a fish. My company t-shirts, my samples, office equipment, etc. I loved the way that Hemingway was able to express deep emotion with few and simple words. Like when the boy, who loved the old man, cried because he’d seen the wounds in the old man’s palms. Battle scars from the tussle he’d undergone with the big fish at sea. I loved how Hemingway pulled me into the old man’s mind. The reasoning process and respect that he’d developed for the giant fish. The flavor of wisdom that comes with age. I’m not old yet, but I certainly identified with the old man’s spirit. When he arrived back home, there was this sense of redemption that radiated from him. This sense of acceptance of life as it is. You get this sense that a deep change had taken place within him. That he no longer gave as much importance to the things that can be taken away, but to the things that last, that matter, that heal the soul and heart — like the Purity and innocence of unconditional love, symbolized by the boy.

The cover claims that the book is Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea," but when I opened it up, the actual contents is "Revelations of Divine Love" by Julian of Norwich - a Christian text. I guess Benediction Classics is running some sort of religious scam, trying to trick people into reading Christian texts by any means necessary.

I can understand why this book is so well renowned and the length off it make for a very easy read too.

Esse livro é simplesmente maravilhoso! A história é excelente e a relação do velho com o menino me fez refletir demais. Fala sobre as idas e vindas da vida, é uma metáfora sobre viver uma vida com riscos, uma história de redenção. Além disso, é uma leitura perfeita para quem quer aprender inglês, as palavras "diferentes" possuem um índice explicando o que elas significam e se você clica em cima delas, há um dicionário. É muito bem ilustrado e há no final dele umas perguntas excelentes para fazer com crianças.

Great prose. The writer sort of almost inconsiderately seems to use so many fishing related words but it works.