The old man and the sea

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. Scrubber Paperback Fiction, 1952. Genre: Fiction

The Old Man and the Sea is about an old man named Santiago. He has been unlucky lately and hasn't been able to catch a fish for 84 days. Santiago is considers as "salao" which means the worst form of unlucky. Santiago's apprentice is named Manolin and due to Santiago's bad luck Manolins parents had forbidden him to go fishing with the old man.

On the eighty fifth day santiago went out on his boat into the Gulf stream to go fishing. At

around noon a large fish started going after his bait, which seemed to him to be a marlin. But the old man was unable to pull the marlin out of the water because the marlin was so strong. After two days the old man started to get in pain from fighting and pulling the fish. On the third day the marlin starts to get tired and is circling the fishing pole. The old man then used all his strength and pulled the marlin up on its side and stabbed it with a harpoon. The man strapped the marlin onto his boat and went back home. But on his way back home the Marlin was leaving a trail of blood in the water that was attracting sharks. First a mako shark comes and the old man kills it with his harpoon and ends up losing it with the fish. He then makes another one with his knife and a oar. Santiago continues till night time fighting the sharks. The sharks have pretty much completely took the marlin’s carcass and just left the

skeleton. Santiago arrives home and goes up to his shack to fall asleep. The next day fisherman went to santiago’s boat to measure the skeleton and measured  that is was 18 feet long. When Santiago woke up from his sleep Manolin was there and promised that he would go fishing together.

“It had good descriptions and good details. Overall I did not enjoy the book very much, because basically throughout the whole book it talked about a man catching a fish. I liked the way the author made the story a little more interesting, the way he explained the old man being there for three days and all the details he had in that section. The thing I didn't really like was that the story kept dragging on and on about the same thing.” By a customer, Amazon.com reviewer.

I agree with the reviewer because I think pretty much the same way about the book. I think the book was okay it was a little bit boring at first when it was just describing the Old man fishing but then when he started to fight with the Marlin and the sharks the book got a little bit better.

“The fish just moved away slowly and the old man could not raise him an inch.” (44). This made me imagine the struggle the old man was having trying to pull the marlin out of the water.

I don’t really ever read books, but it kind of reminded me on how in the Hunger Games Katniss never gave up and used all her energy to win the games. Which in The Old man and the Sea the old man never gave up on catching the fish and used all the strength he had.

“A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” I think this means that a man will never give up on something they want even if it destroys them. I agree and disagree with it because it depends on the situation.

This book was kind of boring because I didn’t really like reading about just a man trying to catch fish the whole time. I give The Old Man and the Sea 2 paws- find better prey.