The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

First Edition, 1952

I had been putting off reading The Old Man and the Sea for some time because I thought if it was considered a 'classic' it would be complicated.  I was immediately proven wrong from the beginning.  It was actually written with so much simplicity and purity it is so powerful. One of Ernest Hemingway's most enduring works, The Old Man and the Sea was written in Cuba in 1951, published in 1952, and played a major role in Hemingway's winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.

Ernest Hemingway,
Pulitzer Prize winner and
Nobel Prize winner for Literature

The book was one of the last books that Hemingway had written. At that time he was already growing older, and like most people, he was changing.  This change prompted him to write about old age.  When the book was first published it was featured in Life magazine which sold out over five million copies in two days. Today, the first edition (top photo) is available only in rare book auctions and sold for up to USD 4,000 (Php 180,000) a copy.

The strikingly simple story is about an old Cuban fisherman, Santiago, who goes out to sea to catch fish.  He has been unsuccessful for the last 84 days but unknown to Santiago this next trip would prove to become his greatest ordeal.  When Santiago finally catches a giant marlin on his line he hopes to bring it home because it would fetch a good price at the market. But he is unable to hoist the huge fish (which turned out to be 18 feet long) onto his boat so he has no choice but to drag it along.  Then sharks start to get attracted to the bleeding fish. The trip would prove to be a most grueling 4-day battle with the giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream for Santiago.

Cojimar, Cuba
Where Hemingway stayed while writing
The Old Man and the Sea and the inspiration for the book

There are very few characters and the plot is simplicity itself.  The writing is elegant, beautiful, painstakingly simple, and yet so powerful it resonates with the truth.  Surprisingly its purity is what makes it profound. To say more would take a literary major to give this book justice. This masterpiece has to be read and enjoyed to be properly appreciated.