Finished reading Ernest Hemingway's 1952 novella THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA; third time. Short and sweet.
Santiago is an old Cuban fisherman. He has two obsessions: fishing and baseball.
For 84 straight days he sailed his tiny boat to the ocean north of Havana but returned home every day without a catch, not even a gilbakka. But Santiago was born to fish and doesn't give up.
He returns to the ocean, to a point where he can no longer see land, and hooks a fish that feels big and strong on his line. It takes him a day and a night to pull the big fish in and strap it alongside his boat. The fish, a marlin, is 18 feet long and Santiago estimates it weighs about 1500 pounds. He figures he can sell 1000 pounds good fish in a Havana market at 30 cents a pound.
Before Santiago returns to his ocean-front village, however, ferocious sharks attack and only the marlin's skeleton is left hanging on his boat.
On land, the skeleton becomes an object of wonder; one fisherman says it's the biggest fish ever caught.
Will the old man ever fish again? Sure. As he nicely puts it, a man can be destroyed but not defeated. Something to think about.
