Summary of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The old man, his boat, the admiring boy, the sea, a few clouds, two or three fish, a few birds, the great marlin and finally the sharks – those are the ingredients of this famous novella. Stripping out the complications of modern life, Hemingway presents a story of one man’s timeless struggle both with and against the elements. Survival isn’t simply a Darwinian struggle to determine the fittest, but a need to persevere despite challenges and setbacks: to rise to the occasion but also accept that events can turn a success into a failure. It’s the need to go to sleep at the end of a harrowing ordeal with the simple idea that tomorrow you’ll get up and try again. The work of an aging author, The Old Man and the Sea focuses on the realities of growing old and the desire to remain vital and relevant. Much like the old man in the book, Hemingway found himself looking back on his early successes while finding it ever harder to repeat them. As such, his last completed work of fiction was a triumph over his critics, who had basically declared him finished as a novelist. In the middle of a confusing 20th century and with his characteristically economical style, Hemingway makes the battle of this lone fisherman off the coast of Cuba into a poignant story of humanity’s struggle to find meaning.

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