The Old Man and the Sea

Suddenly, one of Santiago’s lines dips on its pole. Quietly, he ships his oars and removes the line from the pole and into his hands so the fish won’t notice the tension. The line jerks repeatedly as a marlin, far below, nibbles on sardines. The old man hopes and prays that the fish—which he assumes must be big if it is so far out at this time of year—will swallow the tuna head that hides the hook.

A hard pull yanks the line; Santiago lets it unspool, hundreds of feet of it, as the big fish takes off at high speed; he connects extra spools of line to the one unreeling between his fingers. Suddenly he grips the line tightly and begins to pull it in until he can’t anymore. He holds on, and the boat begins to move northwest, pulled by the marlin.

Four hours later, Santiago still grips the line, bracing it against his back, as the fish drags the boat onward. Santiago manages to take a drink one-handedly from his water bottle. More hours pass; the fish keeps swimming, the sun sets, and night falls. The old man wraps a sack around his shoulders for warmth. The current pulls them eastward; the glow of Havana, near his home port, begins to fade. He wishes he had a radio to hear ball games, and he wishes the boy were with him. He decides to eat the tuna in the morning before it spoils.

The old man begins to respect the marlin for its calm determination. He remembers catching a female whose mate stayed next to the boat until Santiago and the boy had killed and butchered her. “That was the saddest thing I ever saw with them” (29), he recalls.

Before dawn, another fish takes the bait on one of the other lines; quickly, the old man cuts that line and the other two baited lines and splices their unused coils onto the marlin’s line. The sun rises; the fish isn’t tired, but it is swimming less deeply—a good sign that it might soon jump. If it jumps, its bladders will fill, and it will no longer be able to dive too far. He does not dare pull harder on the line, lest it break.

A small bird alights on the taut fishing line. Santiago talks to the bird, inviting it to rest a moment during its long, harrowing journey through life. The line jerks, nearly dragging him overboard; when he looks up, the bird has flown. The jerked line cut his hand. He washes it in the sea, but the cut will hamper him. His other hand is already cramping as it holds onto the line.

Using a gaffer, Santiago pulls the tuna from the stern, cuts long strips of meat from it, and throws the carcass overboard. He eats the raw strips, wishing he had some lemon or salt to go with them. He shifts his hold and lets go his left hand so it can un-cramp. The day is bright; he is out of sight of land, but the weather is good. Ducks fly overhead; with the animals, he is never alone.

The line angles up suddenly. The fish jumps from the water. It is very large—longer than the boat: “He came out unendingly and water poured from his sides” (38). Its pointed snout alone is as long as a baseball bat. Santiago has caught fish over 1,000 pounds, but never alone, and this is the largest he’s ever seen or heard of.

Though not religious, he prays, reciting ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys. To the latter he adds: “Blessed Virgin, pray for the death of this fish. Wonderful though he is” (40). Under the bright sun, his hand slowly unclenches, but, holding onto the line these many hours, his body suffers. Still, he is determined to prove himself against this regal animal, as his hero DiMaggio daily proves himself despite the pain of the bone spur in his foot.

He remembers an arm wrestling contest long ago in Casablanca between him and a powerful dockworker. The match lasted all day and night, causing their fingernails to bleed, but Santiago finally won. He always won with his right hand, but when he experimented with his left, it tended to betray him.

An airplane flies north overhead toward Miami. He wonders what it would be like to look down on the ocean’s animals from up there. Perhaps it would be like it was when he climbed the masts of the turtle boats when he was young.

Santiago sets out a small line to catch a meal; after some time, a dolphinfish takes the bait and leaps several times into the air. Santiago manages, one-handed, to pull it in, club it, re-bait the line, and toss the line back in the water. He now has food for another day, but the marlin hasn’t eaten; it is swimming a bit slower. He remembers seeing how the hook rested in the fish’s closed mouth; that pain is nothing against the “punishment of hunger, and that he is against something that he does not comprehend” (47).

That night, still holding the marlin’s line, Santiago fillets and guts the dolphinfish—inside it are two flying fish, which he sets aside—and throws the carcass overboard; it glows with phosphorescence in the water. He eats the fillets. He hasn’t slept in nearly two days, so he braces himself carefully against the bow, leans back, and sleeps. He dreams of dolphins leaping and mating, of a storm during which his right arm goes to sleep, and finally of lions on the beach.

The line wakes him as it burns past his hand and back. The marlin leaps several times; the line, dry and without the boy to keep it wet, cuts his hands as he lets it out slowly. Carefully he washes each hand in the sea. He eats one of the flying fish, bones and all.

By dawn of the third day, the marlin has tired and begins to swim more slowly, veering eastward with the current. The line slackens and he knows the fish has begun to circle. Carefully, inch by inch so it doesn’t break, Santiago pulls the line in; as the fish circles deep underwater, the line retightens, and he must let it out again. For a few moments, the fish strikes at the line with its spearlike snout; then it resumes circling. The old man feels bouts of faintness and sees spots before his eyes; he splashes water on his head and neck.

The circles grow smaller; Santiago prepares his harpoon. Near noon, the great fish finally passes directly under the boat; as it slides beneath him, enormous, Santiago pulls in the slack line; this causes the weakened fish to tip sideways, but it rights itself and continues. The marlin makes several more circles; finally the old man, exhausted, manages to pull the fish alongside his skiff. With his last strength, he lifts high his harpoon and plunges it deep into the giant fish and through its heart. The marlin jerks and jumps from the water, then splashes down, dead.