Product Description

Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway's magnificent fable is the story of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. It was The Old Man and the Sea that won for Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here, in a perfectly crafted story, is unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man's challenge to the elements in which he lives.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2792 in Books
• Published on: 1994-08-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

From Amazon.co.uk
Here, for a change, is a fish tale that actually does honour to the author. In fact The Old Man and the Sea revived Ernest Hemingway's career, which was foundering under the weight of such post-war stinkers as Across the River and into the Trees. It also led directly to his receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1954 (an award Hemingway gladly accepted, despite his earlier observation that "no son of a bitch that ever won the Nobel Prize ever wrote anything worth reading afterwards"). A half century later, it's still easy to see why. This tale of an aged Cuban fisherman going head-to-head (or hand-to-fin) with a magnificent marlin encapsulates Hemingway's favourite motifs of physical and moral challenge. Yet Santiago is too old and infirm to partake of the gun-toting machismo that disfigured much of the author's later work:

"The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords."

Hemingway's style, too, reverts to those superb snapshots of perception that won him his initial fame:

Just before it was dark, as they passed a great island of Sargasso weed that heaved and swung in the light sea as though the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket, his small line was taken by a dolphin. He saw it first when it jumped in the air, true gold in the last of the sun and bending and flapping wildly in the air.

If a younger Hemingway had written this novella, Santiago most likely would have towed the enormous fish back to port and posed for a triumphal photograph--just as the author delighted in doing, circa 1935. Instead his prize gets devoured by a school of sharks. Returning with little more than a skeleton, he takes to his bed and, in the very last line, cements his identification with his creator:

"The old man was dreaming about the lions."

Perhaps there's some allegory of art and experience floating around in there somewhere--but The Old Man and the Sea was, in any case, the last great catch of Hemingway's career. --James Marcus

Amazon.co.uk Review
Here, for a change, is a fish tale that actually does honour to the author. In fact The Old Man and the Sea revived Ernest Hemingway's career, which was foundering under the weight of such post-war stinkers as Across the River and into the Trees. It also led directly to his receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1954 (an award Hemingway gladly accepted, despite his earlier observation that "no son of a bitch that ever won the Nobel Prize ever wrote anything worth reading afterwards"). A half century later, it's still easy to see why. This tale of an aged Cuban fisherman going head-to-head (or hand-to-fin) with a magnificent marlin encapsulates Hemingway's favourite motifs of physical and moral challenge. Yet Santiago is too old and infirm to partake of the gun-toting machismo that disfigured much of the author's later work:

"The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords."

Hemingway's style, too, reverts to those superb snapshots of perception that won him his initial fame:

Just before it was dark, as they passed a great island of Sargasso weed that heaved and swung in the light sea as though the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket, his small line was taken by a dolphin. He saw it first when it jumped in the air, true gold in the last of the sun and bending and flapping wildly in the air.

If a younger Hemingway had written this novella, Santiago most likely would have towed the enormous fish back to port and posed for a triumphal photograph--just as the author delighted in doing, circa 1935. Instead his prize gets devoured by a school of sharks. Returning with little more than a skeleton, he takes to his bed and, in the very last line, cements his identification with his creator:

"The old man was dreaming about the lions."

Perhaps there's some allegory of art and experience floating around in there somewhere--but The Old Man and the Sea was, in any case, the last great catch of Hemingway's career. --James Marcus

About the Author
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Chicago in 1899 as the son of a doctor and the second of six children. After a stint as an ambulance driver at the Italian front, Hemingway came home to America in 1919, only to return to the battlefield - this time as a reporter on the Greco-Turkish war - in 1922. Resigning from journalism to focus on his writing instead, he moved to Paris where he renewed his earlier friendship with fellow American expatriates such as Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. Through the years, Hemingway travelled widely and wrote avidly, becoming an internationally recognized literary master of his craft. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, following the publication of The Old Man and the Sea. He died in 1961.

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Customer Reviews

Pathos.
This is possibly the most touching story I have ever read. Upon finishing it, I found the idea of sifting for messages or understandings abhorrent, and that the beauty of this book was its profound simplicity. To even try and complicate your thoughts, or reactions to the book, with interpretations and linkages with other books, or anything literary, borders on sacreliege. I urge you to read this book, and I know you will enjoy it. At its base level it provides the most moving description of the suffering of the old, or even simply of suffering. But more than that, by the time you finish the book, you will be shocked, not by conventional methods of horror, or misery, but by tranquility and honesty.

What Is Defeat?
The Old Man and the Sea is Ernest Hemingway at his simplest, and most powerful, as a story teller. The sentences are short. The meaning is clear. The cadence of the prose advances your sense of what is happening.

An old man goes out fishing alone from Cuba and hooks the fish of a lifetime. This fish could make a lifetime of disappointments and setbacks all worth while.

After an incredible and exhausting fight, the fish is his. Now all he has to do is get it back to shore. Then the struggle really begins!

The Old Man and the Sea lets us see our own lives more clearly, by experiencing the challenge to and empathizing with the fisherman in this classic tale of man versus nature and man versus himself that explores the true nature of human nobility. What does life mean? What is striving for? From what do we gain our dignity?

Anyone who thinks that he who dies with the most toys wins will can learn a great deal from this story.

Even if the story was not so compelling and universal in its appeal and themes, the book is worth the trip just for the writing. Simple words combine into simple sentences that build into metaphors that pile on top of metaphors in order to make for a magnificent vista and experience for you. Seldom has so much complexity been portrayed with such simplicity. What's even more astonishing is how short this novella is. Amazing!

Just to let you know how much I love this book, I often use the techniques and concepts in The Old Man and the Sea in my own writing. Miscommunication is what people have the most trouble with in cooperating with each other. Any time you run into that stall, think about how Hemingway would have solved the problem. Tell a story like this one that makes the point you want to share. Then tell the story again and again. Thirty times or more, and everyone will begin to get it. When your listeners start telling the story thirty times to others, you have made an important first step.

Read this book, reread this book, learn from it each time, and enjoy ... enjoy ... enjoy!

One of Hemingway's Best
I chose ‘The Old Man and the Sea,’ by Ernest Hemingway, primarily because I wanted to read one of his short books, and this one seemed to appeal to me. The story is set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana and is based around an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. Hemingway portrays very uniquely and subtly the way in which man must struggle against his own conscience at times to overcome the power of greed and the challenge of the natural elements.

I enjoyed many aspects of the book, and felt that I was a part of the story itself. I liked the way in which Hemingway delivered the tale and expressed the deeper meaning behind the plot. By only involving three main characters, the reader is able to become more attached to each individual and therefore understand more about their thoughts and feelings. The events throughout the course of this book are quite exciting, as they are caused by the characters and portray the struggles that each individual must face. By highlighting these separately, not only can Hemingway keep the reader interested, but also help the reader to understand more about what is happening as the storyline unfolds.

Overall a brilliant piece of writing. It is up to the reader to decide the real message behind the plot!