The story of an invincible fisherman
The Old Man and the Sea is one of the masterpieces by Ernest Hemingway (1899—1961). Ernest Hemingway is an iconic American novelist who was awarded Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. The Old Man and the Sea is the tale of a combat between an elderly, veteran fisherman, Santiago, and a huge species of fish called marlin. The novel opens by conveying the message to the reader that Santiago has spent 84 days without getting hold of a fish, considered "salao", the most inauspicious sign of ill-fate. He is so unfortunate that his young companion, Manolin, has been prohibited by his family to go on fishing with Santiago and has been instructed to go on fishing expeditions with other fishermen who have been able to catch fish all the time. Manolin enters Santiago's makeshift hut each night, polishing his fishing gear, cooking meals, chatting about American baseball and his favourite player, Joe DiMaggio. Santiago tells Manolin that the following day, he will sail across the sea and propel his boat into the Gulf Stream, north of Cuba in the Straits of Florida to make further efforts to catch fish with a pluck of confidence that this time he might be able to end his ordeal of "failure".
On the eighty-fifth day of his futile fishing pursuit, Santiago thrusts his skiff into the Gulf Stream, throws his fishing lines into the water and by midday, his bait is swallowed by an enormous fish which he supposes to be a marlin. While trying to tug the marlin out of water, the huge fish rather pulls Santiago towards the sea water. Santiago passes two days and nights struggling with his fishing line and trying desperately to tackle the strength of the monstrous fish. He regards this situation as a state of battle and he determines not to give up till his last breath. He gets injured and feels pain throughout his age-worn body but the toughness of his mind keeps up his spirit.
On the third day, the marlin begins swimming around Santiago's boat. Santiago gets exhausted and arrives virtually at the end of his physical power. He applies the last bits of his corporeal force to beat the fish and stabs it with a harpoon. Santiago ties up the wounded marlin to one side of his skiff and starts moving back to the shore, with the hope of claiming a high price for the enormous fish once he reaches home safely.
However, while sailing back to the shore, sharks are enticed by the smell of the marlin's blood. Santiago kills a great shark with his harpoon, but the weapon slips out of his hands and drops into the sea. He improvises a new harpoon by hooking up his knife with the end of an oar to drive away other sharks. He manages to kill five sharks and pushes the rest away from his boat. But the sharks come back once again and before dusk the sharks eat up almost the whole marlin. Just a skeleton of the marling remains comprising some bones, its tail and its head. Finally, as Santiago reaches ashore before the dawn on the next day, he somehow staggers to his shack, carrying his fishing gear and other equipment with him. He falls asleep as soon as he lies on his bed.
A good number of fishermen huddled next morning to take a look at the skeleton of the gigantic marlin which is still bound up with Santiago's boat. One of the fishermen measures it to be 18 feet long from its nose to tail. Visitors at a close-by coffeehouse came out and they thought it's a shark. Manolin, anxious about Santiago, rushes to Santiago's shack and finds him sleeping. He gets that day's newspaper and some coffee for Santiago. As Santiago wakes up, he tells Manolin about the tough time he had at sea the day before and they both agreed to go on fishing together once again. When Santiago goes back to sleep that night, he dreams about his youthful days. In his dreams, Santiago visualizes some lions on the seashores of Africa.
The Old Man and the Sea is about a man's irresistible enthusiasm to overcome the hurdles of life. Being old does not mean being weak—that is the message we pick from this novel and thus this novel upholds the glory of human exuberance.
The reviewer is a student of English literature, Metropolitan University, Sylhet.