52. the OLD MAN and the SEA

Ernest Hemingway 1952

A heartening symbolic novella of Santiago, an old man from Cuba, out too far into the sea, alone, courageously attempting to catch and take back home a big marlin, the big one of his dreams.

"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy's parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky..."(9)

"He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride."
(14)

"Age is my alarm clock...Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?"
(24)

"He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great consequences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor his wife."(25)

"Why did they make the birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the the ocean can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea."(29)

"He always thought of the sea as la mar which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman."(29)

"But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought."(30)

"But what a great fish he is and what will he bring in the market if the flesh is good. He took the bait like a male and he pulls like a male and his fight has no panic in it. I wonder if he has any plans or if he is just as desperate as I am?"(49)

"His sword was as long as a baseball hat and tapered like a rapier and he rose his full length from the water and then re-entered it, smoothly like a diver and the old man saw the great scythe-blade of his tail go under and the line commenced to race out."(62)

"But I will say ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys that I should catch this fish and I promise to make a pilgrimage to the Virgin of Cobre if I catch him. That is a promise."(64)

"He is a great fish and I must convince him, he thought. I must never let him learn his strength nor what he could if he made his run."(63)

"The old man was dreaming about the lions."(127)
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First Scribner trade paperback edition 2003
127 pages
Book borrowed from the Library
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Personal Note: I reread this, since I remember liking this book eons and eons ago, and somehow, I ended liking it even more.