The Old Man and the Sea

Summary

An aging Cuban fisherman named Santiago, long unlucky at sea, hooks an enormous marlin far out in the Gulf Stream and endures days of solitary struggle to bring it home. Hemingway's pared-down prose, biblical cadences, and tight focus on a single contest distill the themes of endurance and dignified defeat that ran through his earlier work. The novella reanimated his reputation and is widely read as a capstone of his late style.