He does catch one – only to find that the fish is far too big for him to handle by himself. Rather on the contrary, he sets out to the open sea – off Florida coast – and goes farther than he usually does – in an attempt to catch fish. This apathy and distrust, however does not deter him from fishing. He carries the albatross of misfortune around his neck. This includes his former apprentice – a young boy called Manolin who has deserted him for a better, prosperous ship. The protagonist Santiago is a fisherman, who is considered the most unlucky man of the village, having gone for months without catching a fish, so much so that people do not want to be associated with him, lest his bad luck rubs off on them. To think of it, isn’t it ironical that a man’s story of a soul-wrenching loss got Hemingway the noblest prize of his life time? The Old Man and the Sea: Summary and Plot Analysis He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for this novel.

This is one of the best works on Ernest Hemingway, touted as the major contributor towards him being awarded the nobel prize. This statement by the old man from the Old Man and the Sea sums up the essence of this tale of poignant yet uncelebrated heroism in the face of a series of misfortunes. “Let him think that I am more man than I am and I will be so.” It is a story of an old fisherman named Santiago who catches an enormous marlin (a type of fish) far out in the sea only to lose it and the pain that accompanies that loss. The Old Man and the Sea is a novel written by Ernest Hemingway.

The old man and the sea story