The Old Man and the Sea

For eighty-four days Santiago has gone out into the Gulf Stream and come back with nothing.

The other fishermen of the village have their own words for a man whose luck has run out that thoroughly, and the boy Manolin, who learned everything he knows from the old man, has been sent by his parents to a luckier boat. Still he brings Santiago coffee and bait and talks with him about baseball and the great DiMaggio, and still he believes.

On the eighty-fifth day Santiago rows out further than any sensible man would go, alone, and sets his lines with more care than usual. Something takes the bait in the deep water that is larger than anything he has seen in a lifetime on that sea, and it does not surface, and it does not tire, and it begins to tow the skiff steadily away from land.

What follows is a contest lasting days, fought with cramped hands and a line across the back, between an old man who will not let go and a fish he has come to love.

Hemingway's late masterpiece is a short, sunlit parable about endurance, dignity, and the difference between being beaten and being destroyed.