It’s the last week of Novellas in November hosted by Cathy and Rebecca, and the final theme is short classics. The buddy read this week is Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton and I’ll post my thoughts later this week. Today my short classic is The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, which won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.In 1954 Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 1954 for his mastery of the art of narrative and for the influence that he had exerted on contemporary style.

Synopsis – This is the story of an old Cuban fisherman and his supreme ordeal: a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Using the simple, powerful language of a fable, Hemingway takes the timeless themes of courage in the face of defeat and personal triumph won from loss and transforms them into a magnificent twentieth-century classic.

My thoughts:

A simple story on the surface, told in a few pages, yet full of depth. Hemingway’s language is direct and deceptively simple too, but I was drawn into his descriptive writing, almost a stream of consciousness in placea. I felt the exhaustion of the old man as he struggled to catch the enormous marlin and then to return to the shore with his catch.

It’s one of those books that I find so difficult to write about, a well known story that has received much praise and also a lot of criticism as some people find it boring.. There’s this old man alone on the sea pondering about life and death, what he has achieved and also his failures. He is at the end of his strength and yet he endures. He has perseverance and determination and pride. Pride in his ability and in his way of life. The matter of sin occupies his mind and he thinks it was a sin to kill the fish, even though he did it to keep himself alive and feed many people. Then he thought he was born to be a fisherman:

You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?

So, yes this is a simple tale and well told – it is more than just a fishing story and it gave me much to ponder.