by Steve Martin

Created on: January 23, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

For all those writers, and aspiring writers, who never use one word where two will do, or a one-syllable word where they can think of an equivalent three- or four-syllable one, The Old Man and the Sea (1952) by Ernest Hemingway, should be made mandatory reading. This is writing at its finest. The basic story is as simple as it could be - an old fisherman out on a fishing trip - and the prose is pared down and sparing. However, the overall result is a powerful, deeply affecting, story of great poetry and meaning.

The old man in question is a poverty-stricken fisherman, sailing out of Havana. He has gone 84 days without catching anything. The boy who sails with him has been ordered to sail with someone else by his father, but there is obviously a very deep, strong bond between the two; the boy making sure the old man is fed and cared for.

The fisherman sets out on day 85, wanting nothing more than to catch his fish. This is a simple man who asks for nothing much from the world. The evening before his trip, he sat in his almost derelict shed reading baseball reports from an old newspaper. For him, this is enough. This and catching a fish.

He sails out into a sea which has supported him throughout his life. This is a primitive relationship; a fisherman and the sea; man and nature. What follows is a battle which tests the old man's ability to endure to the limit. He hooks a marlin; the biggest he has ever seen; longer than his boat. What follows is a long tussle between man and fish; a tussle in which the man's love and respect for the giant fish and its struggle are evident. After a monumental struggle, the fisherman kills the fish and lashes it to the side of his boat.

Sailing back to Havana, sharks attack and, bite by bite, the marlin is eaten. The old man is defeated at last; not so much at seeing the sharks destroy the money he would have earned, as by the ignoble end to such a noble fish.

The novel ends with the old man back in his shack, sleeping face down on his old bed. One senses that this toughest of men has finally been defeated and that he will never again be able to endure what he went through with the marlin.

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