Hemingway has a deservedly incredible reputation as one of America's greatest 20th C writers and The Old Man and the Sea distills this talent into a gripping and poignant tale - absolutely splendid.

One of my favorite quotes is an early description of Santiago:
The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of the scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.
Everything about his was old except his eyes which were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated."
Classic Hemingway in the precision of the language and careful use vocabulary. Notice the alliteration from 'back', 'brown', 'blotches', 'benevolent', 'brings'. The two similies about the scars and his eyes just jump out of the text.
A short, but splendid masterpiece. A late flowering of his genius before the ignominious end of his life.

Don't miss my review of the Meyer biography of Hemingway: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
My rating of all the Pulitzer Winners: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

A masterpiece.

Like a fable, this has become a part of our cultural consciousness. Santiago's simple heroism is a benchmark for all who persevere and endure.

*** 2025 reread -

Beautiful but sad.

Many reviewers focus on the Christian symbolism and imagery, though this reread highlighted to me that these were minimal and consisted of a statement compared to crucifixion and, to me at least, the better scene when Santiago is carrying his mast; and of the general comparison to St. Peter and fishing for men.

What stood out to me this time was the themes of respect for the hunted animal which seemed akin to Native American traditions of similar relationships between the animal hunted and the man hunter and how easily these roles can be reversed. HIs description of the sharks can also be ties to this idea as he showed respect for the beauty and power of the makos.

Other reviewers have opined that the Marlin was a metaphor for a work of art attacked and destroyed by critics and this appears timely as Hemingway’s 1950 novel Across the River and Into the Trees received less than favorable critical acclaim. I also considered a comparison to his novel Islands in the Stream, which though it was published posthumously was apparently written approximately contemporaneously with this work.

Hemingway describes atavistic hunter seeker themes and imagery though this would be set in the late forties due to the references to “the Great DiMaggio”. There is evidence that this story goes back at least several years about a real Cuban fisherman but could also have been pseudo legendary and going back decades earlier.

I also considered an oblique comparison to Albert Camus’ 1947 novel The Plague in that both authors explored themes of fighting a hopeless battle but that the results of the fight were not as valuable as the struggle itself, that the act of fighting, of giving one’s all in a contest of strength and resources was what mattered.

Finally, this is simply very well written and though some critics disagree about the importance of this work when compared to his earlier novels like The Sun Also Rises, this is a great book in it’s own right.