Resumo de The Old Man And The Sea

This is a
novella which describes a tragicomic, short story of an old fisherman named
Santiago. A boy, Manolin, who wants to acquire the knowledge of fishery often
accompanies Santiago in his catching fish. Unfortunately, the fisherman has a
bad luck and since 40 days he can't catch any fish. The boy's parents forbid to
sail with Santiego and force him to change a bout. The next day Santiago sails
out alone and as it turns out later it is a crucial day in his life. After a
few minutes of his catching he manages to catch a small tuna, which he uses as
a bait. The result of it is quite satisfactory because he feels that a big Fish
has been hooked. He is unaware of the fact that the fish he is trying to fish
out is 18 feet long. It is a huge marlin. After a while Santiago makes himself
aware of the size of the fish because he has real troubles with pulling the
fish closer to his bout. The fish is constantly putting up resistance. A
slaughterous fight begins between Santiago and the marlin. The marlin is very strong
and pulls the bout with Santiago out to the open sea. The fisherman is missing
the boy because he knows that the boy's help would be invaluable at the moment.
Santiago feels lonely now and to cope with it he starts to recall journeys with
Manolin, starts to talk with birds and even with marlin. Suddenly the fight
takes a turn for a worse for Santiago. First, a line cuts his palm when the
fish is pulling stronger. Then one of marlin's stronger pull knocks him over
and as a result Santiago cuts his eyebrow. But still he manages to hold the
line in his hands. To make it worse, his physical suffering starts to increase.
The result of cutting his palm leads to a cramp of Santiago's hand. But
Santiago doesn't give up, what gives him strength are recollections when he was
a young man and one day he was wrestling with a Black man almost for twenty
four hours. He won, and a memory of that event gives him power and convinces
him of the possibility of defeating marlin although he is an old man. But still
he doesn't know how big the marlin is. He realizes it when the fish surfaces
for a while. The fish turns out to be bigger than Santiago's bout. The
fisherman is excited.

All of a sudden, a strange event
draws Santiago's attention. He notices that the fish starts swimming around
which means one thing, the fish is getting weak. When the marlin swims around
the bout, the fisherman takes a harpoon and pierces the fish in its heart.
Finally, he catches the fish and tries to return to an island pulling the fish
behind the bout. Unfortunately, this is not the end of Santiago's troubles. He
has a long distance to sail and to his horror more sharks appear on his way
home. The bleeding dead body of the marlin lures sharks. Santiago almost falls
into despair. He tries to protect the caught fish from starving sharks but the
only weapon he has is an oar with fixed knife on its end. He manages to
threaten two sharks but he loses his weapon. From now on, sharks eat up the
fisherman's trophy. When Santiago finally reaches the coast of Havana, the only
thing of the marlin that has left was a skeleton. Santiago is entirely
exhausted and on the way to his palm hut he falls down several times. Tired
falls asleep and in the morning, Manolin, who during the absence of Santiago
was worrying about him, visits him. Meanwhile, other fishermen and tourists are
admiring a huge skeleton of fish. The boy promises Santiago that, no matter
what his parents say, he will stay with Santiago and will be learning from him
how to catch fish.

This is a
heartbreaking story and that summary does not reflect the suffering which has
happened to a poor old man. Why? As the author of the summary I am full of
remorse that I have made a poor summary of such an excellent Hemingway's story.
I am aware of the fact that some people after reading that summary may not want
to read the book. But that's not tha summary. Therefore, I wish to
encourage you, dear reader, to read that first-class story entirely. Reading
that story will not take you much than an hour, what's more, you will enrich
yourself. A simple lesson can be learnt from that story: "A man can be destroyed but not defeated".

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