The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway (1952)
“A 127-page novella about an old man catching a fish — and one of the most argued-about books in American literature.”
At a Glance
Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who has gone 84 days without a catch, rows alone far into the Gulf Stream and hooks an enormous marlin. Over three days he battles the fish in open ocean — no food, no sleep, his hands destroyed — and finally kills it. On the way home, sharks strip the carcass to a skeleton. He returns to the village with nothing but the giant bones. He falls into a deep sleep. Manolin, the boy who loves him, sits at his side.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
The single issue of Life magazine containing the full text sold 5.3 million copies in 48 hours — one of the largest single-issue sales in the magazine's history. The Pulitzer Prize (1953) and Nobel Prize (1954) followed. It is the most-assigned Hemingway text in American schools, the most frequently cited example of his 'iceberg theory' of prose, and the novella that restored his literary reputation after a decade of decline. At 127 pages, it remains the shortest book to win both awards.
Diction Profile
Deceptively simple — short words, Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, almost no Latinate abstraction. Formal only in its refusal to be informal.
Very low