The Old Man and the Sea : Summary

Summary

Day One: Santiago, an old fisherman, has gone 84 days without catching a fish. For the first 40 days, a boy named Manolin helped him, but Manolin’s parents made him leave Santiago. They made Manolin work on a “luckier” boat. Even though Manolin now works elsewhere, he still helps Santiago carry his empty boat (called a skiff) at the end of each day. Santiago’s face and hands are scarred from years of handling fishing gear and large fish. Though he is old, his eyes are still bright like the color of the sea, and they remain “cheerful and undefeated.” After another unsuccessful day, Manolin helps Santiago bring in his boat and equipment. Manolin tells Santiago that he’s made some money working on the luckier boat and offers to fish with him again. Santiago advises him to stay with the lucky boat, but they both agree that they believe Santiago will catch a big fish soon.

Manolin offers to buy Santiago a beer at the Terrace, a small restaurant by the docks. The other fishermen there tease Santiago, but Manolin doesn’t care. He talks with Santiago about the time they first fished together when Manolin was just five years old. Manolin offers to bring Santiago fresh sardines for bait. As he drinks beer, Santiago tells Manolin that he plans to fish far out at sea the next day. Manolin says he’ll try to convince the man he works with to go far out too since that man has poor eyesight and will likely agree. Manolin wonders how Santiago’s vision remains so sharp after all these years. Santiago smiles and says, “I am a strange old man.” After the beer, Manolin helps Santiago carry his fishing gear to his small shack. On the wall are two pictures: one of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which belonged to Santiago’s wife, and another of Cuba’s patron saint. Santiago used to have a photo of his wife hanging there, but he took it down because it made him feel too lonely.

That night, Santiago offers Manolin some food, but Manolin knows Santiago has very little food. They sit on the porch and read about baseball in the newspaper. Santiago tells Manolin that he believes tomorrow, the 85th day, will be lucky. Manolin jokes, asking why Santiago doesn’t wait until the 87th day to break his longest unlucky streak. Santiago laughs and says such a long streak couldn’t happen twice. Later, Manolin goes to get the sardines he promised, and when he returns, Santiago is asleep. Manolin covers him with a blanket. When Santiago wakes up, Manolin gives him food that Martin, the owner of the Terrace, provided as a gift. Santiago is grateful and says he must thank Martin by giving him a part of the next big fish he catches. Santiago and Manolin talk about baseball, especially Santiago’s favorite player, Joe DiMaggio, whose father was a fisherman. Manolin tells Santiago that he thinks Santiago is the best fisherman. Santiago humbly disagrees but admits that while he’s no longer strong, he has “tricks” and determination. After Manolin leaves, Santiago lies down to sleep. He no longer dreams of storms, women, or fish. He only dreams of the beaches of Africa and the lions he saw there when he was young.

Day Two: Early the next morning, Santiago wakes up and goes to Manolin’s house, as he always does, to wake him. Santiago drinks his coffee and heads out to fish, knowing he won’t eat anything all day because eating bores him now. Manolin helps Santiago load his boat, and they wish each other luck. As Santiago rows into the water, he hears other boats nearby but no voices—fishermen don’t talk to each other while working. Santiago rows over a deep part of the ocean, called “the great well,” where fish usually gather. He hears flying fish around him and thinks of them as his friends. He feels sorry for the birds that struggle to catch the fish and admires how hard they must work to survive. Santiago calls the sea “la mar,” viewing it as a woman who can either give or withhold favors, depending on her mood. Younger fishermen, however, call the sea “el mar,” as if it were a masculine force to battle. Santiago disagrees with them. (Santiago loves nature and thinks of himself as a part of it.)

By sunrise, Santiago finds a good spot and drops his baited lines. Each line is measured to a specific depth. He is proud of how straight he keeps his lines, unlike the younger fishermen, who let theirs drift. As the sun rises higher, he marvels at how his eyesight is still good. Santiago notices a seabird diving, a sign that fish are nearby. He rows further out but arrives too late. The big fish has moved on, but Santiago remains confident. Later in the morning, Santiago catches a 10-pound tuna, which he plans to use as bait. He talks to himself, wondering when he started doing so. He realizes it was probably when Manolin stopped fishing with him.

Around noon, one of his lines tightens. Santiago feels a marlin nibbling on the sardine bait 600 feet below. He patiently waits until he thinks the marlin has taken the hook, and then tries to reel it in. The marlin doesn’t move—it’s a massive fish. The marlin begins pulling Santiago’s boat far out to sea. As night falls, Santiago holds onto the line. He loses sight of Cuba’s shore but knows he can find his way back by following Havana’s lights. As night deepens, Santiago wishes Manolin could see his catch. He pities the marlin and wonders if it is an old fish, like him. Santiago knows that the marlin is male and feels they are now connected—two creatures alone in the vast sea. Santiago recalls a time when he and Manolin caught a female marlin. The male marlin had stayed beside her until the very end, loyal and unwavering. When they caught the female, the male followed their boat, heartbroken.

Day Three: Before dawn, another fish bites on one of Santiago’s other baited lines. Santiago quickly cuts the other lines to focus solely on the marlin. The marlin suddenly dives, pulling Santiago down and cutting his face on the line. Santiago vows to fight the marlin until one of them dies. The fish pulls the boat northeast. Santiago hopes it will jump so its air sacs will fill, stopping it from diving deep. If the marlin dies underwater, Santiago knows he won’t have the strength to pull it up. Santiago praises the marlin’s strength but vows to kill it. A small bird lands on the marlin’s line, and Santiago talks to it, pitying how tired it must be. The bird flies off when the marlin lurches, cutting Santiago’s hand. He curses himself for losing focus. Santiago washes his wound and eats the tuna he caught earlier to keep up his strength. His hand soon cramps. As Santiago nurses his cramped hand, he sees a flock of ducks and feels that no man is ever truly alone on the sea. He wishes Manolin were there to rub his cramped hands.

Suddenly, the marlin jumps out of the water. It’s an enormous, dark purple fish, two feet longer than Santiago’s boat. Santiago struggles to keep the line tight. He thinks the marlin must weigh over 1,000 pounds and feels proud. He also feels nervous, about catching such a fish alone. Santiago prays, promising to say 10 Hail Marys and 10 Our Fathers if he catches the fish. He feels comforted by the prayers, though his pain doesn’t lessen. As the day ends, Santiago prepares to catch more food and reflects on his purpose in catching the marlin: To show “what a man can do and what a man endures” and to prove to Manolin that he is indeed a “strange old man.”

To distract himself, Santiago thinks about baseball. He tells himself that he must try to be worthy of the great DiMaggio, “who does all things perfectly even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel.” He wonders if DiMaggio would stay with the marlin as long as he will stay with it, and knows that DiMaggio would. It occurs to Santiago then that men may be inferior to the “great birds and beasts.” For a moment, Santiago wishes that he were the marlin. That is, unless sharks were to come. If the sharks come, Santiago thinks, both he and the marlin would be in trouble. To prop up his confidence, Santiago remembers when, as a young man in Casablanca, he arm-wrestled a great “negro” who was the strongest man on the docks. The battle lasted a day and a night, and finally, Santiago won. For a long time after that, he was known as “The Champion.”

As night falls, Santiago eats some of the dolphinfish he caught. He wonders why the lions are the only thing he dreams about anymore.

Day Four: The marlin suddenly jumps, waking Santiago. In the dark, it leaps again and again, pulling Santiago forward and reopening the cuts on his hand. Santiago holds tight, determined not to let the fish go. At sunrise, the marlin begins circling Santiago’s boat, a sign that it’s tiring. Santiago pulls it closer inch by inch, but the struggle takes hours. Santiago finally drives his harpoon into the marlin’s heart. The fish makes a final leap, then falls into the water, dead. Santiago lashes the fish alongside his boat. He estimates it weighs 1,500 pounds, far too big to bring onboard (on his boat). He begins sailing toward Cuba, imagining how much money the fish will bring and how proud Manolin will be.

An hour later, a Mako shark appears, drawn by the marlin’s blood. Santiago kills the shark with his harpoon but loses the harpoon in the process. The shark’s bite took a 40-pound hunk of flesh from the marlin. More blood now pours from the marlin into the water, which Santiago knows will only attract more sharks. It seems to Santiago that his battle with the marlin is worthless. More sharks will just come and eat the marlin. But Santiago quickly reminds himself that “a man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

Two more sharks attack and Santiago kills them with a knife tied to an oar. However, they eat a quarter of the marlin. Santiago feels ashamed and apologizes to the marlin. As night falls, more sharks come. Santiago fights them with whatever he has left—a club and finally the boat’s tiller. By the time he drives off the last shark, nothing is left of the marlin but its skeleton. Santiago arrives at the harbor before dawn. He drags his boat’s mast on his shoulder to his shack, stopping to rest several times.

Day Five: In the morning, Manolin comes to Santiago’s shack and finds him sleeping. He is relieved to see that Santiago is alive, but when he notices the cuts on Santiago’s hands, he begins to cry. Manolin quietly goes outside to get some coffee for him.

Down by the water, several fishermen are gathered around Santiago’s boat. They are looking at the huge skeleton of the marlin tied to it. They estimate that the fish was about 18 feet long. When they see Manolin, they ask how Santiago is doing. They feel guilty for all the times they have laughed at him.

When Santiago wakes up, Manolin is there with the coffee. Santiago asks him to give the marlin’s head to Pedrico to use as bait for his fish traps. Manolin tells Santiago that the Coast Guard and search planes had been looking for him for days. He then promises Santiago that he will fish with him again, no matter what his family says. When Manolin asks how much he suffered at sea, Santiago simply replies, “Plenty.” Manolin then goes out to get Santiago some food and the daily newspapers. Later, some tourists at the Terrace notice the big skeleton of the marlin in the water. They ask the waiter what it is, and the waiter tells them “Tiburon,” meaning shark. The tourists misunderstand and think the skeleton belongs to a shark.

When Manolin returns to the shack, Santiago is asleep again. Manolin quietly watches over him as Santiago dreams of lions playing on the beach.