Interpretive Essay

The Old Man and the Sea is a novel about a man’s fight with adversity, and finding peace with himself. In The Old Man and the Sea, An old man has seemingly lost his luck with his trade of fishing, going months without catching anything. He is a mentor to a young boy, who is told that he can’t go with the old man anymore because of the old man’s dry spell with fishing.

                The old man is looked down upon by the other fisherman, but he continuously goes out and fishes. And each night he comes home to his shack, and rests. He goes days without much to eat or drink, and usually only what the boy brings him. He is in rough times, but doesn’t show it.

                On the eighty fifth day, he sets out for deeper waters further out, hoping to catch a big fish. The boy wanted to go with him, but was unable to due to his family. The old man reaches a spot and drops his lines, always keeping them straight up and down. He then notices a bird, which’s following a school of fish, and he slowly moves with the bird. After a time, one of his lines gets a bite. He takes the line off the pole so that he may feel for the fish, without the fish being able to notice his pull.

                The line became heavy, and he pulled on the line to hook the fish. Once the fish was hooked, it took off to deeper waters, pulling the skiff behind it. The pulling went on for more than a day, and even when the pulling stopped, the struggle with the fish had just begun. It took all the old man had left to pull the fish in and harpoon it. Once he got the fish, it was too big to fit on the skiff, so he lashed it to the side of the skiff. That was a moment of peace and pride for the old man. But it was also the start of a new struggle.

                The new struggle was with the sharks. The fish alongside the skiff had attracted sharks, which in turn took chunks out of the fish. The old man harpooned one shark. Made a makeshift lance out of an oar and his knife, and stabbed two more sharks with it. His makeshift lance broke in the head of the next shark. Then he clubbed sharks with his short club, until a shark took that from him. The last thing he fought them with was the tiller, a bar or lever fitted to the head of a rudder, for turning the rudder in steering.  But it was too late. The sharks had eaten his fish and left him with nothing but a skeleton and head.

                He arrived back on the beach of home, and pulled the skiff onto shore himself. He was wary and tried to carry the mast to his home, he had to sit down five times along the way. He finally made it, laid in bed and fell asleep.  The fishermen of the town were gathered around his skiff, admiring the fish. One of them measured it to be 18 feet long. They inquired from the boy how the old man was doing. The boy brought the old man coffee, and newspapers from the time he had been gone. The boy had a fisherman, Pedrico, watch over the old man’s stuff.

He gave the head of the fish to Pedrico, and let the boy have the spear. He found out that he had been searched for, by the coast guard with planes.  The boy went to get food and the newspapers for the old man, and when he came back the old man was sleeping again. He was dreaming about the lions.