4/15/15 The Old Man And The Sea?

    I read through this book in like three-four days.  It is supposed to be Ernest Hemingway's best work, since it won him a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.  The story is only 98 pages long, but the story is so good that I found it hard to put down.  I read another collection of his and I was not moved, but this one had me a little teary eyed at the end.
    The old man is an old fisherman who has spent his life fishing the Gulf of Mexico in different capacities.  He is in a small skiff now in his old age.  The story picks up on the old man's 84th day without catching a fish, I guess one that can be sold to a market.  His best friend is a boy who grew up fishing with him since five years old.  The man has taught him everything he can teach an apprentice, and the boy loves and cares for the man, almost as a son.  He helps him in the evenings to dock and store his boat and belongings and then comes around to check on him to make sure he has some food to eat.  It is apparent that the man lives to fish.  And talk a little of baseball. 
    It is the man's 85th day, and he determines this is a lucky omen.  The boy brings him some bait to use, the boy has to work on a bigger ship per his family's request, I only assume he is helping to provide for them.  The old man sets out determined to go farther than is customary on his skiff.  He goes where the ocean drops a mile deep and hooks onto a behemoth.
    The story then goes on a journey.  The old man hooks a marlin longer than his skiff, and it tests the old man's stamina, his mental wherewithal, and his skills at survival.  Just when you think things are turning around for the old man, new obstacles show up.  In the end, the man loses his prize, but gains adulation of the other fishermen who didn't take him seriously anymore.
    He is left a heap of a man after returning to land, but some positive words from the boy and the old man is ready to head back out to sea.  This was a story of man vs. beast but at the same time man vs. himself as it took more of the man not going crazy as he was dragged by the huge fish for three days before giving up the good fight.