Old Man and the Sea

Get ready for an emotional journey as this book guides you through a landscape of feelings and experiences. Buckle up for a ride filled with poignant moments that will resonate deeply, challenging your perspectives and stirring your heart. Each chapter invites you into a world rich with vivid storytelling and intricate characters, ensuring that you remain engaged from start to finish.

I’ve always believed that the best stories ever written are those that sever the veil (screen) upon which our seeming lives are temporarily projected. Through the hole/tear we see an eye looking in, and lo, it is our own! This story is about ambition, love, resistance, resilience, acceptance, and ultimate triumph, but not in the way that the conditioned mind would expect or tend to think. This beautiful little story reminded me of a time when I thought that I’d caught my own big fish. I’d been hired by a prestigious company that promised to turn my life around. As soon as they hired me, I was able to purchase a fully loaded, top of the line luxury vehicle. The latest model. Something that had never happened in my life. My first car had been a used, Orange 1973 Volkswagen Beetle. Which left me stranded more times than I can remember. And the nice thing was that the company that hired me gave me a car allowance that well exceeded my car payment! The company issued me a beautiful smart phone to conduct business, the latest model. Nothing but the best. and furnished me with all of the office supplies that I could ever want or need. They paid for my airfare and hotel stays when traveling, and had a rule that I could never stay in hotels that ran under $140 a night. They had a reputation to uphold! They paid for all of my meals when traveling and even paid for the entertainment that I had to furnish to my top buyers, from my top accounts! In other words, I got paid to take my buyers golfing and seven to strip clubs, as some preferred. I was making more than four times what I made before and the company even paid for my relocation to the most beautiful state that I’ve even stepped foot on — Oregon. I had many accounts scattered along the breath-taking Oregon coast, which I loved to call on, because it meant spending a few nights in hotels just steps from the water. Eating fresh seafood while marveling at the in and out breaths of the mighty Sea. However, like Santiago in the story of The Old Man and the Sea, I became tethered to this huge fish. It was so big that it took me wherever it wanted. And my life became a tempest of temporal highs interspersed with tremendous pressures. Since I had never made so much money before, I began to spend as if I was a millionaire! As if money was infinite rather than finite. Little by little, the sharp teeth of sharks all around me began to eat away at my big fish and I couldn’t do anything about it. My great joy began to dwindle, daily. Eventually, when I could take it no more, I emailed my letter of resignation and sailed back home with only a carcass of a fish. My company t-shirts, my samples, office equipment, etc. I loved the way that Hemingway was able to express deep emotion with few and simple words. Like when the boy, who loved the old man, cried because he’d seen the wounds in the old man’s palms. Battle scars from the tussle he’d undergone with the big fish at sea. I loved how Hemingway pulled me into the old man’s mind. The reasoning process and respect that he’d developed for the giant fish. The flavor of wisdom that comes with age. I’m not old yet, but I certainly identified with the old man’s spirit. When he arrived back home, there was this sense of redemption that radiated from him. This sense of acceptance of life as it is. You get this sense that a deep change had taken place within him. That he no longer gave as much importance to the things that can be taken away, but to the things that last, that matter, that heal the soul and heart — like the Purity and innocence of unconditional love, symbolized by the boy.

Oh my, what a sad, sad story. The old man, Santiago, and the young boy, Manolin are friends. This setting is in Cuba. Santiago would take the young boy with him and teach him about the practice of fishing. The old man who is down on his luck thought he should never have been a fisherman, but realized that fishing was the thing he was born for. One day, a great marlin took Santiago on an adventure leading the old man out to sea all alone. The great marlin kept a steady pace throughout the night with the old man in the boat in tow until sunrise. The old man had seen many great fish and caught two but never did it alone. He wished he had the boy as company, to see this and to help him. Yet he knew he had to go this journey by himself. After being out to sea for a couple of days, having caught and killed his great marlin, he had to fight off a pack of relentless man-eating sharks that eventually ate the marlin he was going to bring back to the market. In the end, after the old man made it back to shore Manolin came to visit him. Santiago told the boy that the sharks beat him. He was going to give up fishing. The boy told him, "He didn't beat you. Not the fish." The old man faced his adversary, his battle with a giant marlin out in the Gulf Stream. While Santiago had to deal with the injury to his hands, fighting off the aggressive attacks of the sharks in a pool of fresh blood surrounding his skiff (his small boat) his determination wasn't shattered. It didn't occur to the old man that in his time of weakness and apparent defeat, he garnered incredible strength to fight and win over his seemingly unbeatable foes. Easy recommended read!

This tale of an aged fisherman intent on proving he could still catch “the big-one” earned Hemingway a most well-deserved Pulitzer Prize. Capturing the writer’s trademark theme of challenge – be it physical or moral – the story features his crisp, sparse writing style that keeps the reader fully engaged to the end. Hemingway has weaved a fable of remarkable strength and beauty that relies on just three characters: The old man, a young boy who prays fervently for the old man to succeed in his quest, and a giant fish. To those who may claim it to be boring, uninteresting, predictable I say pish-posh (or more directly, don’t be foolish!) This is a perfectly crafted story that led to Hemingway being awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature. Those who dismiss it as anything less have most assuredly never challenged themselves to seek success against odds deemed by others as unobtainable. This is a great book; great literature, and well deserves the title of “Classic”.

Probably third time I’ve read this story, which shows how much I love the human heart, soul and endurance in it…

Read it in a day, mainly sitting by the water’s edge in Mexico- so not far from where it is set. Such a simple story but so beautifully and powerfully written - you can almost taste the salt on your lips, and the rope burning across your hands. A classic for a reason. And timeless.

The cover claims that the book is Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea," but when I opened it up, the actual contents is "Revelations of Divine Love" by Julian of Norwich - a Christian text. I guess Benediction Classics is running some sort of religious scam, trying to trick people into reading Christian texts by any means necessary.

I can understand why this book is so well renowned and the length off it make for a very easy read too.