A New Day

The Old Man and the Sea 

by Ernest Hemingway

“Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.”

― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

"I will show him what a man is capable of and what a man is willing to endure." Santiago is the title's old man, a poor Cuban fisherman who has not caught a fish in eighty-four days. The other fishermen now call him unlucky, and his best friend, the boy Manolin, has been forbidden from fishing with him any longer. On the eighty-fifth day, Santiago decides to go farther out than usual, farther than the other fishermen, in the hopes of finding a big fish. On that day, he hooks a massive marlin, and the battle for dominance and survival commences.

This is more than just a tale of the struggle to catch a big fish. When you join the old man in his boat, you realize how much he loves the boy, the sea, and the fish. This, combined with his vision of lions on a beach, gives him the courage to keep going, as well as the cheerfulness that allows him to do so day after day.

This is the book that won Hemingway the Pulitzer Prize and, eventually, the Nobel. It depicts man alone against nature in the simple style that Hemingway mastered. I first read this many years ago and have since read other of his novels, but this is the one that sticks with me the most.

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