About the product
Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" was first published in 1952. The work tells the story of an episode in the life of an old Cuban fisherman who fought on the high seas with a huge marlin, which became his biggest catch in his life. “The Old Man and the Sea” is the last known work published during the writer’s lifetime. The story was awarded the Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes.
On the site you can read online a summary of “The Old Man and the Sea” chapter by chapter, as well as take a test on your knowledge of the story for better preparation for a literature lesson.
The material was prepared jointly with the highest category teacher Lyubov Alexandrovna Koroshchup.
Experience as a teacher of Russian language and literature - 30 years.
Summary
The old man was fishing alone in the Gulf Stream. For 84 days he did not catch a single fish. For the first 40 days he had a boy with him. But the boy’s parents, deciding that the old man was now “unlucky,” ordered Manolin to go to sea on another boat - the “lucky” one. “The old man was thin and emaciated, the back of his head was cut by deep wrinkles,” and his cheeks were covered with spots of harmless skin cancer caused by the sun. There were old twine scars on his arms.
One day a boy and an old man were sitting on the terrace and drinking beer. The boy remembered how he caught his first fish at the age of 5 - he remembered everything from the very first day when the old man took him to the sea. Santiago shared that tomorrow he will go to sea before dawn.
The old man lived very poorly in a hut made of royal palm leaves. The boy brought Santiago dinner - he did not want the old man to fish without eating. After dinner the old man went to bed. “He dreamed of the Africa of his youth,” its smell brought from the shore, “distant countries and lion cubs coming ashore.”
Early in the morning, after drinking coffee with the boy, Santiago went out to sea. “The old man decided in advance that he would go far from the shore.” “In his mind he always called the sea la mar, as the people who love him call it in Spanish.” “The old man constantly thought of the sea as a woman.” Santiago decided today to try his luck there, “where flocks of bonito and albacore roam.” He cast the hooks with bait and slowly swam with the current. Soon the old man caught a tuna and threw it under the stern deck, concluding that it would make good bait.
Suddenly, one of the rods trembled and bent down to the water - the old man realized that a marlin had been caught on the bait. After waiting a little, he began to tug at the line. However, the fish turned out to be too big and towed the boat along with it. “She will die soon,” the old man thought. “She can’t swim forever.” But after 4 hours the fish was still going out to sea, and the old man was still standing, holding the line taut. He carefully sat down on the mast, resting and trying to conserve his strength.
After sunset it got colder, and the old man threw a sack on his back. The lights of Havana began to disappear, from which Santiago concluded that they were moving further and further to the east. The old man regretted that the boy was not with him. “It’s impossible for a person to be left alone in old age,” he thought. “But this is inevitable.”
The old man was thinking about how much money this big fish would bring him if its meat was tasty. Before sunrise, I took a bite on one of the baits behind my back. To prevent another fish from snatching the big one, he cut the line. The old man again regretted that the boy was not with him: “You can only count on yourself.” At some point, the fish pulled hard, he fell down and cut his cheek. At dawn the old man noticed that the fish was heading north. It was impossible to tug on the line - the tug could cause the wound to expand and “if the fish surfaces, the hook could break out completely.”
The fish suddenly rushed and knocked down the old man. When he felt the forest, he saw that blood was flowing from his hand. Moving the line to his left shoulder, he washed away the blood - the abrasion was exactly on the part of his arm that he needed for work. This upset him. The old man cleaned the tuna he caught yesterday and began to chew. His left arm was completely cramped. “I hate it when my hand cramps,” he thought. “Your own body—and such a catch!”
Suddenly, the old man felt that the thrust weakened, the forest slowly went up, and fish began to appear on the surface of the water. “She was burning all over in the sun, her head and back were dark purple. <…> Instead of a nose, she had a sword, long, like a baseball stick, and sharp at the end, like a rapier.” The fish was two feet longer than the boat. The old man “had seen many fish that weighed over a thousand pounds, and had caught two such fish himself in his time, but he had never before had to do it alone.”
Although the old man did not believe in God, in order to catch this fish, he decided to read the “Our Father” ten times and the “Virgin Mary” the same number of times. The sun was setting, and the fish kept swimming.
The old man caught a mackerel - now he has enough food for the whole night and another day. The pain that the rope caused him turned into a dull ache. He could not tie the string to the boat - so that it would not break from the jerk of the fish, he had to constantly weaken the pull with his own body. The old man decided to get some sleep, holding the line with both hands. He dreamed of a huge school of porpoises, and then of a yellow sandbank and lions emerging onto it. He woke up from a jerk - the forest was rapidly going into the sea. The fish began to jump, the boat rushed forward. The fish followed the current. The old man regretted that his left hand was weaker than his right.
“The sun was rising for the third time since he went out to sea, and then the fish began to make circles.” The old man began to pull the line towards himself. Two hours passed, but the fish were still circling. The old man is very tired. By the end of the third circle the fish surfaced thirty yards from the boat. Her tail "was larger than the largest sickle." Finally the prey was at the edge of the boat. The old man raised the harpoon high and stabbed the fish in the side. She rose high above the water, “it seemed as if she was hanging in the air above the old man and the boat,” then rushed into the sea, flooding the fisherman and the entire boat with water.
The old man felt sick, but when he came to his senses, he saw that the fish was lying on its back, and the sea around it was colored with its blood. Having examined the prey, the old man concluded: “It weighs at least half a ton.” The old man tied the fish to the boat and headed home.
An hour later, the first shark overtook him - it swam to the smell of blood that flowed from the wound of the killed fish. Seeing the shark, the old man prepared a harpoon. The predator sank its jaws into the fish. The old man threw a harpoon at the shark and killed it. “She took with her about forty pounds of fish,” the old man said out loud. The shark dragged his harpoon and the rest of the rope to the bottom. Now blood was flowing from the fish again - others would come for this shark. The fisherman felt as if a shark had rushed at him.
Two hours later he spotted the first of two sharks. He picked up an oar with a knife tied to it and hit the predator in the back, and then plunged the knife into her eyes. The old man lured the second shark, he had to stab it several times with a knife before the predator died. The fish became much lighter. “They probably took with them at least a quarter of the fish, and the best meat at that.”
“The next shark came alone.” The old man hit her with an oar and a knife, the blade broke. “The sharks attacked him again just before sunset.” There were two of them - the old man beat the predators with a club until they swam away. “He didn’t want to look at the fish. He knew that half of her was gone.”
The old man decided to fight until he dies. He "saw the glow of city lights about ten o'clock in the evening." At midnight, a fisherman was attacked by a whole flock of sharks. “He hit the heads with a club and heard the jaws clanging and the boat shaking as they grabbed the fish from below.” When the club was gone, he tore the tiller out of its socket and began hitting the sharks with it. When one of the sharks swam to the head of the fish, the old man realized that “it was all over.” Now the boat moved easily, but “the old man thought of nothing and felt nothing.” “At night, the sharks attacked the gnawed carcass of the fish, like gluttons grabbing scraps from the table. The old man didn’t pay attention to them.”
Santiago entered the small bay when the lights on the Terrace were already extinguished. Heading towards his hut, he turned around and in the light of the lantern saw the huge tail of a fish and the exposed line of the spine. The boy came to him while he was still sleeping. Seeing the old man’s hands, Manolin began to cry.
“A lot of fishermen gathered around the boat,” one of the fishermen measured the skeleton - “It was eighteen feet from nose to tail.”
The boy brought hot coffee to the old man. The old man allowed Manolin to take the fish sword as a souvenir. The boy said that they were looking for the old man, and now they would fish together, because he still had a lot to learn. Manolin promised Santiago: “I will bring you happiness.”
A tourist who came to Terrace asked what kind of skeleton was lying near the shore. The waiter replied: “Sharks” and wanted to explain what happened. However, the woman only said in surprise to her companion: “I didn’t know that sharks have such beautiful, gracefully curved tails!”
“Upstairs, in his hut, the old man was sleeping again. He was sleeping face down again, with the boy watching over him. The old man dreamed of lions.”
Summary of the story “The Old Man and the Sea” in detail
For 84 days now, the old man has been fishing unsuccessfully on his boat in the Gulf Stream. The boy goes with him for the first forty days, but his parents, realizing that there will be no catch, tell their son to go to sea with another boat - there Manolin catches three big fish in the first week. But the boy was very sorry for the poor old man, who came day after day without a catch, so he often helped him carry the tackle, the harpoon and the patched sail. The boy loves and cares for the old man - he taught him to fish, revealing all the intricacies of this matter and sharing his own experience.
Manolin treats Santiago to a beer and they talk on the Terrace, reminiscing about things from long ago - the day the boy caught his first fish. He was five years old then, on his first voyage. His teacher pulled the fish, which was still alive, into the boat. The fish almost destroyed the boat: it beat with its tail and broke the can, but the old man managed to kill the fish with a club before it could sink the ship.
Then the two friends talk about the weather and where the best catch is. The old man tells the boy that he is going to sail away from the shore, leaving at dawn, and returning when the wind changes.
After resting, the old man and the boy carried Santiago's equipment to his hut. The walls of the hut were made of brown compressed palm leaves. The mast could hardly fit there, and the rest of the space was occupied by a bed, table and chair. Previously, there was a photograph of the fisherman’s late wife hanging on the wall, but he hid it so as not to feel sad again.
The boy goes to catch sardines and returns after sunset. He discovers that Santiago has fallen asleep and decides to go get dinner. Manolin buys food in metal cups from a restaurant on the Terrace. After the meal, they talk about baseball and reminisce about stories from the past. The boy calls the old man the best fisherman.
They agree that Santiago will wake up the boy in the morning, since he himself wakes up very early due to his advanced age, and they will go to the sea together - although they will fish on different boats. Having said goodbye, Manolin leaves, and the old man goes to bed.
Santiago wakes up when the moon is still shining behind the open door. He, overcoming the morning freshness, goes to the boy’s house. Manolin is sleeping on the bed, the old man wakes him up with a careful touch, and they leave the house.
After putting all the gear in the boat, they drink coffee at a diner. There the boy takes sardines, and they go down to the sea. After wishing each other good luck and launching Santiago's boat, they part ways.
The old man decides to go as far from the shore as possible. He swims through the “great well” - a place where the bottom drops seven hundred fathoms, and the current forms a whirlpool, bringing here all kinds of fish.
Santiago loves the sea, affectionately calling it la mar - in the feminine gender, sometimes speaking badly about it, but treating it like a beloved woman.
Before the sun rises, Santiago casts out his baited rods as his boat floats slowly with the current. He has spare skeins of fishing line with him, so that fish can be caught at great depths, and the boy also gave the old man two tuna, which Santiago has now put on the longest lines. The old man slowly rowed his oars, hoping for luck.
The sun is already shining brightly, the shore seems like a green stripe. Suddenly the old man notices a bird circling in the sky - this is a sign of a catch. And indeed, soon the short fishing line became taut, the old man quickly took the end of the string in his hands and began to pull. The line jerks again, and Santiago notices the golden side of the fish, and then throws it over the side into the boat. This is tuna. The fisherman hits him in the head with a knife, thinking it would be great bait. Since childhood, Santiago has dreamed of catching a big fish, he sees this as the goal of his life, and now he has hope of fulfilling this dream - where there is tuna, there should be bigger fish.
He was not mistaken, because soon the line trembled cautiously. The old man knew this meant that at a depth of 100 fathoms there was now a hungry marlin eating sardines from the point of a hook. Santiago watches every movement of the fishing line, and happiness arises in his soul.
Suddenly the movement stopped, but the old man still felt the weight of the fish. Finally, the line reached down, which means one thing - it pecked. Santiago waits for the moment when the hook hits the fish in the heart and kills him, he longs to finally put a harpoon into his prey.
Realizing that it was time to act, the old man sharply pulled the fishing line and began to pull the string. But he fails - the fish was too heavy and did not give in. She is so strong that she moved the boat and dragged it along with her.
The next day, Santiago discovers that the fish is still pulling the boat. They sailed so far that the shore was no longer visible. But he doesn't worry about it, because he can always return, sailing to the lights of Havana. In addition, the fisherman is full of strength and desire to see his prey.
The next night he looks at the stars and thinks that in old age a person cannot be left alone. Then he suddenly feels sorry for the big fish he caught on his hook. In thought, he regrets that he did not take Manolin with him. He remembers how, together with a boy, he caught a female marlin, and the male did not leave her until the end, he swam around the boat and almost cut the line with his sharp tail, and then jumped high and, seeing that his girlfriend was dead, disappeared into the dark depths of the sea.
The old man tries to pull the fish out again, but it jerks violently, and Santiago cuts his cheek and wounds his hands. However, his determination to see his prey only becomes stronger. He is counting on the fact that the fish will soon get tired and give up or emerge unexpectedly - then Santiago will have enough strength and string to pull it out.
The old man eats tuna, while thinking about when the big fish will weaken. His left arm is cramping, the result of a recent injury. He thinks that he is now more alone than ever, but he calms down, looking at the reflections of the sun on the waves and feels how his arm becomes lighter and the cramp goes away. Suddenly the forest rises and a huge dark purple fish emerges from the water. Its nose is shaped like a sword, pointed at the end like a rapier, and the length of the fish itself is two feet longer than the boat. Santiago realizes that this is the first time he has seen a fish of this size. He feels severe pain in his arms and back, so he does not try to pull out his prey.
Santiago is overcome by fatigue, his body hurts, but he is supported by the thought of a boy who believes in him. He begins to remember his fight in a Casablanca tavern, where he defeated the strongest man in the port. They competed with their hands for a whole day, taking turns taking each other's advantage, but Santiago became the champion. He then allowed the enemy to recoup, but won this battle too. After this, Santiago gave up fighting and decided to engage only in fishing.
The old man has never fallen asleep yet; he understands that he will be completely exhausted, but he decides to snack on mackerel first. He deftly cuts it with a knife - cuts off the skin and meat and throws the skeleton of the fish overboard. After eating, he lies down on the side of the boat, and takes the line in his left hand - now if the fish suddenly pulls the line, he will feel it.
Santiago wakes up from a sharp jerk - the forest goes into the water. He quickly grabs the line, then a fish swims out of the water, it accelerates, and the boat rushes forward. With difficulty, the fisherman manages to stop the line. He understands that the fish will soon begin to circle and convinces himself to believe in his strength and not give in to the fear of drowning.
On the third day, the fish begins to make circles. Santiago watches every movement of the line and does not stop pulling it. Soon, due to tension, black spots begin to flash before his eyes, but the old man is only concerned about his growing weakness. He decides to act carefully so that the fish wounded by his hook does not go mad with pain and fall off. His prey hits the wire again and again, but Santiago continues to choose the line evenly.
The fish occasionally emerges from the water to take a breath of air and disappears again. The old man was tired by the end of the third lap - sweat was pouring from his face, and his consciousness was swimming. But with each new circle he selects more and more forests and hopes that he will soon be able to plant a harpoon in his victim.
There was one circle after another, but the fish did not weaken. Santiago gathers all his will into a fist and, overcoming the pain, begins to act. He, pressing down the line with his foot, takes the harpoon in his hands. The old man waits until the fish swims close enough to the boat, and with all his strength he plunges the harpoon into the side of his victim. The fish rises sharply above the water, but immediately falls back into the sea dead.
Some time later, when the old man finally comes to his senses, he pulls the fish to the side and ties it to the boat. Santiago straightens the sail and points the boat towards the house - to the southwest. He swims with his prey, but still cannot believe that this is all real.
An hour later, the first shark appears - it smelled blood while at depth and followed the wake of the boat. The old man notices her and prepares a harpoon - his consciousness instantly clears, he is full of determination. The shark quickly swims up to the boat and sticks out its toothy head, and then Santiago plunges his harpoon into the predator. The shark falls dead into the sea and quickly sinks to the bottom, along with a harpoon stuck in its head. The old man realizes that now he has no weapon, and the fish's blood will attract even more sharks. He ties his knife to the handle of the oar - now this is his only protection.
Santiago notices several brown fins - broadnose sharks swam to the smell of blood. One of them takes a piece from the fish, and the second watches the old man. With a sharp movement, he picks up an oar with an attached knife and kills one of the predators with one precise blow to the body. Then Santiago does the same with the second shark. The old fisherman has lost about a quarter of his fish, and he is already beginning to regret that he caught the marlin - it turned out to be a disaster for both him and his prey.
Santiago stabbed the next shark in the side, but it managed to break the blade. Now the old man has only a hook, a club, a tiller and two oars, but he does not give up, believing that he will reach his native island alive.
The sun is just beginning to set behind the horizon, and brown fins reappear near the boat. Santiago picks up a baton and, as soon as the shark shows its head, hits it right on the tip of its nose. The predator slides into the water. Another shark turned out to be tenacious - the fisherman hits it several times before it disappears into the water, taking half of the catch with it.
Santiago is very tired. He leans against the stern and realizes that he is alive, that he still feels pain. At this moment, the old man is firmly convinced that if the sharks come at night, he will fight to the last. The old fisherman begins to argue that happiness cannot be bought. Now all he wants is to see the lights of Havana. Then he notices a pale glow in the distance, which intensified every minute. But there is a long way to get to these lights.
At night, Santiago is attacked by sharks again. In the darkness he sees nothing and moves towards the noise. At first he beats the predators with a club, but soon loses it. You have to fight with the tiller. Meanwhile, the sharks pounce on the dead fish again and again until they eat it completely.
When the last shark disappears from sight, the old man bitterly admits defeat. Santiago now only thinks about his boat - after the shark attack, it needs a new tiller.
When Santiago enters his home bay, the lights have already been extinguished and silence reigns in the harbor - everyone is sleeping. The old man ties up the boat, removes the mast and sail, and goes to his hut. Along the way, he stops to rest five times, but when he finally gets home, he lies down and instantly falls asleep.
In the morning a boy comes into the hut. After checking to see if the fisherman is alive, he notices his wounded hands and goes in tears to get coffee for the old man.
Having returned, Manolin patiently waits for Santiago to awaken and only after that asks him about what happened. They talk for a long time. The old man gives the boy a sword-shaped nose - the only thing left of the fish. Manolin promised to bring happiness to Santiago, and also to get him a good spear and a new knife. They agreed to go fishing together in three days, and before that time the old man had to heal his hands.
That day, tourists came to the Terrace, and one of them noticed a huge skeleton of a fish with a tail at the end on the shore. Then she asked the waiter what it was. The waiter wanted to tell everything that happened to the old fisherman, but only answered that it was the skeleton of a shark.
