The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway, “The Old Man and the Sea” Scribner Classics, 1952, 93 pps

Recently I read “Hemingway’s Boat”, previously reported on this blogsite. Reading that book stimulated a desire to again read something by Hemingway; I chose this short book to re-read as I am too busy for a longer one. I am somewhat amazed how much I forgot about the author’s style as well as the specific content of this book.
The Old Man and the Sea led directly to Hemingway’s receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1954 & revised his floundering career. However, it did not revise my floundering interest in his work, at least at the moment.
My Notes:

Pg. 35: Santiago (the old man): “He did not remember when he had first started to talk aloud when he was by himself. He had sung when he was by himself in the old days and he had sung at night sometimes when he was alone steering on his watch in the smacks or in the turtle boats. He had probably started to talk aloud, when alone, when the boy had left. But he did not remember. … It was considered a virtue not to talk unnecessarily at sea and the old man had always considered it so and respected it. But now he said his thoughts aloud many times since there was no one that they could annoy”.

Pg. 70: “He took all his pain and what was left of his strength and his long gone pride and he put it against the fish’s agony and the fish came over onto his side and swam gently on his side, his bill almost touching the planking of the skiff and started to pass the boat, lone, deep, wide, silver and barred with purple and interminable in the water.”

Pg. 75: “They sailed well and the old man soaked his hands in the salt water and tried to keep his head clear. There were high cumulus clouds and enough cirrus above them so that the old man knew the breeze would last all night. The old man looked at the fish constantly to make sure it was true. It was an hour before the first shark hit him.”