the fish isn’t the thing…

Book review:

The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952

127 pages

The old man has a name. Santiago. He is a perilously old fisherman. He has befriended a boy, a helper—but he fishes alone.

The Old Man and the Sea isn’t about the sea. You know what it’s about. It’s about the old man, a big fish, and the vicissitudes of life concentrated in one long, lonely, painful, heroic, unsatisfying, and redemptive fishing trip.

Santiago lives a life after he hooks a marlin that is too big for him to catch. He suffers, he marvels, he learns about himself, he lives a dire philosophy, he yearns for help as he endures the hours, he accepts again and again that he is responsible for his life that may end quickly.

Santiago unknowingly shares his boat with fate and chance. He gives up his illusion of control when the sharks begin to destroy his prize.

He returns to his solitary life ashore, and the battered carcass of the fish tells no tales.

* * * * * *

Book review: The Blithedale Romance

by Nathaniel Hawthorne, not his best…

click here

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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,

and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)

and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”