A Book Report On The Old Man And The Sea By Ernest Hemingway

Plot

The story, The Old Man and The Sea, begins with an old man, whose name is not known, who has fished his whole life. The old man unluckily has a streak of not catching any fish for 85 days. The parents of his apprentice came to the conclusion that their son could not learn from him anymore so the apprentice stopped coming to the old man and put him in a ‘luckier’ boat. The old man sailed alone on the next day. He really wanted to catch a fish again so he sailed further than he normally went to catch more fish. When he waited for a fish to bite, a huge fish took his bait and got stuck. The old man was too weak to pull the fish, so the fish pulled the boat. The hook that stuck in the big fish’s beak caused him to bleed and the blood attracted sharks. When the sharks attacked the old man’s boat and the fish he caught, one of the sharks ate the fish. Now the man had only the bones of the fish to show. When he came home everybody was amazed how big of a fish he had caught and how difficult it must have been for him. The boy then was approved to join him again on his journeys.

Character Analysis

The old man lived a very poor life, sleeping in his fish storage which is his only ‘house’. He gets his food from his apprentice, a young boy whose parents are wealthy. The young boy supports the old man, they have a really good relationship. The old man has taught everything to the young boy about fishing. The man also really likes sports. His idol is DiMaggio, a professional baseball player. He always reads the sports news just to see what the scores are from his favourite team. The apprentice of the old man is also interested in sports and together they try to guess the scores. His battle with nature on the sea shows that he is someone who is determined. I think the reason for this is that he wants to win back his apprentice, but it could also be that he is a proud person.

Conclusion and My View

I think this book is very different to other books that I’ve read, because there is only one main character and one main setting. The context of the plot seems very short, but I think it’s very impressive that Ernest Hemingway could write such a long story about a plot you could just summarize in 3-4 sentences. In that story I’ve learned a few things, such as how deep your bait has to be for certain fish. Also that fishermen used to measure not in feet or meters, but in phantoms, which is 1.8 meters or 6 feet. Whilst reading I’ve found it boring in the middle of the story, because when he was in the water he was just talking to himself and nothing exciting happens. I would recommend this to young children who love sea adventures. I recommend this because the book tells a man against nature story. Nature is an important part about the story, because the old man really relies on nature, for example he hopes that there are no storms or no sharks. Eventually sharks came and he almost died.