The Old Man and the Sea Reissue Edition, Kindle Edition

This was one of about 3 required readings l read back in high school without resorting to the cheater book, 'The Monarch Guide'.. It is short enough to read in two nights even being the slow reader l am... As a high school kid you can appreciate the 'learning from the old guy' thing going on with 'the boy' in the story... l have always thought on the many impressions l got when l read it the first time, and l decided that l should really read it again from the perspective of my older age. Now, at 65 yr old and having gotten through throat cancer, a couple back operations and through a few failures of my own, l admittedly may be a bit of a 'tired old man' myself.. l really related to the old man and his lonely effort to still 'get that big one'... I believe l enjoyed it better as an 'old man' than l did as 'a boy'... Now being older and wiser and not thinking of it back in the school discussions, l have got ask, ...when he was down to half of the fish, why didn't he pull that last half into the boat?? I also did not remember from school that Hemingway received the Pulitzer Prize for this book... So all you now Old Men of the Sea, need to give it another read...

A Love Story. Yes, A Love Story. But not what you may be thinking...It is about the love between the 'Old Man' (Santiago) and a young boy, his protege, his apprentice, his beloved companion, and about the boys love for him, too.And if love is also 'committment,' as it surely is, this, too, is what this book is about...The 'old man's' commitment to break his streak of 84 days without a catch. His willingness to to row way, way, way out, way beyond where any of the other fishermen were toiling...and to do this by himself, alone.And it's also about his love of (commitment to) fishing and, yes, his love of the 18' marlin (over one thousand pounds) that he caught, and with whom he dialogues throughout this wonderful tale..AND dialogues with him even after he had killed him, and, then, finally his ferocious committment to preserve the fallen fish, now dead, from the sharks that relentlessly tore into its carcass.This is also a book about nobility, about singleness of purpose, about purity of heart and bravery, endurance, and about friendship....about the love of the 'old man' for the boy, and of the boys love for the 'old man.'For Hemingway, who wrote 'The Old Man' when he was in his early 50's, this book was, I believe, a plaint, a cry about beauty, and about man at his best, and about good fortune and bad fortune, and about loss and sadness, and, in the end, about emptiness.This book is a treasure of dialogue...dialogue between the man and the boy that is exquisite, but even more, much more exquisite, about the dialogue between the man and himself, his reveries, and also between the man and his fish, the huge marlin, both when the fish was living and when he was dead.The Old Man and the Sea is artistry, pure artistry at its greatest, nary a spare word, never complicated...always lucid, aways compressed, transparent, pure. I have read that Hemingway labored over each and every word, each and every phrase, and edited and re-edited it endlessly.Only 127 pages, it is an easy read that bears periodic rereading...For this review, I have read it twice, and listened to it on tape twice...and I had read it before when I was in college in the late 1950's.Hemingway died about 9 years after this book was published...In some ways, The Old Man and the Sea can be considered his last and final testament...and what a beauty it is...A true treasure. And, of course, it did win both a Nobel and a Pulitzer...Finally, I don't want or mean to suggest or imply that this book is 'heavy.' Anything but...It catches perfectly the 'lightness of being' in it's descriptions of the weather, the processes of fishing, and the Old Man's love for baseball and Joe DiMaggio, and his arm wresting with a huge black man in Havana...In short, this book is also fun...

I have read this book several times, and each time I find some new meaning, something deeper than I had noticed before. No writer I know of could reach so far into the hearts of this boy and this old fisherman as Ernest Hemingway. The story speaks to something human that is indescribable, too deep for words. This time I was struck by the clash of the old man's excruciating fishing experience with the indifference of the waiter at the end, who when asked by a tourist what that wreckage of bones is, floating out there, just shrugs and says, "Tiburon." (shark), a fish which is a common, everyday sight in the Havana Harbor of the time. The waiter stands in for the big, silent, looming character -- The Indifference of the World. It's a marvelous story, Hemingway at his absolute best.

Not a review of the book because I haven't been able to read it yet. I couldn't get past all the formatting errors and misspellings in the first few pages. Won't bother continuing, I'll try another version.

An easy to read story that takes the reader on a journey, a physical and spiritual battle. There are multiple themes including perseverance, will, and friendship. If you've not yet read anything by Hemingway, I'd recommend starting with The Old Man And The Sea. It's easy to see why this book is a classic. I've read it multiple times at different ages and each time I read it, I find new meaning and feel strengthened for having read it.

I hate to appear as a philistine, but these other reviews must have been written by English literature graduates. This is not a book to read for entertainment or excitement. Dull, dull, dull. A man goes out on a boat to catch fish, takes him two days to land the fish( its a big one), man goes home, I think. Couldn't get to the end without skipping the last 40 pages of a 100 page short story. Serves me right, never watch a film that won awards now applies to books. Maybe it was relevant when it was written but those days have gone. I'll go back to reading for pleasure now.

I honestly, earnestly think, this book is a piece of trash. I picked this book seeing so many positive reviews, and it's status as one of the great classics, but somehow, I've started doubting this whole 'Classic' thing, seems like a gimmick. First, 'The Great Gatsby', and now this. It was such a pain to read through each page, random boring description of catching a fish. Call me naive or anything, it didn't find any meaning in the book, there are thousands of books out there, much better written, and communicate with the reader easily. This one was a waste of time and money.

The cover of this book is HUGELY misleading! It says clearly on the cover "Ernest Hemingway", but it turns out that it is based on his book of the same name but is "adapted by Swayam Ganguly" which is says in very small writing inside the cover. The language is NOT that of a Pulitzer prize winning author but I suspect has maybe translated into another language and back again? Or otherwise it has simply been dumbed down for the sake of it. WHO KNOWS??!!As you can probably tell, I am VERY DISAPPOINTED and will be complaining to Amazon about the extremely misleading appearance of this book on their website.

I have read this book several times, and each time I find some new meaning, something deeper than I had noticed before. No writer I know of could reach so far into the hearts of this boy and this old fisherman as Ernest Hemingway. The story speaks to something human that is indescribable, too deep for words.Hemingways magnificent fable is the story of an old man,a young boy and a giant fish.in a perfectly crafted story.Nobel prize for literature is a unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man challenge to the elements in which he lives.

The old fisherman Santiago’s luck has run out. For eighty-four straight days he hasn’t caught a fish, and is surviving only with the help of the young boy, Manolin, who once fished with him but whose parents have now insisted he go out with another luckier boat instead. Manolin feels an intense loyalty to old Santiago, and helps him each day with his gear, catching bait, and even buying him food when Santiago’s funds run out.On this day it will be different. A fish takes Santiago’s bait – a huge marlin, so big that Santiago can’t pull him in. As the marlin sets out to sea, dragging Santiago’s little skiff behind him, Santiago must decide whether to cut the line or run with the fish. And so it becomes a matter of will, as Santiago battles with nature, with his own failing strength, with growing exhaustion and with his pride as a fisherman.This is a beautifully written and absorbing short tale – mesmerising, almost, as hour after hour passes and still the fish won’t tire. Although written in the third person, once Santiago is alone on the sea with his fish, the reader is taken directly into his thoughts. He is a simple man, and his mind dwells on great successes and failures of his past, a lifetime’s experience all guiding his actions in this moment. He knows he is at the limit of his physical endurance as the line cuts his calloused hands each time the fish changes pace. He recognises that the pride of youth has given way to the humility of age, and wonders when that happened. But he still has enough pride to want to kill this fish, although he loves it for its strength and will and beauty.I suspect people have read all sorts of symbolism into this over the years and maybe there is lots and I just missed it. But for me, this is simply a tale well-told, by a man who clearly knew what he was talking about. As usual with Hemingway, there’s a degree of pondering on the meaning of masculinity, though less overtly than in the couple of longer novels of his I’ve read. It’s an old theme, man against nature, and Hemingway brings nothing new to it except his wonderful prose. And that alone makes this well worth reading.