I would never have read Hemingway, had I not chanced upon ‘The Old Man and the Sea’. This book also was a part of our academics in class IX and X. Two years to study one book.. To be frank, in the beginning I never enjoyed the book. It was all about fishing lines, sea, mud, shacks, and the old man. There was nothing interesting in it. I used to bunk my classes when we had ‘The Old Man and the Sea’. As time went by, my first exam approached. This time I was cornered. The book accounted for about 40% of the marks for English. I had no option than to read it because I wasn’t confident of scoring a 40 out of the rest 60.

The first chapter started “He was an old man who fished alone in the….”. I still remember that beginning. The story is about Santiago, an old fisherman in Cuba, who is considered unlucky in fishing, how he catches the biggest catch of his life, and what happens to the catch. He is considered unlucky as though he goes out fishing everyday, he doesn’t get a single catch. One more character to be mentioned is Manolin, Santiago’s apprentice. (more…)