The Old Man and the Sea (The Hemingway Library Edition)

by Ernest Hemingway

Overview

Ernest Hemingway’s most beloved and popular novel ever, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, now featuring a previously unpublished short story and additional supplementary material—plus a personal foreword by the author’s only living son, Patrick Hemingway, and an introduction by the author’s grandson Seán Hemingway.

The last of his novels Ernest Hemingway saw published, The Old Man and the Sea has proved itself to be one of the most enduring works of American fiction. The story of a down-on-his-luck Cuban fisherman and his supreme ordeal—a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream—has been cherished by generations of readers.

Hemingway takes the timeless themes of courage in the face of adversity and personal triumph won from loss and transforms them into a magnificent 20th-century classic. First published in 1952, this hugely popular tale confirmed his power and presence in the literary world and played a large part in his winning the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476787855
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	07/19/2022
Series:	Hemingway Library Edition
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	83,190
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Ernest Hemingway did more to change the style of English prose than any other writer of his time. Publication of The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms immediately established Hemingway as one of the greatest literary lights of the twentieth century. His classic novel The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. His life and accomplishments are explored in-depth in the PBS documentary film from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, Hemingway. Known for his larger-than-life personality and his passions for bullfighting, fishing, and big-game hunting, he died in Ketchum, Idaho on July 2, 1961.

Date of Birth:

July 21, 1899

Date of Death:

July 2, 1961

Place of Birth:

Oak Park, Illinois

Place of Death:

Ketchum, Idaho

Read an Excerpt

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy's parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.
     
     The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.
     
     Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.
     
    "Santiago," the boy said to him as they climbed the bank from where the skiff was hauled up. "I could go with you again. We've made some money."

     The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him.

     "No," the old man said. "You're with a lucky boat. Stay with them."

     "But remember how you went eighty-seven days without fish and then we caught big ones every day for three weeks."

     "I remember," the old man said. "I know you did not leave me because you doubted."

     "It was papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him."

     "I know," the old man said. "It is quite normal."

     "He hasn't much faith."

     "No," the old man said. "But we have. Haven't we?"

     "Yes," the boy said. "Can I offer you a beer on the Terrace and then we'll take the stuff home."

     "Why not?" the old man said. "Between fishermen."

     They sat on the Terrace and many of the fishermen made fun of the old man and he was not angry. Others, of the older fishermen, looked at him and were sad. But they did not show it and they spoke politely about the current and the depths they had drifted their lines at and the steady good weather and of what they had seen. The successful fishermen of that day were already in and had butchered their marlin out and carried them laid full length across two planks, with two men staggering at the end of each plank, to the fish house where they waited for the ice truck to carry them to the market in Havana. Those who had caught sharks had taken them to the shark factory on the other side of the cove where they were hoisted on a block and tackle, their livers removed, their fins cut off and their hides skinned out and their flesh cut into strips for salting.

     When the wind was in the east a smell came across the harbour from the shark factory; but today there was only the faint edge of the odour because the wind had backed into the north and then dropped off and it was pleasant and sunny on the Terrace.

     "Santiago," the boy said.

     "Yes," the old man said. He was holding his glass and thinking of many years ago.

     "Can I go out to get sardines for you for tomorrow?"

     "No. Go and play baseball. I can still row and Rogelio will throw the net."

     "I would like to go. If I cannot fish with you, I would like to serve in some way."

     "You bought me a beer," the old man said. "You are already a man."

     "How old was I when you first took me in a boat?"

     "Five and you nearly were killed when I brought the fish in too green and he nearly tore the boat to pieces. Can you remember?"

     "I can remember the tail slapping and banging and the thwart breaking and the noise of the clubbing. I can remember you throwing me into the bow where the wet coiled lines were and feeling the whole boat shiver and the noise of you clubbing him like chopping a tree down and the sweet blood smell all over me."

     "Can you really remember that or did I just tell it to you?"

     "I remember everything from when we first went together."

     The old man looked at him with his sun-burned, confident loving eyes.

     "If you were my boy I'd take you out and gamble," he said. "But you are your father's and your mother's and you are in a lucky boat."

     "May I get the sardines? I know where I can get four baits too."

     "I have mine left from today. I put them in salt in the box."

     "Let me get four fresh ones."

     "One," the old man said. His hope and his confidence had never gone. But now they were freshening as when the breeze rises.

     "Two," the boy said.

     "Two," the old man agreed. "You didn't steal them?"

     "I would," the boy said. "But I bought these."

     "Thank you," the old man said. He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride.

     "Tomorrow is going to be a good day with this current," he said.

     "Where are you going?" the boy asked.

     "Far out to come in when the wind shifts. I want to be out before it is light."

     "I'll try to get him to work far out," the boy said. "Then if you hook something truly big we can come to your aid."

     "He does not like to work too far out."

     "No," the boy said. "But I will see something that he cannot see such as a bird working and get him to come out after dolphin."

     “Are his eyes that bad?”

     "He is almost blind."

     "It is strange," the old man said. "He never went turtle-ing. That is what kills the eyes."

    “But you went turtle-ing for years off the Mosquito Coast and your eyes are good.”

     "I am a strange old man."

     "But are you strong enough now for a truly big fish?"

     "I think so. And there are many tricks."

Table of Contents

Foreword Patrick Hemingway ix

Introduction Seén Hemingway xi

The Old Man and the Sea 1

Appendix I "On the Blue Water: A Gulf Stream Letter," Esquire, April 1936 83

Appendix II Letter from Ernest Hemingway to Erl Roman, May 8, 1935 94

Appendix III Ernest Hemingway's List of Principal Sharks in Cuban Waters 97

Appendix IV "Pursuit As Happiness," a Previously Unpublished Short Story 101

Appendix V Selected Edits from Ernest Hemingway's Typescript of The Old Man and the Sea 122

Appendix VI Ernest Hemingway's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech 130

Acknowledgments 132

Notes to the Introduction 134