Literary Analysis In “The Old Man and the Sea” Ernest Hemingway writes about an old Cuban fisherman named Santiago. The story begins with Santiago fishing alone after having gone eight-four days without catching a fish. A boy, Manolin, fishes with Santiago for the first forty days, but Manolin’s father subsequently forbids him to continue fishing with the old man because the village perceives Santiago to be unlucky and too old to fish. On the eighty-fifth day, Santiago, alone, departs for the sea before sunrise. This begins Santiago’s exhausting three-day struggle to capture and bring home an enormous marlin; thereby redeeming himself to the villagers. The first day Santiago hooks the marlin, only to have it drag his skiff far out to sea. He knows he is not prepared to be out to sea so far and keeps hoping the marlin will come up for air so he can kill it with a spear. The second day the reader rejoices. Santiago kills the marlin only to find the fish too large to fit in the skiff. The old fisherman lashes the fish to the side of the skiff and hopes the sharks won’t attack. The third day sharks attack the dead marlin again and again. Santiago tries to protect his prize catch but is ill prepared. The sharks are unrelenting and leave only the marlin’s skeleton for Santiago to bring to the village. In this novella, Hemingway unites the reader with setting, character, and conflict to tell a tale of “grace under pressure.” Cuba and the Gulf Stream is the setting for this story. One researcher, Patricia Dunlavy Valenti, writes that “The Old Man and the Sea” incorporates many facets of Cuban geography, climate, and landscape—all the elements of setting that influence Saniago’s characterization as an impoverished man who earns his living at sea” (25). The island of Cuba with its semitropical climate, landscape, birds and fish has all the elements needed to