Old Man And The Sea

I read The Old Man And The Sea last night. It's a short story really. All of 100 pages in a small format paperback edition. So I finished it in one go after dinner. It is a profoundly touching and moving story of an old man in Havana who goes to the sea - after a long streak of unlucky days when he could catch nothing - and after two days of struggling with it he finally manages to catch and kill a huge fish larger than his boat. Being larger than his boat he has to tie it to the boat and try to bring it ashore when sharks attack the fish and eat all of it away, bit by bit.

Initially he fights them valiantly and alone but looses his harpoon and then the knife in the process of killing the firstfew.  So he has to abandon the fight and concentrate on getting back ashore, while giving up hope to save anything of the fish. After 3 days at the sea, eating raw fish and dolphin he finally reaches home with just a skeleton of the large fish, having lost it all to the sharks.

This is the gist of the simple story. But one has to read the book to understand that great writing is not just about the story. It is about how you tell the story and what it tells you beyond the immediate story line. You can draw various profound conclusions about life from such a story. 

Except the technical fishing and fishing boat terms, there is not a word that you cannot understand if you have a basic  and simple knowledge of English. This goes to show that you don't necessarily have to sound very erudite and use obscure unpronounceable words to get a Nobel in literature or create classics of enduring value.