Summary and modernist characters of the old man and the sea

The book The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway is about an Old man called “Santiago” and a large marlin. The novel opens with the explanation that the old man has gone eighty-four days without catching a fish. The old man’s lack of success, though, does not destroy his spirit, as his cheerful and undefeated eyes show. His only friend Manolin, referred as the boy, helped him during the first forty days of his failure; however, after the forty days, the boy’s parents decided that the old man was unlucky and forced him to join another fishermen’s boat. Still dedicated to the old man, the boy visits Santiago’s shack every night to haul back the fishing gear, get him food and talk about baseball. That night, the old man says to Manolin that he will go out far in the gulf to fish. The next day, the old man leaves the shore early in the morning alone, taking his skiff far onto the gulf. He knew that he was going far out and he left the smell of the land behind and rowed out into the clean early morning smell of the ocean. Moving along he sees a man-of-war bird overhead and notices that the bird has spied something in the water. He later sets his fishing lines hoping to capture the fish the bird has seen. The old man moves on, hoping to catch something. By noon, he catches a small tuna and after not too long, he feels a bite in one of his deeper lines. The bite was hard, and the stuck to which the line is connected drops sharply. He is sure that a big marlin takes his bait. Unable to pull the great marlin, the old man finds that the fish is pulling his skiff. Two days and two nights pass in this manner, and Santiago bears the tension of the line with his weak body. He decides that he needs some sleep and wraps the line around himself leaving his left hand on the rope to wake him if the marlin lurches. He later is awoken by the line rushing furiously through his right hand. The large marlin leaps out of the water and it is all the old man can do to hold onto the line, cutting his hand badly and dragging him down to the bottom of the skiff. The old man finds his balance, though, and realizes that the marlin filled the air sacks on his back and cannot go deep. At sunrise, the marlin begins to make a large circle. Santiago holds the line strongly, pulling it slowly as the marlin goes round. At the third turn, he readies the harpoon and pulls the line in more. The marlin tries desperately to pull away, but he couldn’t and the old man drove the harpoon into the marlin’s chest. In this novel we can see two of the modernist characteristics which are the alienation of the individual but at the same time the value of the individual. While he was referred as the most unfortunate man and other fishermen disregarded him, Hemingway does a great job in recovering his “image” by his extravagant agitation with the large marlin. The author uses simplistic sentences creating a vivid imagery on our heads making it look like if the old man is a hero appraising the old man.