Boekverslag : Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man And The Sea / De Oude Man En De Zee
De taal ervan is Engels en het aantal woorden bedraagt 800 woorden.

The facts

In 1952 was the first publication of The Old Man and the Sea, a book written by Ernest Hemingway. The illustrations are made by C. F. Tunnicliffe and Raymond Sheppard. This book was published in 1975 by Book Club Associates London..

On November 1954 the Swedish Academy awarded Ernest Hemingway the Nobel Prize for literature for this book. The book is 117 pages thick.

The story is very realistic, all the things that happen can happen in the real world.



About the Author

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in 1899 in Oak Park, a Chicago suburb, as the second of six children.. Hemingway was passionately involved in bullfighting, hunting and deep-sea fishing. He visited Spain during the Civil War and described his experiences in the bestseller: For whom the bell tolls. Other books by Hemingway are: A farewell to arms, The Torrents of Spring, Fiesta, Men without Women and so on.



Summary of the book

A poor old and wise fisherman named Santiago lives in a village at the Gulf Stream. He has been a fisherman his whole life and gained much experience. But the last 84 days he caught nothing at all. The first 40 of these 84 days he had been fishing with a boy named Manolin, but his father has forbidden him to go out fishing with Santiago any longer, because he believed that the old fisherman is doomed. Every time the old man goes out fishing he believes that from that day on he will have luck and that he will catch a lot. Then the great DiMaggio (a famous baseball player) will be proud of him.

At a regular morning he leaves in his tiny wooden boat. He puts his rods in position, rows his boat far from the coast and waits for big fish to bite. Suddenly he sees that he has bite! He tries to pull his line on board, but the fish is too strong and suddenly his boat starts to sail. He realizes that it must be a very big fish that pulls the boat and he prepares for a battle between him and the fish

It takes till the evening when he can see the fish for the first time. It turns out to be a very big and beautiful swordfish that is even bigger then the boat! He stays up all night and in the morning he is mentally and physically broken. But the swordfish is tired too because of the dragging he has been dragging the boat all night. The fish suddenly starts to swim around in circles around the boat. Every time the fish has swum a circle the old man pulls the line a bit in the boat

until the fish swims almost next to the boat on the surface of the water. He kills the fish with a harpoon and attaches it to the boat with a rope.

You might think that this is now a happy end, but on his way back to his village he is being attacked by sharks! He manages to kill some, but the sharks keep coming and in the end he looses his weapon. The swordfish is being eaten by the sharks until only a carcass remains.

When he arrives in the dock of the village, he is embittered by the fact that the carcass is the only trophee he has. The old man goes to his hut where he falls asleep.

Manolin sees the boat of the old man the next day and happy he goes to the old mans hut. There he sees Santiago sitting with bloody hands and a burned skin. He startles and starts to cry. He promises him that he will go out fishing with Santiago next time no matter what his father will tell him.



My opinion

I think the book is written for adults. I think so because the book is not spectacular, nor thrilling. The story takes place in the fifty’s of the last century.

The title means nothing special in my eyes. Differently from my last book report (Eldest) it just combines the main person (the old man) and his adventures (the sea).



In the beginning I thought the book was boring but the further I came the more interesting I found the book. The connection between the old man and the sea is very good. I also think that the writer has made Santiago into a very strong character, just like every other main person in the book, and I understand why Hemingway has obtained the Nobel Prize for this book. I like the end too because it was not good nor bad. The fish was being eaten by the sharks, but Santiago gained a bit honour back when tourists and villagers were very interested in the carcass of the fish.



There are 818 words in my book report.
Andere boeken van deze auteur:


Home - Contact - Over - ZoekBoekverslag op uw site - Onze Boekverslagen - Boekverslag toevoegen