Reading Hemingway Reading Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea: Glossary and Commentary, (Paperback)

The Old Man and the Sea is a deceptively simple work. An old man goes fishing. He catches a giant marlin after much struggle. Sharks attack and destroy the fish. The old man is left with the bare bones of the fish--a Monday morning "fish story." But much lies beneath the surface. The action is condensed and presented in carefully crafted images, in words and details selected because of their multivalent meanings, and in several external narrative strands, present primarily as allusions and echoes.