The Old Man and the Sea (Reading Guide Catalog for Primary and Secondary School Students)

The book "The Old Man and the Sea" is the most important and influential work of the American writer Hemingway and a masterpiece of tough guy literature. This novel uses a concise and sharp style to create an upright and unyielding spiritual image. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. The novel tells the story of an old Cuban fisherman fighting a huge marlin in the Gulf Stream far offshore. An old fisherman didn't catch a fish for eighty-four days, but he still refused to admit defeat and was still full of fighting spirit. Finally on the eighty-fifth day, he caught a big fish that was 18 feet long and weighed 1,500 pounds. The old man accepted failure calmly and faced death calmly and bravely, showing an extremely perseverant "tough guy" quality.