“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.”
— Ernest Hemingway
Image: The Daily Beast
On September 8 1952, Ernest Hemingway published his novel ‘The Old Man and the Sea’. This short novel was the last major work of fiction written by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. In 1953, The Old Man and the Sea was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to their awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954.
Speaking of perseverance and resilience, the novel revolves around the protagonist Santiago, a seasoned fisherman who has not caught a fish for 84 successive days. His persistence is finally rewarded when he catches a fish on the 85th day. The 127 page novel also portrays an accurate description of a world upended by war and the suffering people who simply want to live a peaceful and traditional life. Hemingway very accurately depicts man’s place in this world while describing his need for survival.