From the marlin waking Santiago by jerking the line
to Santiago’s return to his shack
Summary
Then the fish came alive, with his death
in him, and rose high out of the water showing all his great length
and width and all his power and his beauty.
See Important Quotations Explained
The marlin wakes Santiago by jerking the line. The fish
jumps out of the water again and again, and Santiago is thrown into
the bow of the skiff, facedown in his dolphin meat. The line feeds
out fast, and the old man brakes against it with his back and hands.
His left hand, especially, is badly cut. Santiago wishes that the
boy were with him to wet the coils of the line, which would lessen
the friction.
The old man wipes the crushed dolphin meat off his face,
fearing that it will make him nauseated and he will lose his strength.
Looking at his damaged hand, he reflects that “pain does not matter
to a man.” He eats the second flying fish in hopes of building up
his strength. As the sun rises, the marlin begins to circle. For
hours the old man fights the circling fish for every inch of line,
slowly pulling it in. He feels faint and dizzy and sees black spots
before his eyes. The fish riots against the line, battering the
boat with its spear. When it passes under the boat, Santiago cannot
believe its size. As the marlin continues to circle, Santiago adds
enough pressure to the line to bring the fish closer and closer
to the skiff. The old man thinks that the fish is killing him, and
admires him for it, saying, “I do not care who kills who.” Eventually,
he pulls the fish onto its side by the boat and plunges his harpoon
into it. The fish lurches out of the water, brilliantly and beautifully
alive as it dies. When it falls back into the water, its blood stains
the waves.
The old man pulls the skiff up alongside the fish and
fastens the fish to the side of the boat. He thinks about how much
money he will be able to make from such a big fish, and he imagines
that DiMaggio would be proud of him. Santiago’s hands are so cut
up that they resemble raw meat. With the mast up and the sail drawn,
man, fish, and boat head for land. In his light-headed state, the
old man finds himself wondering for a moment if he is bringing the
fish in or vice versa. He shakes some shrimp from a patch of gulf
weed and eats them raw. He watches the marlin carefully as the ship
sails on. The old man’s wounds remind him that his battle with the
marlin was real and not a dream.
An hour later, a mako shark arrives, having smelled the
marlin’s blood. Except for its jaws full of talonlike teeth, the
shark is a beautiful fish. When the shark hits the marlin, the old
man sinks his harpoon into the shark’s head. The shark lashes on
the water and, eventually, sinks, taking the harpoon and the old
man’s rope with it. The mako has taken nearly forty pounds of meat,
so fresh blood from the marlin spills into the water, inevitably
drawing more sharks to attack. Santiago realizes that his struggle
with the marlin was for nothing; all will soon be lost. But, he
muses, “a man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
Santiago tries to cheer himself by thinking that DiMaggio
would be pleased by his performance, and he wonders again if his
hands equal DiMaggio’s bone spurs as a handicap. He tries to be
hopeful, thinking that it is silly, if not sinful, to stop hoping.
He reminds himself that he didn’t kill the marlin simply for food,
that he killed it out of pride and love. He wonders if it is a sin
to kill something you love. The shark, on the other hand, he does
not feel guilty about killing, because he did it in self-defense.
He decides that “everything kills everything else in some way.”
Two hours later, a pair of shovel-nosed sharks arrives,
and Santiago makes a noise likened to the sound a man might make
as nails are driven through his hands. The sharks attack, and Santiago
fights them with a knife that he had lashed to an oar as a makeshift weapon.
He enjoyed killing the mako because it was a worthy opponent, a
mighty and fearless predator, but he has nothing but disdain for
the scavenging shovel-nosed sharks. The old man kills them both,
but not before they take a good quarter of the marlin, including
the best meat. Again, Santiago wishes that he hadn’t killed the marlin.
He apologizes to the dead marlin for having gone out so far, saying
it did neither of them any good.
