These are my illustrations for Ernest Hemingway's short novel, The Old Man and The Sea.
It's a tale of endurance, adventure, suffering and failure. Perfect for some imaginative drawing.
It's a tale of endurance, adventure, suffering and failure. Perfect for some imaginative drawing.
The tale begins.
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'He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days without taking a fish. ... It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty ...'
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That evening...
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After landing the boat, the boy and the old man drank beer on the terrace.
'They sat on the terrace and many of the fishermen made fun of the old man and he was not angry. Others, of the older fishermen, looked at him and were sad.' |
Early next morning.
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Early the next morning, the old man rowed far out on the ocean.
'Just then he saw a man-of-war bird with his long black wings circling in the sky ahead of him.... 'He's got something,' the old man said aloud. 'He's not just looking '' |
The struggle begins.
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A big fish takes the line and pulls the skiff through the water.
'He held the line against his back and watched its slant in the water and the skiff moving steadily to the north-west.' |
The fight continues all through the night
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The great fish pulled the skiff along all night and all the next day.
'As the sun set he remembered, to give himself more confidence, the time in the tavern at Casablanca when he had played the hand game with the great negro from Cienfuegos who was the strongest man on the docks. The had gone one day and one night with their elbows on a chalk line on the table and their forearms straight up and their hands gripped tight.' |
At last the fish surfaces
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'The old man ... lifted the harpoon as high as he could and drove it down with all his strength, and more strength he had just summoned, into the fish's side just behind the great chest fin that rose high into the air to the altitude of the man's chest.'
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The fish is caught, but all is not well.
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The old man lashed the fish to the skiff and set the sail, to sail home. But 'The shaft of the harpoon was projecting at an angle from the fish's shoulder and the sea was discolouring with the red of the blood from his heart. First it was dark as a shoal in the blue water that was more than a mile deep. Then it spread like a cloud.'
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The sharks attack, repeatedly.
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After several shark attacks the old man had lost his harpoon and a makeshift spear. Eventually he improvised a club.
'It was an oar handle from a broken oar sawed off to about two and a half feet in length. ... The two sharks closed together and as he saw the one nearest him open his jaws and sink them into the silver side of the fish, he raised the club high and brought it down heavy and slamming on to the top of the shark's broad head.' |
The aftermath.
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The sharks attacked and attacked and stripped the great fish of its flesh.
Eventually he reached home. 'There was no one to help him so he pulled the boat up as far as he could... He unstepped the mast and furled the sail and tied it. Then he shouldered the mast and started to climb. It was then that he knew the depth of his tiredness.' |