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.
That evening...
Early next morning.
The struggle begins.
The fight continues all through the night
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
The fish is caught, but all is not well.
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.
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.
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.' |