The Old Man and the Sea

The old man would set out alone in his skiff upon the Gulf Stream. For eighty-four days now he had gone to sea, yet nothing had taken his bait. For the first month and a half, a boy had accompanied him. But as the days passed and no fish came, the boy’s parents lost hope and called the old man «a luckless, cursed wretch», commanding their son to take another boat. On the new boat, fortune quickly turned: within the first week he and his new companion caught three large marlins. Whenever the boy saw the old man return to shore empty-handed, his heart ached with pity. He would always go to meet him, to help carry the fishing gear - the gaff and harpoon, and the sail the old man set upon his skiff - back to the fisherman’s humble home. That sail, patched again and again with coarse canvas, lay furled in the boat like a flag of a defeated army, tattered yet enduring.