The Old Man and the Sea. Short summary.

The Old Man and the Sea is a novella by Ernest Hemingway written in Cuba in 1951 and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction to be produced by Hemingway and published in his lifetime. It is noteworthy in twentieth century fiction, and reaffirms Hemingway's worldwide literary prominence.
The Old Man and the Sea led to numerous awards for Hemingway, including the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The author also earned the Award of Merit Medal for the Novel from the American Academy of Letters. The most prestigiously award became the Nobel Prize in Literature which came in 1954, "for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style."

The Summary
The story centers upon an aging Cuban fisherman named Santiago who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. The fish is so strong that after swallowing the bait it pulls the boat far from the shore. Two days and two nights pass in this struggle. Santiago, completely worn out and almost in delirium, uses all the strength he had left in him to pull the fish onto its side and stab the marlin with a harpoon, thereby ending the long battle between the old man and the tenacious fish. While Santiago continues his journey back to the shore, sharks are attracted to the trail of blood left by the marlin in the water. By night, the sharks gnaw round the marlin leaving only its skeleton. The old man castigates himself for sacrificing the marlin, because heretofore he named the fish his brother, but the desire to catch the giant marlin was so strong that he couldn’t stop himself. Having reached the shore with the only marlin’s skeleton, he slumps onto his bed and enters a very deep sleep.

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