Santiago hasn't caught a fish in eighty-four days and must set out in deeper waters to end his draught and gain his fellow fishermen's respect and the boy Manolin's admiration. After days at sea, he comes upon a marlin and struggles with it for two days before killing it and tying it to the side of the skiff. But while he is returning home, sharks follow the scent of blood and though Santiago kills several of them, they eventually eat most of the marlin, leaving only the fish's skeleton.
The Old Man
In The Old Man and the Sea, Santiago struggles though he couldn't win but because to struggle is human. He fights not to overcome, but to assert his humanity and transcend destiny and fate through his determination amid destruction. In his own words: "… man can be destroyed but not defeated." Like Dr. Rieux and his friends in Camus's The Plague, struggling with the plague, while people continue to succumb to the disease. Perhaps Hemingway has seen enough death and destruction while reporting on the Spanish Civil War to understand that at times, a person can only fight without the hope of victory, and he or she must choose either to give up, or to fight and be destroyed. In his novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Robert Jordan, in accepting the assignment to blow up the bridge, knows he wouldn't survive the task and he didn't. Still, he, like Santiago, chooses to fight. Hemingway in praise of human resolve.
And the Sea
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