The Old Man and the Sea Irony

I found a lot of irony in 'The Old Man and the Sea'. One thing I found ironic in the book is how fast the old man's luck changes. In the beginning of the book, the old man is not having very good luck at all. He had not caught a single fish in eighty four days and he lost his best friend and apprentice, Manolin, the young boy. He was very lonely out at sea with out Manolin to keep him company. Every one in his small fishing town had started calling the old man "salao" meaning the worst form of unlucky. I feel bad for the old man in the beginning of the book because his luck had been so bad. He had a bad reputation as a fisher and his young apprentice and friend had been taken away from him. His luck changes toward the middle of the book however. On the eighty fourth day of being out at sea, the old man finally catches a fish. That not being enough, this fish was the biggest fish of the old man's career. It was an eighteen foot long marlin fish. Most fishermen had never seen a fish so great in size. The old man had hit the jackpot! It took a few days, but the old man finally got the fish close enough to his small fishing boat to kill it with a harpoon. Just when the old man had thought that his luck had finally turned around, however, his bad luck came back. Some nearby sharks had smelled the marlins blood in the water and began to gather around the body. Since the marlin was too big for the old man's boat, it was still in the water. The sharks attacked the body and ate it until all that remained was the skeleton. This is all an example of irony because the old man had gone from unlucky, to lucky and back to unlucky so quickly in this book that it is ironic.




Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. New York: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1995. Print.