Santiago Monologue

My parents said that Santiago was an unlucky fisherman and from then on I sailed with a crew on a different boat. The old man was unlucky for a while, eighty-four days to be exact. Before my parents objected, Santiago and I would fish together and he would teach me all I needed to know be a good fisherman. We always had great fun chatting about fish and about baseball. For, we both had a love for baseball. Santiago mostly enjoyed talking about the great DiMaggio of the Yankees. Even though the remarkable player was tormented by a bone spur in his heel, he was still an incredible star of the game. Neither the old man nor I knew what a bone spur was, but it really sounded malo. On the eighty-fourth day of Santiago not having caught anything,
After he pulled the great, flopping fish into the boat, the man gave him a kick and hit him on the head to end his life. Looking down at his seemingly unending line perpendicular to the boat, he grabbed the line and felt for any tension on it. At first he felt no pull, but then he sensed a small tug. After freeing the line from the stick so that the fish would feel no tension, the pull stopped. Oh, the old man thought, I hope that he comes back for more. Again the old man noticed tension on the line and hoped that the curious fish wouldn’t lose interest in the bait on the hook. The fish decided to torture the old man by repeating the process a few times more. He would taste the bait, let go, swim in a circle, and come back for more of the tantalizing food. Finally, the great fish took the hook in his
He wasn’t sure he could eat all six of the strips that he cut. He felt a strong urge to feed the great fish, his brother of the sea. Come on, hand, he thought. I need you very much and I don’t know how you could do this terrible thing to me. While rubbing his hand against his thigh to loosen the muscles, a seemingly unending mass shot up through the placid glass surface of the ocean and white, and foaming sea water gushed up with the beast, soaking Santiago. The massive marlin was dark purple with lavender colored stripes along his sides. His sword must have been quite as long as DiMaggio’s bat. His tail was sharp and dangerous. As the ocean swallowed him up, the old man gasped. By noon, the old man’s hand had fully uncramped. To build his confidence, the old man reminded himself of the time when he was still youthful that he had beat the strongest negro from Cienfuegos in an arm wrestle. It lasted a whole night and went into the morning. Ever since he won, Santiago had been given the honorable title of “The