This book is about an old Cuban fisherman named Santiago, who has become unlucky, and not caught a fish in eighty-four days. The fisherman is very poor and lives in a shack on the beach where he sleeps on old newspapers. It seems that the only things that keep him from giving up are Joe DiMaggio who is his physical inspiration because he played with a bone spur, and Manolin who he used to take fishing when he was a young boy and even though the boys parents forced him to fish with a more profitable boat, the boy still cares for him, brings food, and talks to him about American baseball, and is his spiritual inspiration.
On the eighty-fourth day the old man sets out in his skiff and decides that he will go out further than normal to catch a really big fish. When he gets out as far as he deems necessary he drops lines at different depths and waits. Then at noon he gets a fish that he knows is a marlin. The old man is unable to pull the marlin in because a marlin of that size would probably break a taut line so he must put the line across his neck and shoulders. And even though every time the fish jumps or turns sharply causes the line to cut into the old man he still endures. And because the old man can not pull the fish in the marlin starts to pull the boat away from land. Although the man aims to kill the fish he feels great admiration and a sense of kinship with the fish, and worries that the people that eat him may not be worthy.
On the third day the old man manages to pull the marlin in close enough to kill with a harpoon, the fish is so big though, that he must tie it to the side of his skiff. As the old man sails the fish's blood attracts sharks. Santiago manages to kill the first with his harpoon but looses the harpoon while killing it. Then more sharks come and he has to fight them off with a knife attached to his ore but that also breaks and is forced to use his tiller as a club but it is not enough against the oncoming hoards which eventually leave only the skeleton.
