For how much can you break the human spirit?

Ernest Hemingway starts by building up the story in a seemingly dry, straight-forward fashion — here, Hemingway starts, introducing the wise fisherman of the story, this is an unlucky old man.

During the first few pages, I found myself at odds with his way of writing. Where was the beautiful prose? It's my very first book from this author. I did not find his words as striking and vivid as I'd expected them to be. However, as the story continued on, I realized that the beauty was contained in the old man's experiences — not confined in the way of its retelling.The resilience, passion, hope, sadness, and suffering that made up the themes of the story were beautifully explored in a fisherman's experience at the sea.

Overall, this book has left me with various emotions to struggle with. I found parallels in the slow tearing of the old man's spirit to my own experiences having been undiagnosed for much of my life for a well-masked neurodevelopmental disorder. The consistent failures from something seemingly innate but unknown had been a source of hopelessness, and this book has thoroughly presented what it's like and elicits the same emotions. It is, in a deranged comforting way, a testament that the human experience is shared in the many variations of our day-to-day lives.

There is much meaning to be gained from this book, and I've no doubt that the story is something that I'll carry with me and revisit every so often.