Key Facts

• Full Title: The Old Man and the Sea
• Author: Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
• When Written: 1951
• Where Written: Cuba
• When Published: 1952
• Literary Period: Modernism
• Genre: Fiction (novella); Allegory
• Setting: Late 1940s; a fishing village near Havana, Cuba, and the waters of the Gulf of Mexico
• Climax: When Santiago finally harpoons and kills the marlin; when Santiago fights off the final pack of sharks
• Point of View: Third-person omniscient, although largely limited to Santiago's point of view