Day Five Summary

The last day starts with the boy finding the old man asleep. The boy cries when he sees the old man's damaged hands, and continues to do so for a long time. The others are down at the beach, measuring the length of the huge marlin. They determine that it was eighteen feet. The old man and the boy talk for a while and the boy says he caught two fish the day before, but does not want to talk about them. The boy makes some coffee and brings it out for the old man, who says that "they beat me". He is not taking about the fish, though, but what happened afterwards.

As the two continue to talk the boy then says that they searched for the old man while he was gone. The old man appreciated that someone actually cared about him and his well being, and also says that he likes having someone to talk to, but does not want to fish with the boy anymore because he thinks of himself as bad luck. But the boy says he doesn't care and wants to fish with the old man anyway. They both decide that the old man needs to heal himself before he totally falls apart. The old man wants to read the newspapers from the days he was gone instead of talking anymore, and that is what he does.

All that is left of the marlin is the head, and the old man insists that they give it to Pedrico, who gave him food in the beginning of the story, instead of keeping the marlin head for himself.

Then, after all of that, it seems that life just goes back to normal for everyone. Tourists see the huge skeleton of the marlin and think that it is a shark, because they don't really understand the story when it is told. And as for the old man...the old man just goes back to dreaming about lions.