Day Four Summary

As day four begins, the old man is woken up by the marlin jerking on the fishing line. The fish starts jumping around as the old man continues to desperately hold on, cursing his hand because it has fallen asleep. As the fish continues to jump the old man begins to deliberate about what he should do, and how he should handle his hunger. He finally decides that he needs to just eat more of the raw fish even though the very thought of it makes him want to throw up, because otherwise he is sure that he will pass out from the hunger.

So he eats the fish and mentally prepares himself for the rest of the day, telling the fish to 'bring it on'. The fish then circles the boat for a couple hours, and the old man starts to pull in the line a little bit. Two other fish are bothering the marlin, and the old man does not care who gets killed, he just wants the whole process over and done with.

Finally, after being on the verge of passing out, the old man sticks a harpoon in the fish and the marlin is dead. He figures that the fish weighs over a thousands pounds, and everyone back home who used to make fun of him for his recent fishing dry spell and inability would be shocked and jealous and proud. So the old man heads home with the marlin, which unfortunately starts bleeding. And the old man knows that the blood could very well attract sharks, which would really not be good.

A shark comes along not long after and the old man harpoons it, but not before it takes a big huge bite of the of the marlin, which means the old man is losing money. The old man then says that a man can be destroyed but not defeated. But biggest problem now is that the old man lost his harpoon while fighting off the shark, and he is now basically defenseless.

More sharks start to come and now a fourth of the marlin is gone, eaten away by the sharks. By the time he nears land, there is basically none of the fish left. He makes it to shore and pulls his boat up himself, deciding that is was all his fault because he had gone out too far. And then he goes home to his shack without anything to show for all his troubles.