decided to gender-neutralized Hemingway's novella, The Old Man and the Sea.
Excerpt below: Full PDF story here: The Old Person and the Sea
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Excerpt below: Full PDF story here: The Old Person and the Sea
The Old Person
and the Sea
By Ernest
Hemingway
Gender
Neutralized by Ryan MacDonald
They were an
old person who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and they had gone
eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a person
had been with them. But after forty days without a fish the person's parents
had told them that the old person was now definitely and finally salao,
which is the worst form of unlucky, and the person had gone at their orders in
another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the person
sad to see the old person come in each day with their skiff empty and they
always went down to help them carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and
harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with
flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.
The old
person was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of their neck. The
brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection
on the tropic sea were on their cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of
their face and their hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish
on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions
in a fishless desert.
Everything
about them was old except their eyes and they were the same color as the sea
and were cheerful and undefeated.
"Santiago,"
the person said to them as they climbed the bank from where the skiff was
hauled up. "I could go with you again. We've made some money."
The old
person had taught the person to fish and the person loved them.
"No,"
the old person said. "You're with a lucky boat. Stay with them."
"But
remember how you went eighty-seven days without fish and then we caught big
ones every day for three weeks."
"I
remember," the old person said. "I know you did not leave me because
you doubted."
"It was
papa-momma made me leave. I am a person and I must obey them."
"I
know," the old person said. "It is quite normal."
"They
haven't much faith."
"No,"
the old person said. "But we have. Haven't we?"
"Yes,"
the person said. "Can I offer you a beer on the Terrace and then we'll
take the stuff home."
"Why
not?" the old person said. "Between fisherpeople."
They sat on
the Terrace and many of the fisherpeople made fun of the old person and they
were not angry. Others, of the older fisherpeople, looked at them and were sad.
But they did not show it and they spoke politely about the current and the
depths they had drifted their lines at and the steady good weather and of what
they had seen. The successful fisherpeople of that day were already in and had
butchered their marlin out and carried them laid full length across two planks,
with two people staggering at the end of each plank, to the fish house where
they waited for the ice truck to carry them to the market in Havana. Those who
had caught sharks had taken them to the shark factory on the other side of the
cove where they were hoisted on a block and tackle, their livers removed, their
fins cut off and their hides skinned out and their flesh cut into strips for
salting.
When the
wind was in the east a smell came across the harbour from the shark factory;
but today there was only the faint edge of the odour because the wind had
backed into the north and then dropped off and it was pleasant and sunny on the
Terrace.
"Santiago,"
the person said.
"Yes,"
the old person said. They were holding their glass and thinking of many years
ago.
"Can I
go out to get sardines for you for tomorrow?"
"No. Go
and play baseball. I can still row and Rogelio will throw the net."
"I
would like to go. If I cannot fish with you, I would like to serve in some
way."
"You
bought me a beer," the old person said. "You are already a
person."
