The Old Man and Sea

“A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

Is the old man being destroyed, or defeated?

He killed the fish with all his strength.

Then the sharks came, they took all the flesh, bite by bite, until only the skeleton was left.

“It was too good to last, he thought. I wish it had been a dream now and that I had never hooked the fish and was alone in bed on the newspapers.”

He is finally back home, with that huge s keleton.

“It is easy when you are beaten, he thought. I never knew how easy it was. And what beat you, he thought.
‘Nothing,’ he said aloud. ‘I went out too far.’”