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Source Nov 2022 Paper 1

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55 views3 pages

Source Nov 2022 Paper 1

Uploaded by

lucybaik24
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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GCSE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Paper 1 Explorations in creative reading and writing

Insert
The source that follows is:

Source A: 20th Century prose-fiction

The Old Man and the SeaI by Ernest Hemingway

An extract from the beginning of a novel published in 1952

Please turn the page over to see the source

8700/1
Source A

Source A is an edited extract from The Old Man and the Sea, a novel written by Ernest
Hemingway and first published in 1952. The extract describes an old fisherman who has been
struggling to make a living.

1 He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-
four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after
forty days without a fish the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was now definitely
and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in
5 another boat which caught three good fish the first week.

It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he
always went down to help him 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.
10 The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown
blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its [9] reflection on the tropic sea
were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his 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 him was old except
15 his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.

16 “Santiago,” the boy said to him 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 man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him.

“No,” the old man said. “You’re with a lucky boat. Stay with them.”
20 “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 man said. “I know you did not leave me because you doubted.”

“It was papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him.”

“I know,” the old man said. “It is quite normal.”


25 “He hasn’t much faith.”

“No,” the old man said. “But we have. Haven’t we?”

‘Yes,” the boy said. “Can I offer you a beer on the Terrace and then we’ll take the stuff
home.”
“Why not?” the old man said. “Between fishermen.”
30 They sat on the Terrace and many of the fishermen made fun of the old man and he was
not angry. Others, of the older fishermen, looked at him and were sad. The successful
fishermen of that day were already in and had butchered their marlin out and carried them
laid full length across two planks, with two men 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. [...]
35 “Santiago,” the boy said.

“Yes,” the old man said. He was holding his 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.”
40 “You bought me a beer,” the old man said. “You are already a man.”

“How old was I when you first took me in a boat?”

“Five and you nearly were killed when I brought the fish in too green and he nearly tore the
boat to pieces. Can you remember?”

“I can remember the tail slapping and banging and the thwart breaking and the noise of the
45 clubbing. I can remember you throwing me into the bow where the wet coiled lines were and
feeling the whole boat shiver and the noise of you clubbing him like chopping a tree down.”

“Can you really remember that or did I just tell it to you?”

“I remember everything from when we first went together.”

The old man looked at him with his sun-burned, confident loving eyes.
50 “If you were my boy I’d take you out and gamble,” he said. “But you are your father’s and your
mother’s and you are in a lucky boat.”

END OF SOURCES

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