The Old Man And the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (2006, Unabridged, Compact Disc)

Hemingway’s powerful Pulitzer Prize winning novella about a poor, elderly fisherman’s single-handed attempt to catch and return home with an 18’ marlin remains a classic portrait of courage, humility and dignity in the face of extreme adversity. Santiago, well past his prime and under no illusions about it, his boat equipped only with fishing gear, a minimal amount of food and water and rudimentary weapons, sails far out into the Gulf Stream. There he goes one-on-one with a giant fish and outwits and lands it, only to lose its valuable meat to a pack of sharks as he heads, bloodied and exhausted, back towards the Cuban coastline. This is not, however, a story of failure but of quiet achievement, and most appropriately, Donald Sutherland avoids the sort of expressive dramatic reading which would serve only to showcase the fisherman’s struggle against the elements. Rather his sensitive low-keyed performance is designed to bring out the character of the old man, to touch us with his simplicity, patience, inner strength and sense of purpose, and to demonstrate that personal triumph can sometimes flow more meaningfully from physical loss than from public acclaim.