The Old Man and the Sea Trivia
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86 free The Old Man and the Sea trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Old Man and the Sea is the shortest book most people ever read for school and the one Hemingway was cited for when he won the Nobel Prize. This quiz covers the story and everything around it. The easy questions ask how long Santiago has gone without a fish, who Manolin is, what he hooks in the Gulf Stream, which ballplayer they talk about and what the old man dreams of. From there it moves into the plot's details: the albacore, the first mako, the knife lashed to an oar, the tourists who mistake the skeleton for a shark and the eighteen-foot measurement. The harder end is for Hemingway readers: the 26,531-word manuscript written in six weeks, Carlos Gutiérrez's original tale, the sea trilogy, Adriana Ivancich's cover sketches, the dedication to Scribner and Perkins, Life magazine's record 5.3 million copies, the Pulitzer of 1953, the Nobel citation of 1954, Berenson's Moby-Dick comparison, the Christian symbolism debate, Saddam Hussein's favourite book, Spencer Tracy's troubled 1958 film, Dimitri Tiomkin's Oscar, Aleksandr Petrov's 29,000 painted frames and Gregorio Fuentes, who lived to 104 without reading it. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the novella, its adaptations and Hemingway's life, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Ernest Hemingway, classic novels and American literature quizzes next.
30 of 86 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote The Old Man and the Sea?
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway: when the book was filmed, he went out off Peru himself to hunt giant marlin for the cameras.
Q 02The Old Man and the Sea is set off the coast of which country?
Cuba
Cuba: on the long sail home in the dark, Santiago steers for the glow of Havana's lights.
Q 03In The Old Man and the Sea, how many days has Santiago gone without a fish when the story opens?
84
84: Santiago tells the boy that eighty-five is a lucky number and suggests they buy a lottery ticket bearing it.
Q 04Which baseball star do Santiago and Manolin talk about?
Joe DiMaggio
Joe DiMaggio: exhausted at sea, Santiago spurs himself on by thinking of 'the great DiMaggio', who played on despite a painful bone spur.
Q 05What small fish does Santiago catch on the morning before the great fish takes his bait?
An albacore
An albacore: he calls it a beautiful bait, then eats it raw strip by strip the next day to keep up his strength.
Q 06Into which current does Santiago row far out to fish?
The Gulf Stream
The Gulf Stream: he rows out far beyond the other boats, and later tells the ruined marlin he is sorry he went out so far.
Q 07Santiago's marlin is two feet longer than his skiff; what does he come to call the fish?
His brother
His brother: he loves and respects the fish, yet he must stay strong enough to kill it.
Q 08On the third morning, what does Santiago's marlin begin to do?
Circle the skiff
Circle the skiff: each turn lets Santiago gain line until, almost delirious, he draws the fish alongside and harpoons it.
Q 09In The Old Man and the Sea, what kind of shark is the first to attack Santiago's marlin?
A mako
A mako: Santiago kills it, but the dying shark sinks with his harpoon still in it, leaving him without his best weapon.
Q 10What does Santiago make into a spear after losing his harpoon?
A knife lashed to an oar
A knife lashed to an oar: he kills more sharks with it until the blade snaps, leaving him a short club to beat them off.
Q 11What is left of the marlin when Santiago reaches shore?
Only the skeleton
Only the skeleton: on the last night a pack of sharks strips it, and Santiago fights them off until his tiller breaks.
Q 12What does Santiago dream about at the very end of The Old Man and the Sea?
Lions on an African beach
Lions on an African beach: he first saw them from a ship bound for Africa when he was a young sailor.
Q 13What Spanish word describes Santiago's extreme bad luck?
Salao
Salao: calling him the worst form of unlucky, the boy's parents ordered their son onto another boat.
Q 21Why has Santiago taken his wife's tinted photograph down from the wall of his shack?
It made him too lonely
It made him too lonely: yet her religious pictures still hang there, though he says he is not religious.
Q 22Which old adversary of Hemingway wrote a highly positive review of the novella?
William Faulkner
Word of mouth then reached such proportions that both editions were bootlegged.
Q 23Which prize did The Old Man and the Sea win in 1953?
Pulitzer for Fiction
Pulitzer for Fiction: it was his first, after the prize had passed over his earlier novel For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Q 14In his youth, what contest did Santiago win in a Casablanca tavern after a full day and a night?
Arm wrestling
Arm wrestling: he beat the strongest man on the docks and was known afterward as El Campeón, the Champion.
Q 15Staggering home at night, what does Santiago carry up the hill on his shoulder, falling under its weight?
The mast
The mast: he had to sit down five times before he reached his shack, then slept face down with his palms up.
Q 16Every day Santiago and Manolin pretend the old man still owns what, though they sold it long ago?
A cast net
A cast net: the pot of yellow rice and fish that Santiago offers the boy is make-believe too.
Q 17When Santiago once hooked a female marlin, what did her mate do?
Kept close to her
Kept close to her: at the end he leapt high beside the boat to see where she was, the saddest sight Santiago recalls.
Q 18Which young muse of Hemingway's drew sketches for the first-edition cover of The Old Man and the Sea?
Adriana Ivancich
Adriana Ivancich: Hemingway modelled the young countess in Across the River and Into the Trees on her, and she designed that book's jacket too.
Q 19To whom did Hemingway dedicate The Old Man and the Sea?
Scribner and Max Perkins
Scribner and Max Perkins: Perkins, his editor, had died in 1947, so the book was dedicated to his memory.
Q 20Which magazine published the whole of The Old Man and the Sea in a single issue?
Life
Life: printing the whole story in one issue paid off, as sales of that issue exceeded all expectations.
Q 24Once he is home, what does Santiago let Pedrico do with the marlin's head?
Use it in fish traps
Use it in fish traps: and when the boy asks about the marlin's spear, Santiago tells him to keep it.
Q 25On his first morning at sea, what does Santiago follow in the hope of finding fish?
A man-of-war bird
A man-of-war bird: he trails it as it dives after flying fish, but the school of dolphin moves too fast for either of them.
Q 26Santiago says his heart is like which creature's, which beats on for hours after it is butchered?
A turtle's
A turtle's: he spent years on turtle boats, and he pities turtles because most people are heartless about them.
Q 27Which dictator counted The Old Man and the Sea among his favourite books, a CIA report found?
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein: CIA analysts wrote that he saw his own life as a struggle against overwhelming odds, carried out with courage and dignity.
Q 28The name Santiago is Spanish for which fisherman-apostle?
St James
St James: once a fisherman himself, the apostle is said to lie at Santiago de Compostela, which grew into a great pilgrimage centre.
Q 29Which word completes Santiago's credo 'A man can be destroyed but not ___'?
Defeated
Defeated: he says it just after killing the first shark, knowing more will follow the marlin's blood trail.
Q 30Back ashore, what does Manolin insist on, whatever his family says?
Going out with him again
Going out with him again: 'I'll bring the luck with me,' the boy says, and they plan a new killing lance for the boat.