CONFLICTS.

 The protagonist, the old Santiago, which has known better times, is defeated by the life (it lives in a wretched situation, from Manolin's charity to the beginning of the story), though it continues in his daily fight (the fishing, even if it has not fished anything throughout 84 days). Something is in this old fisherman, his dignity of being a human being, who makes to him be respected by the boy (and for some inhabitants of the village, since we see ultimately).

It lives in almost complete loneliness, surrounded only with recollections (and between them his knowledge of the baseball would be also), and is employed now at loneliness (constant he throws in lack the boy in his work), because for all it is the defeated one. He still believes in yes same (85 it might be his number of the luck), since his combat in the life is noble and waits to be corresponded.