Perico

Perico is a minor but significant character in Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, a fellow fisherman and neighbor who provides Santiago with a newspaper, embodying the quiet, sustaining community that surrounds the old man even in his isolation. Though he appears only in brief mentions, his small act of giving—a newspaper—links Santiago to the wider world of baseball and current events, and his role as a recipient of the marlin's head after the great fish is destroyed underscores the reciprocal, unspoken bonds among the fishermen of the village.

Identity and Role in the Community

Perico is a fellow fisherman and neighbor of Santiago, known to the old man as a source of newspapers. He is first mentioned when Santiago, sitting in the doorway of his shack, tells the boy Manolin that he has "yesterday's paper" to read about baseball, explaining that "Perico gave it to me at the bodega" . This act of giving a newspaper is not an isolated gesture but part of a pattern of small, practical kindnesses that sustain Santiago: Martin, the owner of the Terrace, sends meals and beer , and the fishermen collectively respect the old man despite his long run of bad luck . Perico's gift, like Martin's meals, is a thread in the social fabric that keeps Santiago connected to the life of the village, even as he endures his epic solitude at sea.

The Newspaper as a Link to the World

The newspaper Perico provides is more than a piece of paper; it is Santiago's primary link to the world beyond the sea and the shack. Santiago uses it to follow baseball, particularly the fortunes of the New York Yankees and the great DiMaggio, whose example of playing through pain with a bone spur becomes a touchstone for Santiago's own endurance . The newspaper also serves a practical, almost ritual purpose: Santiago sleeps on old newspapers that cover the springs of his bed , and he rolls his trousers with the newspaper inside to make a pillow . In this way, Perico's gift is woven into the very texture of Santiago's daily life—read for news, used for comfort, and recycled into the humble materials of his existence.

The Marlin's Head and the Cycle of Giving

After Santiago returns from his ordeal, his marlin reduced to a skeleton, he instructs Manolin to give the fish's head to Pedrico to chop up for use in fish traps (E00442–E00443). This act of giving the head—a practical, unsentimental disposal of what remains—mirrors the earlier gift of the newspaper from Perico. Both men are part of a community where resources are shared and nothing is wasted: the head becomes bait, the newspaper becomes bedding, and the skeleton becomes a tourist curiosity . Perico's role, though small, is thus part of a larger pattern of reciprocity that defines the fishermen's world—a world where a man's luck may fail, but the bonds of mutual aid do not.

Narrative Significance

Perico's function in the narrative is to quietly reinforce the theme of community that counterpoints Santiago's heroic isolation. He is never seen speaking or acting directly; he exists only in Santiago's mention of his name. Yet that mention is enough to establish that Santiago is not utterly alone: he has neighbors who give him newspapers, a boy who loves him, a restaurant owner who feeds him, and a fellow fisherman who will take the marlin's head. Perico, like the other minor figures, helps create the social world that Santiago leaves behind when he rows out to sea and that he returns to, broken but not defeated, at the story's end.