In the Ernest Hemingway novel 'The Old Man and the Sea', the title character battles a giant what?

'The Old Man and the Sea' is a short novel written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Bimini, Bahamas, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it tells the story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba.

In 1953, 'The Old Man and the Sea' was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to their awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954.

In 1954 Hemingway donated his Nobel prize gold medal in Literature to the venerated Marian image of Our Lady of Charity. The Swedish medal was stolen in 1986, but was returned later upon the threat of Raul Castro.