The setting for the story The Old Man And The in Havana Cuba during the 1940s. It takes place along the beach were Santiago catches fish and lives. It is important to understand the setting of where the old man lives to understand how he lives and he has has always lived. The old man lives in a old hut in the beach of the Havana. From this we can tell he is poor and has fishing is the only way he has ever made money. Now since he can't catch fish he is broke and needs others to support him like Manolin. From the setting and the people we can tell they are a tight community because they all don't have a lot of money but they share. At the beginning of the story Manolin was given food for free and shared with Santiago. The setting tells us the people don't have a lot of wealth but they stick together. The Story takes place during the 1940s. This might have affected the story development because this was when everything started to go bad. There was a lot of unemployment, tourism went down so hotels where closing, Havana's many cigar factories suffered the most and closed. Fishing was the only option during this time for many people since everything was closing. Santiago had been a fisherman his whole life and maybe since so many people lost there jobs they resorted to fishing and slowly there were less fish to catch. This may be the reason why Santiago had trouble catching fish, or this caused even more trouble for him.