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Abstract:
The Old Man and the Sea tells an epic battle between an old, experienced fisherman and a giant marlin in a narrative way. The reason why Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature is his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, andthe influence that he has exerted on contemporary style. We can see the narrative features in the three days experiences in the short story. The second unique writing style is his excellent scenery description on the sea, the marlin, the sharks, the birds ,the plane and his dreams which give people the beauty sense and arouse people’s appreciation.
The short story tells us the old man’s spirit. “But man is not made for defeat,”and “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
Key Words:
narrativeunique writing styleexcellent scenery descriptionspirit
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American author and journalist. His distinctive writing style influenced 20th-century fiction, as did his life of adventure and public image. He produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s. Hemingway's fiction was successful. Many of his works are classics of American Literature.
The Old Man and the Sea was published in 1952 which won him the Nobel Prize in literaturein 1954.After that, Hemingway went on safari to Africa, where he was almost killed in a plane crash that left him in pain or ill-health for much of the rest of his life.
We can wildly guess that Hemingway was eager to go to Africa when he was writing The Old Man and the Sea. So he went to Africa afterwards and suffered from the pain which was like the pain and the struggle described in his previous book The Old Man and the Sea.Was it his dream in the book which came into the reality?
The reason why Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature is his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.
We can see the narrative features in the three days’ experiences in The Old Man and the Sea.
The Old Man and the Sea tells an epic battle between an old, experienced fisherman and a giant marlin in a narrative way. It opens by explaining that the fisherman, who is named Santiago, has gone 84 days without catching a fish. His young apprentice, Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to sail with the old man and been ordered to fish with more successful fishermen.However, the boy visits Santiago's shack each night, hauling back his fishing gear, getting him food and talking with him. Santiago tells Manolin that on the next day, he will venture far out into the Gulf to fish, confident that his unlucky fate is near its end.
Thus on the eighty-fifth day, Santiago sets out alone, taking his skiff far onto the Gulf. He sets his lines and, by noon of the first day, a big fish that he is sure is a marlin takes his bait. Unable to pull in the great marlin, Santiago instead finds the fish pulling his skiff. Two days and two nights pass in this manner, during which the old man bears the tension of the line with his body.He is wounded by the struggle and in pain.
On the third day ,the fish begins to circle the skiff. Santiago, now completely worn out, uses all the strength he has left in him to pull the fish onto its side and stab the marlin with a harpoon, ending the long battle between the old man and the tenacious fish.
While Santiago continues his journey back to the shore, sharks are attracted to the trail of blood left by the marlin in the water. By nightfall the sharks have almost eaten the marlin's entire body, leaving a skeleton consisting mostly of its backbone, its tail and its head. Before dawn on the next day, Santiago carryed the heavy mast on his shoulder. Once home, he slumps onto his bed and falls into a deep sleep.
A group of fishermen gather the next day around the boat where the fish's skeleton is still attached. One of the fishermen measures it to be 18 feet (5.5 m) from nose to tail. The old man gave the tail of the fish to the boy and asked the boy to give the fish’s head to the grocery store owner in return to his food.
The second unique writing style is his excellent scenery description on the sea, the marlin, the sharks, the birds ,the plane and his dreams which give people the beauty sense and arouse people’s appreciation.
In the following paragraphs, we can see his description of his dreams.
In this short novel,there appears several descriptions of the old man’s dreams.For example:…He was asleep in a short time and he dreamed of Africa when he was a boy and the long,golden beaches and the white beaches,so white they hurt your eyes, and the high capes and the great brown mountains. He lived along that coast now every night and in his dreams he heard the surf roar and saw the native boats come riding through it.He smelled the tar and oakum of the deck as he slept and he smelled the smell of Africa that the land breeze brought at morning…He no longer dreamed of storms,nor of women,nor of great occurences,nor of great fish,nor fights,nor contests of strength,nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach.They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy…
…Then he dreamed that he was in the village on his bed and there was a norther and he was very cold and his right arm was asleep because his head had rested on it instead of a pillow.After that he began to dream of the long yellow beach and he saw the first of the lions come down onto it in the early dark and then the other lions came and he rested his chin on the wood of the bows where the ship lay anchored with the evening off-shore breeze and he waited to see if there would be more lions and he was happy…
…The old man was dreaming about the lions.
In the following paragraph, we can see the description of birds with personification. We have got a vivid image of birds in our minds after reading it.
…He was sorry for the birds,especially the small delicate dark terns that were always flying and looking and almost never finding,and he thought,The birds have a harder life than we do except for the robber birds and the heavy strong ones.Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be cruel?She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly,dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea…
In the following paragraph, we can see the description of the sun and the sea. So, we will get a beautiful picture before our eyes. And this brings a sense of beauty and admiration of the great nature.
…The sun rose thinly from the sea and the old man could see the other boats,low on the water and well in toward the shore,spread out across the current. Then the sun was brighter and the glare came on the water and then,as it rose clear,the flat sea sent it back at his eyes so that it hurt sharply and he rowed without looking into it…
In the following paragraph, we can see the description of the clouds with metaphor.
…The clouds over the land now rose like mountains and the coast was only a long green line with the grey-blue hills behind it. The water was a dark blue now, so dark that it was almost purple.As he looked down into it he saw the red sifting of the plankton in the dark water and the strange light the sun made now. He eatched his lines to see them go straight down out of sight into the water and he was happy to see so much plankton because it meant fish. The strange light the sun made in the water, now that the sun made in the water,now that the sun was higher,meant good weather and so did the shape of the clouds over the land. But the bird was almost out of sight now and nothing showed on the surface of the water but some patches of yellow,sun-bleached Sargasso weed and the purple,formalized,irridescent,gelatinous bladder of a Portuguese man-of-war floating close beside the boat. It turned on its side and then righted itself. It floated cheerfully as a bubble with its long deadly purple filaments trailing a yard behind it in the water.
In the following paragraph, we can see the description of the marlin.
How moving do the pair of marlin behave!
…He remembered the time he had hooked one of a pair of marlin. The male fish always let the female fish feed first and the hooked fish, the female,made a wild,panic-stricken,despairing fight that soon exhausted crossing the line and circling with her on the surface. He had stayed so close that the old man was afraid he would cut the line with his tail which was sharp as a scythe and almost of that size and shape. When the old man had gaffed her and clubbed her, holding the rapier bill with its sandpaper edge and clubbing her across the top of her head until her colour turned to a colour almost like the backing of mirrors, and then,with the boy’s aid, hoisted her aboard, the male fish had stayed by the side of the boat. Then,while the old man was clearing the lines and preparing the harpoon,the male fish jumped high into the air beside the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep,his lavender wings,that were his pectoral fins,spread wide and all his wide lavender stripes showing.He was beautiful, the old man remembered, and he had stayed...
Hemingway creates a style that meaning is established through dialogue, through action, and silences—a fiction is stated explicitly instead of eloboratory style in 19thcentury.For example:
…A small bird came toward the skiff from the north. He was a warbler and flying very low over the water.The old man could see that he was very tired. The bird made the stern of the boat and rested there. Then he flew around the old man’s head and rested on the line where he was more comfortable.
“How old are you?” the old man asked the bird. “Is this your first trip”
The bird looked at him when he spoke. He was too tired even to examine the line and he teerered on it as his delicate feet gripped it fast…
In the above paragraphs, Hemingway used the dialogue between the old man and the bird, and also used the action.The description with the simplicity is thus full of meanings.
The short story tells us the old man’s spirit. We can get it from the following quotations.
“But man is not made for defeat,”he said. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
The Old Man and the Sea tells an epic battle between an old, experienced fisherman and a giant marlin in a narrative way. The reason why Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature is his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, andthe influence that he has exerted on contemporary style. We can see the narrative features in the three days experiences in the short story. The second unique writing style is his excellent scenery description on the sea, the marlin, the sharks, the birds ,the plane and his dreams which give people the beauty sense and arouse people’s appreciation.
The short story tells us the old man’s spirit. “But man is not made for defeat,”and “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
Key Words:
narrativeunique writing styleexcellent scenery descriptionspirit
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American author and journalist. His distinctive writing style influenced 20th-century fiction, as did his life of adventure and public image. He produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s. Hemingway's fiction was successful. Many of his works are classics of American Literature.
The Old Man and the Sea was published in 1952 which won him the Nobel Prize in literaturein 1954.After that, Hemingway went on safari to Africa, where he was almost killed in a plane crash that left him in pain or ill-health for much of the rest of his life.
We can wildly guess that Hemingway was eager to go to Africa when he was writing The Old Man and the Sea. So he went to Africa afterwards and suffered from the pain which was like the pain and the struggle described in his previous book The Old Man and the Sea.Was it his dream in the book which came into the reality?
The reason why Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature is his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.
We can see the narrative features in the three days’ experiences in The Old Man and the Sea.
The Old Man and the Sea tells an epic battle between an old, experienced fisherman and a giant marlin in a narrative way. It opens by explaining that the fisherman, who is named Santiago, has gone 84 days without catching a fish. His young apprentice, Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to sail with the old man and been ordered to fish with more successful fishermen.However, the boy visits Santiago's shack each night, hauling back his fishing gear, getting him food and talking with him. Santiago tells Manolin that on the next day, he will venture far out into the Gulf to fish, confident that his unlucky fate is near its end.
Thus on the eighty-fifth day, Santiago sets out alone, taking his skiff far onto the Gulf. He sets his lines and, by noon of the first day, a big fish that he is sure is a marlin takes his bait. Unable to pull in the great marlin, Santiago instead finds the fish pulling his skiff. Two days and two nights pass in this manner, during which the old man bears the tension of the line with his body.He is wounded by the struggle and in pain.
On the third day ,the fish begins to circle the skiff. Santiago, now completely worn out, uses all the strength he has left in him to pull the fish onto its side and stab the marlin with a harpoon, ending the long battle between the old man and the tenacious fish.
While Santiago continues his journey back to the shore, sharks are attracted to the trail of blood left by the marlin in the water. By nightfall the sharks have almost eaten the marlin's entire body, leaving a skeleton consisting mostly of its backbone, its tail and its head. Before dawn on the next day, Santiago carryed the heavy mast on his shoulder. Once home, he slumps onto his bed and falls into a deep sleep.
A group of fishermen gather the next day around the boat where the fish's skeleton is still attached. One of the fishermen measures it to be 18 feet (5.5 m) from nose to tail. The old man gave the tail of the fish to the boy and asked the boy to give the fish’s head to the grocery store owner in return to his food.
The second unique writing style is his excellent scenery description on the sea, the marlin, the sharks, the birds ,the plane and his dreams which give people the beauty sense and arouse people’s appreciation.
In the following paragraphs, we can see his description of his dreams.
In this short novel,there appears several descriptions of the old man’s dreams.For example:…He was asleep in a short time and he dreamed of Africa when he was a boy and the long,golden beaches and the white beaches,so white they hurt your eyes, and the high capes and the great brown mountains. He lived along that coast now every night and in his dreams he heard the surf roar and saw the native boats come riding through it.He smelled the tar and oakum of the deck as he slept and he smelled the smell of Africa that the land breeze brought at morning…He no longer dreamed of storms,nor of women,nor of great occurences,nor of great fish,nor fights,nor contests of strength,nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach.They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy…
…Then he dreamed that he was in the village on his bed and there was a norther and he was very cold and his right arm was asleep because his head had rested on it instead of a pillow.After that he began to dream of the long yellow beach and he saw the first of the lions come down onto it in the early dark and then the other lions came and he rested his chin on the wood of the bows where the ship lay anchored with the evening off-shore breeze and he waited to see if there would be more lions and he was happy…
…The old man was dreaming about the lions.
In the following paragraph, we can see the description of birds with personification. We have got a vivid image of birds in our minds after reading it.
…He was sorry for the birds,especially the small delicate dark terns that were always flying and looking and almost never finding,and he thought,The birds have a harder life than we do except for the robber birds and the heavy strong ones.Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be cruel?She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly,dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea…
In the following paragraph, we can see the description of the sun and the sea. So, we will get a beautiful picture before our eyes. And this brings a sense of beauty and admiration of the great nature.
…The sun rose thinly from the sea and the old man could see the other boats,low on the water and well in toward the shore,spread out across the current. Then the sun was brighter and the glare came on the water and then,as it rose clear,the flat sea sent it back at his eyes so that it hurt sharply and he rowed without looking into it…
In the following paragraph, we can see the description of the clouds with metaphor.
…The clouds over the land now rose like mountains and the coast was only a long green line with the grey-blue hills behind it. The water was a dark blue now, so dark that it was almost purple.As he looked down into it he saw the red sifting of the plankton in the dark water and the strange light the sun made now. He eatched his lines to see them go straight down out of sight into the water and he was happy to see so much plankton because it meant fish. The strange light the sun made in the water, now that the sun made in the water,now that the sun was higher,meant good weather and so did the shape of the clouds over the land. But the bird was almost out of sight now and nothing showed on the surface of the water but some patches of yellow,sun-bleached Sargasso weed and the purple,formalized,irridescent,gelatinous bladder of a Portuguese man-of-war floating close beside the boat. It turned on its side and then righted itself. It floated cheerfully as a bubble with its long deadly purple filaments trailing a yard behind it in the water.
In the following paragraph, we can see the description of the marlin.
How moving do the pair of marlin behave!
…He remembered the time he had hooked one of a pair of marlin. The male fish always let the female fish feed first and the hooked fish, the female,made a wild,panic-stricken,despairing fight that soon exhausted crossing the line and circling with her on the surface. He had stayed so close that the old man was afraid he would cut the line with his tail which was sharp as a scythe and almost of that size and shape. When the old man had gaffed her and clubbed her, holding the rapier bill with its sandpaper edge and clubbing her across the top of her head until her colour turned to a colour almost like the backing of mirrors, and then,with the boy’s aid, hoisted her aboard, the male fish had stayed by the side of the boat. Then,while the old man was clearing the lines and preparing the harpoon,the male fish jumped high into the air beside the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep,his lavender wings,that were his pectoral fins,spread wide and all his wide lavender stripes showing.He was beautiful, the old man remembered, and he had stayed...
Hemingway creates a style that meaning is established through dialogue, through action, and silences—a fiction is stated explicitly instead of eloboratory style in 19thcentury.For example:
…A small bird came toward the skiff from the north. He was a warbler and flying very low over the water.The old man could see that he was very tired. The bird made the stern of the boat and rested there. Then he flew around the old man’s head and rested on the line where he was more comfortable.
“How old are you?” the old man asked the bird. “Is this your first trip”
The bird looked at him when he spoke. He was too tired even to examine the line and he teerered on it as his delicate feet gripped it fast…
In the above paragraphs, Hemingway used the dialogue between the old man and the bird, and also used the action.The description with the simplicity is thus full of meanings.
The short story tells us the old man’s spirit. We can get it from the following quotations.
“But man is not made for defeat,”he said. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”