老人与海英语论文

An Analysis of the Heroic Character in the Old Man and the Sea
学院：外国语学院
班级：英语101
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An Analysis of the Heroic Character in the Old Man and the Sea
Abstract:Hemingway was one of the most famous novelists in America. He created a perfect image of Code Hero: Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea which won Hemingway Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. The Old Man and the Sea is one of the most influential and far-reaching novels of the literary treasure of the world. The content of the essay is to analyze the characteristics of Code Hero. Through the introduction to Hemingway’s legend life, we find some common points between the author and the old man, and the most familiar point is that both of them have the spirit of Code Hero. Then I will analyses the spirit of Code Hero. The spirit is concentrated on four areas: First, never give up hopes in any difficult conditions; secondly, keep daring spirit and never admit defeat in the process of fighting; thirdly, behave heroically in the actual battle; and last, endure the loneliness in the long process of the fighting. The last part of the essay is the conclusion. This paper will analyze the image of the old man, reveal the characteristics of Code Hero, and advocate the spirit of never giving up.
Keywords：Spirit, Hemingway, Code Hero, Santiago
1 The Introduction to the Author
Regarded as a giant both in American literature and the world literature, Ernest Hemingway was born on July21, 1898, at Oak Park, Illinois. During World War I he worked as an ambulance driver in France and in the Italian infantry and was wounded severely just before his 19th ter, he became involved with the expatriate literary and artistic circle surrounding Gertrude Stein when he was working in Paris as a correspondent for the Toronto Star, His works during the 1920s are representative of“the Lost Generation”. During the Spanish Civil War and later the Second Word War, Hemingway served as a correspondent on the loyalist side. Then he settled in Cuba in 1945.In 1954, Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize of Literature for his “mastery of the art of modern narration”.After his expulsion from Cuba by the Castro regime, he moved to Idaho. He was increasingly plagued by ill health and mental problems, and in July, 1961, he committed suicide by shooting himself.
Hemingway’s life is filled with kinds of adventures, and from his rich and colorful life experiences，his life seems like an unusual book which many other people in the world admire and envy.Hemingway's fiction usually focuses on people living essential, dangerous lives, soldiers, fishermen, athletes, bullfighters, who meet the pain and difficulty of their existence with stoic courage.From his works and life experiences, Hemingway is indeed a perfectionist. Many of the heroes that he created in novels are represented his code man spirit---perfectionism, especially in The Old Man and the Sea. The old man named Santiago represented Hemingway’s perfectionism characteristic more vividly than other code man in his works
2 The Introduction to the Background
Hemingway’s life was active and adventurous but full of pains. He lived in the period that the World War One broke out when many young volunteers took part in the war which also called “a war ends all wars”.But the cruel reality made them aware that modern warfare was not as glorious as they thought.Actually the First and the Second World Wars had affected Hemingway a lot, for he had once joined the army and had injured in Italy, so he suffered much which was brought about by the war deeply. He was disappointed with the world at that time and became very pessimistic about the fate of the human beings. As a young writer and spokesman of the “The Lost Generation”, and influenced by the greedy and heedless way of life in America, Hemingway’s works all vividly recorded the life of those physically and mentally wounded soldiers, revealed the frustration, loneli ness when “God is dead”.
3 Plot
It is a poetic tragic novel told in language of great simplicity and power. Its hero is an old Cuban fisherman ---Santiago, who is down on his luck, and tries to fight against his fate. In the story Santiago has gone for 84 days without catching a fish. As a result, Mandolin, a little boy, who used to sail with him, is forbidden from fishing with the old man by his parents and forced to catch fish in another “good-lucky” ship.
Later despite the boy asks for fishing together again, but the old man insists on fishing alone and at last, he succeeds in hooking a giant marlin which is eighteen-foot, the largest he has ever known before. But the fish is very powerful and disobedient. It tows the old man and his boat for almost 48 hours, the old man could do nothing but bearing the whole weight of the fish through the line on his back. The old man, with little food and sleep, has to bear a lot of pain and at the same time fight against the
fish. To his great excitement, he was rewarded for his struggle. On the third day at sea, he finally catches the weakened marlin to the surface and harpoons it.
On his way home, he lashed marlin alongside his boat because it is too big to be put in the boat. But, unfortunately, the sharks assaulted the old man and the giant marlin in different directions for four times. The old man fights to kill the sharks with as much strength he can summon, but only to find a giant skeleton of his marlin left after his desperate defense. At last, Santiago, having lost what he fought for, reaches the shore and struggles to his shack. He falls into sound sleep, dreaming of Africa and the lions again.
4 Analysis of the heroic characters
In the novel, the author portrays the image of an old Cuban fisherman who has gone for 84 days with catching nothing.“The old man was thin and gaunt, with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of the scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.” From these words, we may feel sympathetic toward the old man and think that he is too week to catch a big fish. But “Everything about him was old except his eye and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.” In spite of his old and week appearance, his eyes are not stuffy but as cheerful as the young men’s eyes through which we can see his unyielding spirit. This contrast clearly shows Santiago’s real personality.
84 days is a long period of time. A man can tolerate failure, but can’t tolerate continuous failure. Too much failure will destroy a man even with strong will. But for Santiago, although a poverty-stricken and lonely old man, nothing can defeat his will. He firmly insists that he will not always be unfortunate.He says, “I may not be as strong as I think.”, “But I know many tricks and I have resolutions.” The old man is very confident and has the strong believe that he will finally catch a big fish. What gives him such confidence under the difficult and cruel reality? Through the man, the author points out---even though life is very hard and seems hopeless, “But who knows? Every day is a new day.” He has the hope for the future and the unyielding spirit to challenge his fate.
With Santiago’s exceeding self-confidence, he gets ride of his bad fortune and catches the fish which is longer than his skiff. But the Marline is very disobedient and strong. The old man “swing with each arm alternately on the cord with all the strength
of his arm and the pivoted weight of his body.” But “nothing happened. The fish just moves away slowly and the old man could not raise him an inch.” One side is a very old man, and the other side is the big strong Marline. Neither side is going to yield. In some way, the Marlin is a remarkable and respectable fish. It tows the skiff behind him out to the sea for 48 hours. “The contest is to see who can endure longer than the other.”“The fish made a struggle that pulled him down on his face and made a cut below his eye. The blood ran down his cheek a little way. But is coagulated and dried before it reached his chin and he worked his way back to the how and rested against the wood.” At the moment, if Santiago cut the line and let the fish go, he can get ride of the danger, but if he do so, it means that he is a loser. Santiago doesn’t choose this way; he tries to think nothing but only to endure. When he is thirsty, he takes some water; when he is sleepy, he lies forward cramming himself against the line with all of his body, putting all his weight onto his right hand. Even his left hand cramps and his right hand is cut by the line, he just tries his best to endure. On the third day at sea, he finally catches the weakened marlin to the surface and harpoons it. But on the returning voyage, the old man meets a more terrible disaster. The Marline’s blood draws the shark group in different directions for four times. Although he knows that there is little hope for him to win after his long fighting with the Marline, but he knows that he should face the sharks and kill them as a man to protect his fish. The author uses much ink to portray the sharks which aims to describe the old man’s spirit. The harder the fish and the sharks are to defeat, the taller the old man’s image is.
5 Writing Style and Techniques
Hemingway’s works have unique artistic style. He is distinguished from other writers in choosing characters and subjects. The leading roles in his novels are men. Through a series of description, he shows the readers the unique world of men. Most of these men are matador, pugilist, and hunter and so on. By portraying the battles in which these men fight with nature, society and, Hemingway want to extol their unyielding struggle spirit. The very virtues of Hemingway’s style are his insistence on simplicity, his pure male writing style, and his manipulation of language. Some critics call it “cinematic prose”. This style has close relationship with his long career as a reporter. As he said in response to a newsman:“You have to learn to write some simple statement sentences. It is useful to everybody.”
Hemingway can also control language completely. As Ford said:“Every word is
like fresh stone from the stream. They are living and shining and each has its own position. So his language can achieve this effect: seeing the bottom of water clearly, the words ranking one after another orderly. Overall, it is like a chessboard. ”All in all, Hemingway’s language in The Old Man and the Sea is simple and natural on the surface, but actually deliberate and artificial. The forming of this distinct style is related to Hemingway’s ow n experience. And the influence of this style is not only within America but also all over the world. The facts in the novel are selected and used as a device to make the fictional world accepted. Unlike other novelists who add allegorical meanings to their facts, Hemingway uses the facts simply and naturally, without any emotion. In the latter part of the novel, instead of being narrated by the author, the facts are used from inside Santiago’s own consciousness, and form part of a whole scheme of the novel. Besides what have been mentioned above, other techniques in The Old Man and the Sea, such as realism, monologue, the creation of suspense and so on, are also very successful. All these show Hemingway’s superb artistic attainments as a Nobel Prize winner.
6 Conclusion
The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway’s most enduring works and may very well become one of the true classics of his generation. In the novel, Hemingway creates an image of heroic character who actually reflects the author’s own life attitude. That is, to fight through the failure is inevitable and to show dignity and grace under poverty and pressure. From the novel, we know that the knowledge that a simple man is capable of the decency, dignity, and even heroism that Santiago possesses and that his battle can been seen in heroic terms is itself perhaps the greatest victory that Hemingway won. We can also get a lot of inspirations from the hero--- Santiago. Actually the winner takes nothing but the sense of having fought the fight to the limits of his strength，or of having shown what a man can do when it is necessary. Winner is undefeated only because he has gone on trying.Besides we can learn a lot from Santiago’s famous saying. For example, after he kills the first shark, he says, “Man is not made defeated.”“A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” His words not only prove his character: endurance, persistence and undefeated spirit, but also express the novel’ theme.
Life is a kind of endless pursuit. It is a long, difficult road and full of ups and
downs but as long as we are brave enough to meet the challenges with self-confidence, we will always be a real winner. We should not only appreciate the heroic character, but also try to be a man like Santiago. In the present society, everyone may meet failure, from the study or from the work. What we learn from the heroic character can help us conduct ourselves well when bad luck is coming.。