5。 Conclusion 14

References 15

1。 Introduction

1。1 Research Background来自优Y尔L论W文Q网wWw.YouERw.com 加QQ7520~18766

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), born in Oak Park, Illinois, started his career as a writer in a newspaper office in Kansas City at the age of seventeen。 After the United States entered the First World War, he joined a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army。 Serving at the front, he was wounded, was decorated by the Italian Government, and spent considerable time in hospitals。 After his return to the United States, he became a reporter for Canadian and American newspapers and was soon sent back to Europe to cover such events as the Greek Revolution。 During the twenties, Hemingway became a member of the group of expatriate Americans in Paris, which he described in his first important work, The Sun Also Rises (1926)。 Equally successful was A Farewell to Arms (1929), the study of an American ambulance officer’s disillusionment in the war and his role as a deserter。 Hemingway used his experiences as a reporter during the civil war in Spain as the background for his most ambitious novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)。 Among his later works, the most outstanding is the short novel, The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the story of an old fisherman's journey, his long and lonely struggle with a fish and the sea, and his victory in defeat。 Hemingway is a great sportsman and liked to portray soldiers, hunters, bullfighters, at times primitive people whose courage and honesty are set against the brutal ways of modern society, and who in this confrontation lose hope and faith。 His straightforward prose, his spare dialogue, and his predilection for understatement are particularly effective in his short stories, some of which are collected in Men Without Women (1927) and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938)。 Hemingway died in Idaho in 1961。

Hemingway has met the cold shoulder and attack in the sector which lasts for nearly a decade before 1952。 To rescue the declining reputation, he published a new work, that is, The Old Man and the Sea。 William Faulkner considers it the most excellent work in this generation。 Because of this work Hemingway won the Pulitzer in 1952 and the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954, which pushes his writing career to the peak。

The Old Man and the Sea is a short novel written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Bimini, Bahamas, and was 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 is a short novel about Santiago, an old Cuban fisherman who has gone for 84 days without catching a fish。 Therefore, the boy, Manolin, who used to sail with him is forced to leave him and catch in another boat。 Obviously, the old man is unlucky。 After a desperate struggle, he only brought back the skeleton of the big marlin。 论文网

The Old Man and the Sea may very well become one of the true classics of this generation。 Certainly, the qualities of Ernest Hemingway’s short novel are those which we associate with many great stories of the past: near perfection of form within the limitations of its subject matter, restraint of treatment, regard for the unities of time and place, and evocative simplicity of style。 Also, like most great stories, it can be read on more than one level of meaning。 On one it is an exciting but tragic adventure story。 Sustained by the pride of his calling, the only pride he has left, a broken old fisherman ventures far out into the Gulf Stream and there hooks the biggest marlin ever seen in those waters。 Then, alone and exhausted by his struggle to harpoon the giant fish, he is forced into a losing battle with marauding sharks; they leave him nothing but the skeleton of his catch。 On another level the book is a fable of the unconquerable spirit of man, a creature capable of snatching spiritual victory from circumstances of disaster and material defeat。 On still another it is a parable of religious significance, its theme supported by the writer’s unobtrusive handling of Christian symbols and metaphors。 Like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, Hemingway’s Cuban fisherman is a character allowing the imagination of his creator to operate simultaneously in two different worlds of meaning and value, the one real and dramatic, the other moral and devotional symbolic。