英語論文89017：評《老人與?！分泻Ｃ魍懽黠L格和手法

1、英語畢業(yè)論文 評評老人與海老人與海中海明威寫作風格和手中海明威寫作風格和手 法法 abstract being distinguished from many greatest american writers, hemingway is noted for his writing style. among all his works, the old man and the sea is a typical one to his unique writing style and technique. the language is simple and natural on the surf

2、ace, but actually deliberate and artificial. sometimes the simple style is made a little different. the dialogue is combined with the realistic and the artificial. the simplicity is highly suggestive, and often reflects the strong undercurrent of emotion. occasionally, the author uses some figures o

3、f speech. hemingways style is related to his experience as a journalist, his learning from many famous writers, and most importantly, his conscientious effort in looking for a style of his own. the influence of his style is great all over the world. the old man and the sea is full of facts, most of

4、which comes from hemingways own experience. so the way to use facts is a very important writing technique in this novel. the facts in the novel are selected and used as a device to make the fictional world accepted. in the forepart of the novel, they are used to show the quality of santiagos life, a

5、nd are narrated simply and naturally; while in the latter part of the novel, they are used from inside santiagos own consciousness and form part of a whole scheme of the novel. keywords: facts; simplicity; artificial; iceberg theory 中文摘要 在眾偉大的美國作家中，海明威以獨特的寫作風格而著稱。在他所有的作品中， 老人與海最能 體現(xiàn)他獨特的寫作風格和手法。這部小說語

6、言看似簡潔自然，其實包含了作者的精心揣摩和潤色加 工。有時為了突出某一部分，作者會采用長句代替短句。文中的對話內(nèi)容真實、貼近生活，而表達 形式則經(jīng)過了藝術(shù)加工。小說簡潔自然的語言背后隱藏了深刻的意義和感情。文中還運用了比喻、 擬人等修辭手法.還名位的這種獨特風格與他當過新聞記者的經(jīng)歷有關(guān),同時他兼菜各家之長,自成一 體,形成了自己獨特的創(chuàng)作方法和藝術(shù)風格。這種風格對整個世界文壇產(chǎn)生了重要的影響。 老人與海這部小說中運用了大量的事實,他們大多來自于作者親身經(jīng)歷。海明威對這些事實精 心選擇,從而吸引讀者的興趣并使讀者有一種身臨其境的感覺。小說一開始用大量事實描寫了主人 公生活的環(huán)境,敘述風格簡潔自

7、然,未加任何感情色彩。隨著情節(jié)的發(fā)展,大量的事實主要被運用于主 人公的心理活動之中,而不是主要由作者來敘述。同時,這些事實構(gòu)成了整個小說體系中不可缺少的 一部分。 關(guān)鍵詞： 事實；簡潔；加工；冰山理論 英語畢業(yè)論文 i hemingways writing style and techniques in the old man and the sea introduction the old man and the sea (1952) comes round at the finish of hemingways writing career. with its vivid characte

8、rization, its simple language, and the profound implicating it carries, it stands out as one of the excellent books hemingways former stature as the words preeminent novelist after hemingways unsuccessful novel across the river and into the trees (1950). the old man and the sea earned its author the

9、 pulitzer prize in fiction for 1952, and was instrumental in winning him the nobel prize for literature two years later. it is a short novel about santiago, an old cuban fisherman who has gone for 84 days without catch. therefore the boy, mandolin, who used to sail with him, is forced to leave him a

10、nd catch in another ship. the old man insists on fishing alone and at last, he hooks an eighteen-foot, giant marlin, the largest he has ever known. but the fish is very powerful and disobedient. it tows the old man and his boat out to sea for 48 hours, with the old man bearing the whole weight of th

11、e fish through the line on his back. the old man, with little food and sleep, has to endure much pain and fights against his treacherous hand cramp. to his great excitement, on his third day at sea, he succeeds in drawing the weakened marlin to the surface and harpoons it. on his way home, he lashes

12、 marlin alongside his boat because it is too big to be pulled into the boat. but, unfortunately, the come across sharks in different numbers for four times. the old man fights to kill the sharks with as much might and many weapons as he can summon, but only to find a giant skeleton of his marlin lef

13、t 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. his struggle wins him much respect. among many great american writers, hemingway is famous for his objec

14、tive and terse prose style. as the last novel hemingway published in his life, the old man and the sea typically reflects his unique writing style. this paper aims to discuss the writing style and techniques in the old man and the sea. of course, hemingway has used many techniques in this novel, suc

15、h as realism, the creation of suspense, monologue, etc. and this paper focuses especially on the language style and one of the important techniques-the way to use facts in this novel. hemingway is famous for his language. with much care and effort, he created a very influential and immediately recog

16、nizable style. “the style he created in his early work, such as in our time and the sun also rises, was almost too good. like the style of certain painters, it tended to become a manner, rather than a flexible way of responding to experience and conveying fresh insights through words.”1 among all hi

17、s works, the old man and the sea is the most typical one to his unique language style. its language is simple and natural, and has the effect of directness, clarity and freshness. this is because hemingway always manages to choose words “concrete, specific, more commonly found, more anglo-saxon, cas

18、ual and conversational.” 2 he seldom uses adjectives and abstract nouns, and avoids complicated syntax. hemingways strength lies in his short sentences and very specific details. his short sentences are powerfully loaded with the tension, which he sees in life. where he does not use a simple and sho

19、rt sentence, he connects the various parts of the sentence in a straightforward and sequential way, often linked by “and”. in his task of creating real people, hemingway uses dialogue as an effective device. it is presented in a form “as close to the dramatic as possible, with a minimum of explanato

20、ry comment.”3 here is an example chosen from the old man and the sea: 英語畢業(yè)論文 ii what do you have to eat? the boy asked. no, i will eat at home. do you want me to make the fire? no, i will make it later on. or i may eat the rice cold. here we can see that such interpolations as “he said” have frequen

21、tly been omitted and the words are very colloquial. thus the speech comes to the reader as if he were listening. hemingway has captured the immediacy of dialogue skillfully and has made the economical speech connotative. but it is good to note that hemingways style is deliberate and artificial, and

22、is never as natural as it seems to be. the reasons are as follows. firstly, in some specific moments, in order to stand out by contrast and to describe an important turning point or climax, the style is made a little different: he took all his pain and what was left of his long gone pride and he put

23、 it against the fishs agony and the fish came over on to his side and swam gently on his side, his bill almost touching the planking of the skiff, and started to pass the boat, long, deep, wide, silver and barred with purple and interminable in the water.5 the language in this one-sentence paragraph

24、 is different from other parts of the novel. kenneth graham has commented that the sentence builds up its parts in a carefully laborious sequence-“all his pain and what was left of his strength and his long gone pride”. it emulates the movement of the exhausted marlin and the physical strain of the

25、old man. and it mounts to a heavy crescendo in the very un-prosaic inversion of adjectives-“l(fā)ong, deep, wide”-ending in the virtually poetic cadence, “interminable in the water.”6 the dialogue, too, is combined with the realistic and the artificial. usually the content contains and the expression co

26、ntains the artificial. in the old man and the sea, the language style is very peculiar from hemingways other writings. this is because the novel is an english version of the spanish that santiago and mandolin would speak in real life. “since we are meant to realize that santiago and mandolin could n

27、ot possibly speak like this, since english is not his tongue anyway, we are more likely to accept other artificialities of the dialogue. using the device of a pretended translation, which would be bound to stilt in any case, hemingway can poetize the dialogue as he wishes.”7 the speakers are distanc

28、ed from readers to a certain degree. and while their language taking on a kind of epic dignity, it does not lose its convincingness. even slightly strange exchanges like the following become fairly acceptable. for example: youre my alarm clock, the boy said. age is my alarm clock, the old man said.

29、why do old man wake so early? is it to have one longer day? i dont know, the boy said. all i know is that young boys sleep late and hard. i can remember it, the old man said. ill waken you in time.8 the simple sentences and the repeated rhythms hit at the profundities that the surface of the languag

30、e tries to ignore. its simplicity is highly suggestive and connotative, and often reflects the strong undercurrent of emotion. indeed, the more closely the reader watches, the less rough and simple the characters appear. in death in the afternoon, hemingway uses an effective metaphor to describe his

31、 writing style: if a writer of the prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. the dignity of movement of an iceberg is

32、 due to only one-eighth of it being above water.9 among all the works of hemingway, the saga of santiago is thought as the most typical one to this iceberg theory. the author seldom expresses his own feelings directly, nor does he make any comments or explanations. on the contrary, he tries to narra

33、te and describe things objectively and blend his own feelings 英語畢業(yè)論文 iii harmoniously to the natural narration and description this gives readers a pictures compression, from which-the 1/8 of the iceberg above water, they can learn the implying meaning and feelings of the author- 7/8 of the iceberg

34、under water. when hemingway said of this story, “i tried to make a real old man, a real sea and real sharks”, he then went on to say, “but if i made them good and true enough they would mean many things.”10 so this novel has a great and significance conveyed by a compressed action. the core of the n

35、ovels action is fishing. to the hero, fishing is not simply of contest in life. it contains profound philosophic meaning. in addition, two details-the baseball match and the hand wresting with the negro, like fishing, symbolize the contention in life. they compensate and enrich the inner meaning of

36、the main plot of fishing. so the simplicity of the novel is highly suggestive. occasionally, the author uses such figures of speech as metaphor, personification, etc to describe details. hemingway likes to us natural things to make metaphors. for example, he describes santiagos eyes as “the same col

37、or as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.”11the metaphor reveals that the old man is closely linked with nature. at the beginning of the novel, a simile is used: “the sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.”12 here santiagos eyes are contrast

38、ed with the patched sail, which symbolize defeat, as reveals santiagos unyielding character. so hemingway has formed of narrative and dialogue, though natural and simple on the surface, is actually deliberated and artificial. it combines elements that are realistic with elements that are stylized an

39、d heightened. how hemingway has formed such a writing style? the reason is related to his own experiences. “his use of short sentences and paragraphs and vigorous and positive language, and the deliberate avoidance of gorgeous adjectives are some of the traces of his early journalistic practices.”13

40、 after leaving school at 17, he went to the kansas city star, which was one of the best newspapers in america at that time. he served as its eager and energetic reporter. as a journalist, hemingway trained himself in the economy of expression. he once said that, during his working in star, he had to

41、 learn to use simple sentences, which is very useful to him; and that the experience of working as a journalist would not do harm to a young writer, instead it is very helpful if he could cast it off timely. he laid stress on “speaking” with facts and objected groundless concoction in writing. his d

42、escriptions of details are full of factuality, and are as precise as news reports. the influence of hemingways language style is great. in the latter part of his life, hemingway was known as “papa hemingway.”14 it refers mainly to his contribution to the development of a new writing style in america

43、-the colloquial style. his simple word, short sentences and vividly colloquial language purity american novel. in england, which miss storm jameson discussing “the craft of the novelist” in the january 1934 issue of the english review, she advanced an explanation of hemingways popularity: it is this

44、 simplicity, this appeal to our crudest interests, which explains hemingways successin english at least his success has been largely with the intellectuals. thy have praised his simplicity, his directness15 when hemingways death was reported on 3 july 1961, the obituary in the tines pronounced ponti

45、fically: no history of the literature of our time will be able to ignore his achievement or his far-reaching influencehis last masterpiece, the old man and the sea, he remained a solitary both in achievement and style16 and hemingways influence as a stylist was “neatly expressed in the praise of the

46、 noble prize committee about his powerful style-forming mastery of the art of writing modern fiction.”17 英語畢業(yè)論文 iv apart from the language style, which the old man and the sea is famous for, the writing techniques in this novel are also worth paying close attention to. a very important one of them i

47、s the way to use facts. the main events of the story seem to be based on a real incident, which is described by hemingway in an article about fishing in the gulf stream in esquire for april 1936. so the novel of full facts, such as the habit of fish, the technique of catching marlin, the weather, th

48、e sea, and so on. but the power of the novel lies in the way to use these facts. firstly the facts are selected. “hemingways old man, boy, sea, fish, and sharks are not so much built up in our minds, detail by detail, facts by facts, as drive into our mind by the force and the sympathy with which th

49、e author himself shares in their imaginary existence.”18 like any realist, he relies on selection. when the giant marlin finally surfaces, his tail “was higher than a big scythe blade and a very pale lavender above the dark blue water.”19 sargasso weed is bleached and yellow by day; tuna are silver

50、when they jump out if the water, but blue-backed and gold-sides when swimming. hemingway never described them with excessively, but choose some effective ones. he uses them with a sense of how colors shift and change in their relationship. without selection, there can be no intensity, and compressio

51、n. secondly, the facts are used as a device to make the fictional word accepted. the novel is not simply a manual for us to study the technique to catch a fish or how to survive in a boat. the author tries to implicate peoples imagination in what is happening by appealing to our love of practical kn

52、owledge. this shows “the facts are fundamentally a device, a technique of reassuring our sense of everyday values.”20 so they can help to make us accept more readily what the author has invented and made more dramatic than in everyday life. still take the use of color as example: the clouds over the

53、 land now rose like mountains and the coast was only a long green line with the gray- 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.21 t

54、hese facts show readers the process of fishing, which mostly comes from the authors own experience. from these facts, which are vivid, precise and terse, readers can learn a lot about how to catch a fish and can also feel as if they themselves were catching a fish. then they will have the sense that

55、 what the author describes is real and believable. therefore, as kenneth graham has said, many facts in the novel about fishing and about the sea have a double function: they satisfy peoples sense of the real word. and this is what underlies hemingways famous statement that his intention was always

56、to convey to the reader “the way it was.”22 all in all, hemingways language in the old man and the sea is simple and natural on the surface, but actually deliberate and artificial. “the language is rarely emotional. rather, it controls emotions: it holds them in.”23 the forming of this distinct styl

57、e is related to hemingways own 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, heming

58、way 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 santiagos own consciousness, and form part of a whole scheme of the novel. besides what have been mentioned above, other techniques i

59、n the old man and the sea, such as realism, monologue, the creation of suspense and so on, are also very successful. all these show hemingways superb artistic attainments as a nobel prize winner. 英語畢業(yè)論文 v notes: 1. kenneth graham, “commentary” in york notes: the old man and the sea, (beijing: world

60、publishing corporation, 1991), p41 2. chang yaoxin, “chapter 14” in a survey of american literature, (tianjin: nankai university press, 1987), p304 3. mary a. campbell, “study guide” in the old man and the sea, (beijing: world publishing corporation, 1998), p126 4. ernest hemingway, the old man and