英語文學(xué)論文范文

　　‘You’re my alarm clock’, the boy said.

　　‘Age is my alarm clock’, the old man said. ‘Why do old man wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?’

　　‘I don’t know’, the boy said. ‘All I know is that young boys sleep late and hard’.

　　‘I can remember it’, the old man said. ‘ I’ll waken you in time.’

　　The simple sentences and the repeated rhythms hit at the profundities that the surface of the language 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 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 due to only one-eighth of it being above water.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 narrate and describe things objectively and blend his own feelings 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 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.” So this novel has a great and significance conveyed by a compressed action. The core of the novel’s 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 the main plot of fishing. So the simplicity of the novel is highly suggestive.

　　2.2 The Old Man and the Sea Writing Methods

　　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 Santiago’s eyes as “the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.”The 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.” Here Santiago’s eyes are contrasted with the patched sail, which symbolize defeat, as reveals Santiago’s 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 and 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.” 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 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 descriptions of details are full of factuality, and are as precise as news reports.

　　3.The import on Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea

　　The influence of Hemingway’s language style is great. In the latter part of his life, Hemingway was known as “Papa Hemingway.” It refers mainly to his contribution to the development of a new writing style in America-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 Hemingway’s popularity:

　　It is this simplicity, this appeal to our crudest interests, which explains Hemingway’s success…In English at least his success has been largely with the intellectuals. Thy have praised his simplicity, his directness…When Hemingway’s death was reported on 3 July 1961, the obituary in The Tines pronounced pontifically: No history of the literature of our time will be able to ignore his achievement or his far-reaching influence…his last masterpiece, The Old Man and The Sea, he remained a solitary both in achievement and style…And Hemingway’s influence as a stylist was “neatly expressed in the praise of the Noble Prize Committee about ‘his powerful style-forming mastery of the art’ of writing modern fiction.”

　　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 is 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, the sea, and so on. But the power of the novel lies in the way to use these facts. Firstly the facts are selected. “Hemingway’s 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 the author himself shares in their imaginary existence.” 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.” Sargasso weed is bleached and yellow by day; Tuna are silver 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 compression.

　　4.The philosophical significance Old Man and The Sea

　　4.1The Old Man and The Sea by the message to people’s moods