31 Introduction to Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" (Excerpt)

1. Summary of content

This is a novella. Santiago, an old Cuban fisherman, has not caught fish for 84 consecutive days. Everyone thinks that he is "out of luck." "Even his broken sail, which has been patched with many flour bags, is like a flag of eternal failure." . But the old man refused to admit defeat and decided to go further to Haicheng. On the 85th day, the old man finally caught a huge marlin in the open sea. After arduous efforts, he tied the big fish to the side of the boat and found that a group of sharks were following him and wanted to eat his prey. The old man started fighting with the shark alone again. The following excerpt describes the old man's life-and-death struggle with the shark and his experience of returning to shore "after being defeated."

2. Introduction to the author

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

A famous American novelist. Born in Oak Park, Chicago, Illinois, USA. In 1918, Hemingway went to Italy to participate in the First World War as a Red Cross member. He was seriously injured in the war and won the war medal. After the war, he became a correspondent in Paris. While in Paris, I met the famous American female writer Stein and others. At this time, he published the short story collection "In Our Time" and the novel "The Sun Also Rises", which reflected the confusion and depression of post-war young people after being traumatized by the war, thus making Hemingway a "lost generation". Represent the writer. The novel "Forever to Arms" brought Hemingway great fame. The hero of the novel, Frederick Henry, came to the Italian front line to fight as an ambulance driver in World War I. During a vacation, he met Catherine, a British female nurse. After going through many hardships, Catherine died of childbirth, leaving Henry alone to survive in despair. Henry, who personally experienced the war, felt: "I feel ashamed when I hear the empty words such as sacred, glorious, and sacrifice. I don't have anything sacred, and there is no glory in glorious things. As for sacrifice, it's like Chicago's "The difference between a slaughterhouse and a slaughterhouse is that the meat is buried." In this work, Hemingway reflected people's hatred, curse, and disgust for the war, and also expressed a strong sense of confusion, and was considered to be a "lost generation." representative works. In the first half of the 1930s, Hemingway went hunting in Africa and wrote the famous short story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" based on this experience. This is also one of the author's most satisfying works. In 1937, the Spanish Civil War broke out. Hemingway wrote the script "The Fifth Column" and the novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls" based on the theme of the Spanish Civil War. After the outbreak of World War II, Hemingway actively participated in the anti-fascist struggle and used his identity as a reporter and writer to experience the front lines. In the war, he was wounded again. After the war, Hemingway settled in Havana for a long time. In 1952, Hemingway published the novella "The Old Man and the Sea", which shocked the world of literature. Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. The award citation was "due to his mastery of modern narrative art, which is highlighted in his recent work "The Old Man and the Sea", and also due to his influence on modern literary styles." Hemingway shot himself at home on July 2, 1961.

3. The moral and symbolic meaning of "The Old Man and the Sea"

"The Old Man and the Sea" is one of Hemingway's masterpieces. The work has obvious allegorical and symbolic meanings.

First of all, the novel expresses the writer's unique understanding of the world and the relationship between people.

"The sea" symbolizes the mysterious modern society full of all kinds of "violence"; "lonely situation", "shark" and "other people's indifference" are all "violence" in the writer's eyes Embodiment form; "Old Man" is a symbol of "humanity" with a long history. In this way, the description of the relationship between the "old man" and the "sea" reflects the writer's understanding of the relationship between people and society. The "sea" cannot be grasped. It can make the old man get nothing for 84 days; it can also give people a huge report in an instant; the sea contains huge wealth (marlins and various sea creatures) , there are also ferocious enemies (sharks, whirlpools, etc.). It is against this background that the work expresses the loneliness and suffering, failure and struggle of modern people.

Secondly, the author demonstrates the indomitable and enterprising spirit of human beings in violent situations and the "calmness under pressure" shown in the face of unpredictable nature and tragic life. Santiago is a "tough guy" image.

His creed is: "Man is not born to be defeated. You can eliminate him as much as you can, but you can't defeat him." The image of "tough guys" in Hemingway's works is not to advertise that they can defeat all "violence" The heroic spirit lies in promoting the unyielding spirit that people have when facing blows and difficulties. Hemingway knew that it was difficult for his "tough guys" to achieve real victory in this era, but he did not allow his "tough guys" to "know the current affairs" like other people of this era. He required his characters to survive in the face of violence, death, and failure. Maintain human dignity and courage, maintain "manly demeanor", and thus obtain a spiritual victory. The significance of Santiago's image is that his spiritual temperament makes readers no longer judge him by the success or failure of the central event of fishing, but focus on his spiritual victory or defeat in the fight against the evil forces symbolized by the shark. At this time, the old man is no longer a fisherman, but a spiritual symbol of mankind's struggle against all evil forces.

In the end, the old man did not keep the big fish he caught as a fisherman (only a skeleton of the fish was left), but the reader felt a kind of heartfelt gratification: Santiago defended the rights of mankind. Dignity, because human beings have never failed in their fight against evil forces! Santiago is a defeated winner and a non-heroic hero.

The significance of this novel is that it creates a typical Hemingway-style tough guy image, shows an unyielding spirit, and illustrates that a person can be eliminated, but he can never be defeated. A spiritual state.

4. The spiritual characteristics expressed in the selected text

The selected text focuses on the above content and promotes the spiritual characteristics of the elderly. And the writer further deepened the above thoughts through several detailed descriptions:

1. The child Norman Lin was the first to visit him and expressed his determination to go fishing with him, which showed the old man's There are successors to the "tough guy spirit";

2. "The old man dreamed of the lion again" implies that this tough guy spirit and super personality strength in humans will not fade or disappear because of a failure;

3. The description of the "tourist" scene brings to light a terrible reality in modern society, that is, not all a person's "heroic behavior" can be understood by the world. To all living beings, the old man's story is just a story. Just boring conversation.

5. Artistic Characteristics

The selected text also profoundly reflects the artistic achievements of Hemingway's creation.

First, the application of the "Iceberg Principle" is extremely excellent; through the description of the scene of the old man fighting a shark on the sea, the novel combines charming image portrayal with abstract and profound meaning, making a The specific fishing story in life has turned into a magnificent picture of understanding the relationship between modern people and society and promoting people's "tough guy" spirit.

Second, the language introduction, the narrative is plain, using a few words, including many elements such as catching marlin, fighting with sharks, returning to the shore, and the behavior of the people in the hotel; and The description is vivid and fascinating.

6. Knowledge link

1. The lost generation. A literary genre in the United States after World War I. G. Stein, an American female writer who lived in Paris in the early 1920s, once said to Hemingway: "You are all a lost generation." Hemingway used this sentence as the epigraph of his first novel "The Sun Also Rises" , "The Lost Generation" has since become the title of this group of writers who have the same creative tendency although they have no program or organization. These young writers once went to the European battlefields with the ideal of democracy. As a result, they witnessed the unprecedented massacre of mankind and experienced all kinds of suffering. They were deeply deceived by slogans such as "democracy", "glory" and "sacrifice", and they had great feelings about society and life. They were disappointed, so they wrote novels to describe the harm done to them by the war, expressing a feeling of confusion, hesitation and disappointment.

2. Tough guy image. A series of characters appear in Hemingway's works, including boxers, matadors, hunters, fishermen, etc. They all have an indomitable and unyielding spirit and character. In the face of violence and death, and in the face of unchangeable fate, they all show a calm and calm willpower, maintaining human dignity and courage. Santiago's famous saying "People can be destroyed, but cannot be defeated" is the embodiment of the spiritual realm of this "tough guy" image.

3. Iceberg principle.

This creative theory was first proposed by the American writer Hemingway, which refers to the fact that human language expresses human thoughts like an iceberg, with only one-eighth of it on the surface and seven-eighths of it underwater. For writers, it means using concise words to create a distinct image and burying their own feelings, thoughts and emotions in the image to the greatest extent possible.