On The Old Man and the Sea

-Analysis of The Old Man and the Sea

One,

Santiago is a "normative hero" image created in Hemingway's famous short story The Old Man and the Sea. Whether the old man is lucky or unlucky, he is struggling, which shows an "elegant" demeanor. Although Hemingway once opposed The Old Man and the Sea as a fable, its symbolic significance is obvious. "Sea" symbolizes real life. It is eternal, infinite and mysterious. It is sometimes kind and brings you rich harvest. Sometimes cruel, rough waves make you die; "Marin" symbolizes what people want to achieve. People's ideals are always so beautiful and unattainable; "Shark" symbolizes a tragic factor that human beings can never get rid of. It always appears when you are happiest. The "old man" is an abstract symbol of human spirit.

Choosing the sea as the background reflects the significance of the theme of the work. After all, the ocean is closely related to the fate of mankind. Moreover, the creative idea of a simple fishing and hunting story 16 years ago is also the result of Hemingway's in-depth thinking about the real social order. The real society represented by the sea is an unreasonable and dangerous world. The vagaries of the sea and the ferocity of sharks are symbols of violence in the real world. In the eyes of the elderly, Na Pianhai is an objective existence that can never be understood. Its absurdity and mystery lie in: it can give you great gifts and make you ecstatic; It may also make you fall short when victory is in sight. The whole social reality represented by the sea, the whole world is completely above "people", and it has become an absurd existence that plays tricks on people. The result of the struggle between human beings and the real world is cruel failure, bloodshed and powerlessness.

This reminds us of a story. The image of Santiago easily reminds us of Camus' Sisyphus. Sisyphus ended up pushing a stone up the hill. "People can only see one person get up all his strength to push the boulder. He clung to the cheek of the boulder, his shoulders were covered with mud, his feet were deeply immersed in the mud, his arms were stretched out, his hands supported it and he kept pushing it. After a long period of hard work, the goal has been achieved. However, Sisyphus watched the boulder roll down the hillside quickly, and he had to start from scratch. He returned to the flat ground below the mountain. " As a symbol of absurdity, Camus commented on it like this: "No matter his enthusiasm or his torture, he is an absolutely absurd person. His contempt for gods, hatred for death and love for life earned him this indescribable punishment. This punishment prevented him from trying his best to succeed. This is the price you must pay for loving the world. "

Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea struggled for 84 days and finally caught a marlin that was two feet longer than his boat. However, like Sisyphus: the result went up in smoke. What he dragged back to the seaside was just Marin's empty shelf, and the shark deprived him of his "trophy". However, the old man is not depressed. He still loves life, and even saw a lion symbolizing strength in his dream. We can also say, "His fate belongs to himself, Na Pianhai, and that ship belongs to him." It may be futile to go to sea tomorrow, but he enjoys it. Through Santiago, Hemingway expressed his understanding of the absurd world that shows existence.

As the existentialist Heidegger said: "We are hopeless accidental creatures, thrown into a world where we must exist without us, and existence itself is in extreme accident all the time." The tragic fate of Hemingway's characters seems to have been doomed before they acted. The reality is so unreasonable that it seems that people can only give themselves a clear answer through death. Only death is the safest guarantee to get rid of the tricks of the absurd world. The 84-day long battle process is solemn in the eyes of the old man and the epitome of his life. Fishing determines that he must go through all kinds of hardships and narrow escape; Survival determines that he must face absurdity.

Second,

Existentialist philosophers and writers pay attention to existence, human existence and individual existence; And the conditions and quality of existence. " This kind of thinking and concern about existence is not only the need of the spirit of the western times, but also the reflection on the human survival problems faced by all mankind. While affirming Hemingway's existentialism in Hemingway and Death: A Story of Existentialism, John Key Ringer pointed out that his similarity with existentialism "is not because existentialism has a direct impact on him, but because Hemingway and existentialists are the products of their * * * same environment-the disaster-stricken and war-torn world in the 20th century. "

Hemingway participated in the First World War at the age of 18, leaving scars of war both physically and psychologically. The war exposed the illusory nature of capitalism, destroyed traditional values and caused an irreparable rift between people and society. Since then, people have fallen into a lonely situation. They are hesitant, depressed, suspicious and confused, and can't see the meaning and value of survival. Hemingway not only reveals the cruelty and injustice of war, but also reveals the living conditions of people in the whole capitalist society. While denying the war, he is also denying the whole living condition of mankind. This revelation of post-war human existence is a replica of the existentialism that "life is painful and the world is absurd". Sartre thought about the nothingness and pain of human existence from the perspective of human ontology. Hemingway, on the other hand, shows the emptiness and confusion of human existence in a society with lost values from the actual living conditions of human beings. They are from different angles, but they point to the same one.

Third,

Existentialism advocates that existence precedes essence, that is, there is no absolute eternal truth and no fixed speaking style before human existence, which provides readers with seven-eighths of the right to interpret freely. Hemingway hides eight-sevenths and shows only one-eighth of the iceberg principle floating on the water, which makes him concentrate his life materials to the point of being stingy. "As long as the author writes truly, readers will strongly feel what he has missed, as if the author had written it." Hemingway's style of writing without comment, explanation and analysis not only tells us that every instinctive action of the characters is exactly what it looks like in real life, but also provides us with the freedom to reorganize the characters who are familiar with the environment, thus greatly increasing the appeal of artistic life. Concise, seemingly dry language, short and incoherent sentences, and implicit and objective expression have not weakened the expression of people's living situation. Instead, they have seen profundity in conciseness, truth in incoherence, connotation in implication and truth in objectivity. This is Hemingway's contribution to existential writing style, which makes existential literature reach its peak in form and content.

Generally speaking, Hemingway's existential outlook on life is basically an existential Hemingway-style hero who walks out of his way at the mercy of absurd fate. They affirmed the value and significance of life with the tragic spirit of human suffering, and their direction was optimistic. If Sisyphus is the central myth of existentialism, then Hemingway's central myth is Santiago's constant struggle with sharks and nature at sea. Both are positive and constructive actions and efforts, but Sisyphus's actions are day after day, and the tone is a futile sigh; Santiago's action is gradual and beyond, and its keynote is praise and affirmation of the victory of the action.

Fourth,

In The Old Man and the Sea, the sea is fierce, savage, insidious, unfathomable and unknowable, which can be said to be a typical symbol of Hemingway's real world. At the same time, people in that world can only be a broken boat on the vast sea. He struggled feebly and endured all kinds of hardships in order to survive. There is no lighthouse around, and there is no hope of salvation. That is to say, in that killing world, individuals are isolated; Not only between people is ruthless, but also between people and all living things.

It can be seen that Hemingway's world outlook is very pessimistic, and his sense of absurdity of the world is systematic, which runs through his works, revealing his thorough exposure and ruthless lashing of the absurdity of the real world. At the same time, he condemned the war in a special way and satirized the "material civilization" of western society and the increasingly corrupt social reality. Existentialists' aversion to the reality of capitalist society is their ignorance of the objective world, indescribable fear and confusion of the environment, strangeness of life and loneliness of interpersonal relationships. Hemingway's characters, on the other hand, are struggling fiercely with the absurd world, showing a strong spirit that never gives in, that is, "elegance under heavy pressure." Existentialists and Hemingway treat this absurd society in different ways.

Italian critic Nano D'Agostino said, "From In Our Time to The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway's basic attitude towards reality has not changed. Life is a lonely struggle, a desperate passion for action, with no meaning or reason behind it. In life, nothing can be explained, improved or saved, and no problems can be really raised or solved. " Therefore, people can only "die unsatisfied" or watch sadly on the fence of life. This makes Hemingway and his hero fall into the abyss of pain and disappointment, which shows that the value of people in Hemingway's empty world is erratic, homeless and always unknown. Man is always in a "strange" or even hostile environment, and he is always in a state of anxiety and fear that is turbulent, unstable and at a loss. He is very confused about his future, full of crises, and feels the oppression of the big void all the time. However, he was unwilling to accept his resignation, but tried to compete with those "dissidents" with his instinct and intuitive experience. Of course, this effort to get out of trouble by personal strength will inevitably end in tragedy.

Heidegger, an existentialist philosopher, believes that a person's most basic way of living in the objective world is "worry", because he feels that all situations in his world are nothing, and this empty world is mysterious and incomprehensible. People can only hang in nothingness and worry endlessly, and all the worries are expressed through fear, pain, disgust and selective behavior. In Heidegger's view, nothingness comes from a general boredom, which cannot be abandoned. It comes from the dark night deep in the soul. If Heidegger expounded this view in philosophical language, Hemingway vividly interpreted this idea in literary language.

Five,

Since the world is absurd and life is empty, then death is inevitable. The theme of death is an eternal theme in Hemingway's works, and its core is death anxiety and death transcendence. In the absurd and horrible world, on the one hand, death makes people feel mysterious and terrible with its irrational and unpredictable power, and feels the emptiness of life, on the other hand, it is regarded as the ultimate means to escape nothingness and get rid of absurd life, which has the ultimate reality.

The old man in The Old Man and the Sea fished alone for 84 days and found nothing. Whether to close the net or continue fishing in deeper waters is a major issue that he must choose. The old man resolutely chose the latter. He said that the choice of fish is to stay in deep water where all traps, temptations and tricks can't be done. "My choice is to find it where no one has been. Go where no one has been in the world. " 15 If he doesn't go into the sea, then his life will be meaningless and his existence will become nothing. "A man can be destroyed, but he cannot be defeated." The old man tried to embody this spirit in his actions. In the desperate struggle with marlin and shark, the old man persevered and showed "elegance under heavy pressure" Although he failed in the end, he won spiritually, giving him the meaning and value of existence. From this point of view, Hemingway, like an existentialist, tried to point out to readers that the only way out in an absurd environment is to resist; Resistance is the response of human beings to the powerful alien world, which is one of human nature. Resistance means humanity.