海明威及其《老人与海》的文学批评

Being distinguished from many greatest American writers, Hemingway is noted for his writing style. Amonga ll 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 surface, 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 of speech. Hemingway's 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 overthe world.

The Old Man and the Sea is full of facts, most of which comes from Hemingway's 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 maket he fictional world accepted. In the forepart of the novel, they

are used to

show the quality of Santiago 's life, and are narrated simply and naturally; while in the latter part of the novel, they are used from inside Santiago ' s own conscious ness and form part of a whole scheme of the novel.

Keywords: Facts; Simplicity; Artificial; Iceberg Theory

中文摘要

在众伟大的美国作家中，海明威以独特的写作风格而著称。

在他所有的作品中，《老人与海》最能体现他独特的写作风

格和手法。这部小说语言看似简洁自然，其实包含了作者的精心揣摩和润色加工。有时为了突出某一部分，作者会采

用长句代替短句。文中的对话内容真实、贴近生活，而表

达形式则经过了艺术加工。小说简洁自然的语言背后隐藏了深刻的意义和感情。文中还运用了比喻、拟人等修辞手法. 还名位的这种独特风格与他当过新闻记者的经历有关, 同时他兼菜各家之长,自成一体, 形成了自己独特的创作方法和艺术风格。这种风格对整个世界文坛产生了重要的影响。

《老人与海》这部小说中运用了大量的事实, 他们大多来自于

作者亲身经历。海明威对这些事实精心选择, 从而吸引读者的兴趣并使读者有一种身临其境的感觉。小说一开始用大量事实描写了主人公生活的环境,叙述风格简洁自然,未加任何感情色彩。随着情节的发展, 大量的事实主要被运用于主人公的心理活动之中, 而不是主要由作者来叙述。同时, 这些事实构成了整个小说体系中不可缺少的一部分关键词：

事实；简洁；加工；冰山理论

Hemingway' s 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 Hemingway' s writing career. With its vivid characte rization, its simple language, and the profound implicating it carries, it stands out as one of the excellent books Hemingway's former stature as the word 's preeminent novelist after Hemingway's

unsuccessful novel Across the River and into the trees (1950).

The Old Man and the Sea earned its author the 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 and 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 the 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 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 manf ights to kill the sharks with as much might and manyw eapons as he can summon,b ut only to find a giant skeleton of his marlin left 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.

Amongm any great American writers, Hemingwayi s famous for his objective 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, such 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.

Hemingwayi s famous for his language. With muchc are and effort, he created a very influential and immediately recognizable 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 Amonga ll his works, The Old Mana nd 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, casual and conversational. ” 2 He seldom uses adjectives and abstract nouns, and avoids complicated syntax. Hemingway 's 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 short 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 explanatory comment.”3 Here is an example chosen from The Old Man and the Sea:

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 frequently been omitted and the words are very colloquial. Thus the speech comes to the reader as if he were listening. Hemingwayh as captured the immediacy of dialogue skillfully and has made the economical speech connotative.

But it is good to note that Hemingway 's style is deliberate and artificial, and 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 it against the fish 's 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