The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway.docx

1、The Old Man and the Sea is one of HemingwayThe Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingways most enduring works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, it is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeala relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out i

2、n the Gulf Stream. Here Hemingway recasts, in strikingly contemporary style, the classic theme of courage in the face of defeat, of personal triumph won from los. Written in 1952, this hugely successfully novella confirmed his power and presence in the literary world and played a huge part in his wi

3、nning the 1954 Nobel Prize for LiteratureThe Old Man and the Sea is a novella (just over 100 pages in length) by Ernest Hemingway, written in Cuba in 1951 and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction to be produced by Hemingway and published in his lifetime. It is noteworthy in twent

4、ieth century fiction, reaffirming Hemingways worldwide literary prominence as well as being a significant factor in his selection for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Background and publication：Most people maintain that the years following Hemingways publication of For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1

5、940 until 1952 were the bleakest in his literary career. The novel Across the River and Into the Trees (1950) was almost unanimously disparaged by critics as self-parody. Evidently his participation as an Allied correspondent in World War II did not yield fruits equivalent to those wrought of his ex

6、periences in World War I (A Farewell to Arms, 1929) or the Spanish Civil War (For Whom the Bell Tolls). Inspiration for character：Gregorio Fuentes is one possible model for Hemingways eponymous Old Man”. While Hemingway was living in Cuba beginning in 1940 with his third wife Martha Gellhorn, one of

7、 his favorite pastimes was to sail and fish in his boat, named the Pilar. General biographical consensus holds that the model for Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea was, at least in part, the Cuban fisherman Gregorio Fuentes. Fuentes, also known as Goyo to his friends, was born in 1897 on Lazaretto

8、 in the Canary Islands, migrated to Cuba when he was six years old and met Hemingway there in 1928. In the 1930s, Hemingway hired him to look after his boat. During Hemingways Cuban years a strong friendship formed between Hemingway and Fuentes. For almost thirty years, Fuentes served as the captain

9、 of the Pilar; this included time during which Hemingway did not live in Cuba. Fuentes at times would admit that the story was not exactly about him. He related that the true inspiration of the old man and the boy did exist but they never knew who they were. The story goes that in the late 1940s, up

10、on return from an early morning fishing trip, Fuentes and Hemingway saw a small rowboat 10 miles out to sea. Hemingway asked Fuentes to approach the vessel to see if they needed help. Inside the boat was an old man and a boy. As the vessels closed in the old man began yelling at them with insults in

11、cluding telling them to go to hell, indicating that they had scared away the fish. According to Fuentes, he and Hemingway looked at each other in surprise. Just the same, Hemingway asked Fuentes to lower them some food and drinks while the old man and boy glared at them. Without another word exchang

12、ed, the two boats parted ways. According to Fuentes, Hemingway began immediately to write in his notebook and later asked him to find the old man. According to Fuentes, he never was able to find the fisherman that had made such an impression on Hemingway. Fuentes recounts that this was the real orig

13、in of the lore. A few years after The Old Man and the Sea was published, residents of Cojimar believed that the old fisherman that Fuentes and Hemingway ran into at sea was a humble local fisherman they called el Viejo Miguel; some described his physical appearance as a wiry Spencer Tracy. Fuentes,

14、suffering from cancer, died in 2002; he was 104 years old. Prior to his death, he donated Hemingways Pilar to the Cuban government. Hemingway had initially planned to use Santiagos story, which became The Old Man and the Sea, as part of a random intimacy between mother and son and also the fact of r

15、elationships that cover most of the book relate to the Bible, which he referred to as The Sea Book. (He also referred to the Bible as the Sea of Knowledge and other such things.) Some aspects of it did appear in the posthumously published Islands in the Stream. Positive feedback he received for On t

16、he Blue Water (Esquire, April 1936) led him to rewrite it as an independent work. The book is a novella because it has no chapters or parts and is slightly longer than a short story. The novella first appeared, in its 26,500-word entirety, as part of the September 1, 1952 edition of Life magazine. 5

17、.3 million copies of that issue were sold within two days. The majority of concurrent criticism was positive, although some dissenting criticism has since emerged. The title was misprinted on the cover of an early edition as The Old Men and the Seaedit Plot summaryThe Old Man and the Sea recounts an

18、 epic battle between an old, experienced fisherman and a giant marlin said to be the largest catch of his life. It opens by explaining that the fisherman, who is named Santiago, has gone 84 days without catching any fish at all. He is apparently so unlucky that his young apprentice, Manolin, has bee

19、n forbidden by his parents to sail with the old man and been ordered to fish with more successful fishermen. Still dedicated to the old man, however, the boy visits Santiagos shack each night, hauling back his fishing gear, feeding him and discussing American baseball most notably Santiagos idol, Jo

20、e DiMaggio. Santiago tells Manolin that on the next day, he will venture far out into the Gulf to fish, confident that his unlucky streak is near its end.Thus on the eighty-fifth day, Santiago sets out alone, taking his skiff far into the Gulf. He sets his lines and, by noon of the first day, a big

21、fish that he is sure is a marlin takes his bait. Unable to pull in the great marlin, Santiago instead finds the fish pulling his skiff. Two days and two nights pass in this manner, during which the old man bears the tension of the line with his body. Though he is wounded by the struggle and in pain,

22、 Santiago expresses a compassionate appreciation for his adversary, often referring to him as a brother. He also determines that because of the fishs great dignity, no one will be worthy of eating the marlin.On the third day of the ordeal, the fish begins to circle the skiff, indicating his tirednes

23、s to the old man. Santiago, now completely worn out and almost in delirium, uses all the strength he has left in him to pull the fish onto its side and stab the marlin with a harpoon, thereby ending the long battle between the old man and the tenacious fish.Santiago straps the marlin to his skiff an

24、d heads home, thinking about the high price the fish will bring him at the market and how many people he will feed.While Santiago continues his journey back to the shore, sharks are attracted to the trail of blood left by the marlin in the water. The first, a great mako shark, Santiago kills with hi

25、s harpoon, losing that weapon in the process. He makes a new harpoon by strapping his knife to the end of an oar to help ward off the next line of sharks; in total, five sharks are slain and many others are driven away. But by night, the sharks have almost devoured the marlins entire carcass, leavin

26、g a skeleton consisting mostly of its backbone, its tail and its head, the latter still bearing the giant spear. The old man castigates himself for sacrificing the marlin. Finally reaching the shore before dawn on the next day, he struggles on the way to his shack, carrying the heavy mast on his sho

27、ulder. Once home, he slumps onto his bed and enters a very deep sleep.A group of fishermen gathers the next day around the boat where the fishs skeleton is still attached. One of the fishermen measures it to be eighteen feet from nose to tail. Tourists at the nearby caf mistakenly take it for a shar

28、k. Manolin, worried during the old mans endeavor, cries upon finding him safe asleep. The boy brings him newspapers and coffee. When the old man wakes, they promise to fish together once again. Upon his return to sleep, Santiago dreams of lions on the African beach.The Old Man and the Sea is written

29、 according to a true fact. After the Second World War, Hemingway immigrated into Cuba; there he was acquainted with an old Cuban fisherman. In 1930, Hemingway came across a hurricane on a boat; fortunately the fisherman saved him, after that, they often went to fishing together. In 1936, the old fis

30、herman caught a big fish. The fish was so big that it spent a long time to be brought back, after it was brought back; there was only a giant skeleton to be left. Hemingway was very interesting in this story, and he realized that it was an excellent novel material. In 1950, Hemingway began to writer

31、 this novel. In the early of 1951 it was finished, and there were just eight weeks spent in all. After a short time it was published. Hemingway himself accounted that this novel is his best work in his literary creation.When this work was finished, Hemingway was over 50 years old; He has experienced

32、 the two World Wars and witnessed the collapse and depravity of western traditional culture. Now he was an old man, just like Santiago. No matter how ambitious he was, he was old and not as strong as his youth. This was life, and nobody could change it. With this work Hemingway expressed his tragic

33、thought through his seemly tough style.Chapter Analysis about The Old Man and the Sea As the quintessence of Hemingways works, The Old Man and the Sea has great influence in the world literary works. The figure of this work is the concentrate of Hemingways lifetime. Everything in the work means many things, and has its differ