The dialogue, too, is combined with the realistic and the artificial. Usually the content contains and the expression contains the artificial. In The Old Man and the Sea, the language style is very peculiar from Hemingway’s other writings. This is because the novel is an English version of the Spanish that Santiago and Mandolin would speak in real life. “Since we are meant to realize that Santiago and Mandolin could not possibly speak like this, since English is not his tongue anyway, we are more likely to accept other artificialities of the dialogue. Using the device of a pretended ‘translation’, which would be bound to stilt in any case, Hemingway can ‘poetize’ the dialogue as he wishes.”7 The speakers are distanced from readers to a certain degree. And while their language taking on a kind of epic dignity, it does not lose its convincingness. Even slightly strange exchanges like the following become fairly acceptable. For example:
‘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.’8
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:
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