As for Hemingway’s “tough guy”, some critics pointed out that as the heroic manner is too conspicuous, which determined their actions is quite obvious and sometimes it caused the figures thinking abstract and isolated. However, in The Old Man and the Sea, the image of the old man is entire because the author arranges a little boy purposely and describes him in a great deal of details. Thus, the grace of the old man becomes more realistic and vivid, which of course should be attributed to the existence of the little boy.
In addition to describe the old man through the boy’s and his eyes, Hemingway also draws a directive and detailed description of the boy’s character. In this way, it reveals the old man’s character charm from another standpoint which shows a optimistic trend in the end of the novel. The boy began to learn to fish at the age of 5, which is the age that the children begins to have memories about things. Therefore, in the process of the boy’s character’s shaping, the old man inevitably occupied an important position. Hemingway’s description about the boy’s personality is actually a complement to perform the old man’s character.
Although the boy is young, he is not boyish. He learns the fishing skills, also inherits the spirit of the self-esteem and self-reliant from the old man. After several years living with the old man, he has understood the hardship of life and the duty of a man. Here there is a detail: the boy is very little, at the age of sleepy, after the old man wakes him up, he is sleepy when he goes out of the door. In such a young age he has to face the reality of the life, which obviously causes people’s sympathy in their hearts. But the boy does not mind it, his tender shoulder has already accustomed to the lives’ responsibility and he regards it is what a man must do. The words are so sonorous and forceful to driver a sound. Its auditor must have followers. The pupil is like this, let alone the master! Here the boy’s personality to set off the old man’s. it provides an indispensable preclude to draw the perfect image of the “tough guy”. As a result, the heroic mettle of the old man appears logically.
At the end of The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway expresses his optimistic tendency to life by the symbolic meaning of the boy’s return at last. The little boy decides to return to the old man even ignoring his father’s authority and the fishermen’s superstition about the luck:
“The hell with luck.” the boy said. “
I will bring the luck with me.”
What will your family say?”[14]
“I don’t care. I caught two yesterday. But we will fish together now for I still have much to learn.”[15]
Before the boy’s return, it is just a isolated struggle of the old man. Therefore, no matter how it is brave, it is not enough to be a source of optimism. Hemingway has convinced for several decades that: life is a lonely struggle and there is nothing meaningful behind it. So some critics point out: the figures written by Hemingway all go to the old way---exploration, loneliness, the result is a dead end. But this pattern changes in The Old Man and the Sea; the old man not only has a follow but also can find the support of the boy. And the return of the boy is his new starting---the boy becomes more and more mature in the fluencies of the old man’s heroic spirit: In this sense, The Old Man and the Sea is oriented to the future. At the end of the novel, Hemingway deals with the boy, which shows that: he is returning to his starting point through a new path.
Carlos. Baker points out that: in a certain sense, the child and the old man symbolized the youth and the elderly of the human. In the old man’s subconscious, the child is another stage of his life. Because it is impossible for a person to dream two stages of himself in one dream, so though the child stays with him all day, he never dreams the boy. Therefore the child’s return means that human being’s intelligence and mental strength will be passed on from generation to generation, which is the novel’s optimism lies in, also is Hemingway’s lifelong pursuit and the highest expression of the “tough guy’s spirit”. It is the reason why the boy can not be taken place by the women having the same age of the old man, like Catharine (the heroine of Farewell to Arms) or Albright (the heroine of The Sun Also Rises). Because the same aged women and men are in the parallel or antagonistic concept, and can not express the continual optimism, which is an important distinction between The Old Man and the Sea and the other works of Hemingway’s. The boy’s return alights the novel and enriches the content of the work, which inspires readers to make a further exploration on the meaning and tendency of the work.
There are many different views about whether there are symbols or not in this novel. Hemingway once wrote to his friend, Bernard Bryson: there is not any symbol, the sea is the sea, the old man is the old man, the child is the child, and fish is fish, what people says about symbolism is nonsense. In fact, the reason for saying like this is that he wants to oppose that kind of rhetoric, unfounded and so—called symbolism. Objectively speaking, symbolism is often stressed the symbolic nature of the whole work, however, Hemingway is too outright to be the symbolism. But this does not mean that there is no symbolism and symbolic significance in his works. The symbolism, as a whole and the symbolic method as an rhetoric method are two different concepts. Hemingway acknowledges later in public that there are symbolic methods in his works, he explains that he tries to portray a real old man, a real child, a real sea, a real fish and real sharks. If he can picture them very well and realistically, they will mean many things. Here what he says that mean many things is actually a symbolic meaning, which is based on the profound understanding of the novel. Of course, we can not view a realistic novel as a symbolic one just because it applies some symbolic methods; meanwhile, we can not deny there are symbolisms in a word just because it is a realistic novel.
3. The roles in moving and inspiring readers
In this novel, the second important role of the boy is that he leads and inspires the readers. Hemingway’s direct describing of the little boy does not only reveal the boy’s simple and complex emotion towards the old man, but also portray the boy’s personality in order to enhance the effective of the work and rich the content of the work.
3.1 The little boy’s emotion
In The Old Man and the Sea, in a certain extent, especially at the beginning and the end of the novel, the boy is much close to the readers than the old man. So the boy’s feeling is inevitable to lead and impact the readers` emotion. There is nothing in the boy’s inner state but the old man. His attitude and emotions towards the old man affects the readers` emotion for the old man quietly and gradually. So Carlos Baker once said that the boy has a role to make people pay more sympathy to the old man. Because at the beginning and the end of the novel, we see the old man in the boy’s eyes which fills with respect and sympathy. But in fact, the boy’s respect and sympathy towards the old man is not static in his inner state ode mind. His emotion goes along a deeper and deeper trajectory which is from sympathy to heartache; and such kind of feeling becomes stronger and stronger, at last rising to the peak and bursting out, “he started to cry” [16]. The fluctuations of the boy’s inner world affect the readers’ emotion unknowingly. The emotional changes of the boy can be divided into 3stages.
3.2 The little boy’s sympathy in the static stage
The boy’s sympathy for the old man is very simple and plain: “the old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him” [17]. The boy remains concerned about the old man after getting lucky in another boat. He can not feel happy even when he gets achieves quite good grades because of the old man’s hardship, which reflects the boy’s sincere emotion for the old man. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty. He wants to return to the old man. After the old man’s several rejections, he still wants to help the old man to do something. It is unbootable that the boy’s deep and simple emotion has branded deeply in the mind of the readers by the first impression.
3.3 The little boy’s respect and worry in the subtle, fluctuating stage
The little boy shows his respect for the old man all the time. He memorized the past experience of lucky and unlucky together with the old man, he regards the old man as the best fisherman, an unusual fisherman. The boy’s respect to the old man does not reduce because of the old man’s frustration. It is the boy’s encouragement in spirit that support the old man to go on struggle impregnably. Later the old man realizes that if it is not the child, he has already finished.
Although the boy hopes that the old man can create another brilliant prospect ion, he worries about the old man’s psychological condition as well. He is afraid of that the old man is so old and feeble that he can’t bear the difficulties alone, sometimes he also reveals his worries:“I’ll try to get him to work far out. Then if you hook something truly big we can come to you aid.”[18]These common words seem random but is a good wish of good luck which leads the readers attention to the uncertain sea.
3.4 The little boy’s affirmation in the outbreak stage
The old man returns from the sea exhausted and ragged both in physically and mentally, enduring all kinds of hardships and difficulties in three days, he catches a big fish which has a special meaning for him, unfortunately, the big fish is gnawed by sharks and left a pair of huge skeleton. The victory gains nothing, the results is disappointed. But the boy’s eyes do not stay on the pale skeleton only; he perceives the success that the old man ever achieved from the failure:
“They beat me, Manolin,”he said.
“They truly beat me.”
“He didn’t beat you. Not the fish.”[19]
What the boy said is a fact. That is the boy’s affirmation in his deep mind which is also the old man’s wish of proving he is unusual. But the boy’s attitude to the old man’s return is not only positive. After all, the old man returns in empty-hand, and badly bruised, so when the boy sees the old man’s hands, he can not help tearing full of the face. But what he feels heartache is not only the blooding hands, but what even more distressing is that the old man’s fish which symbolizes the victory has been gnawed by sharks which make the old man feels more disappointed after 84 days failure. The emotion of the boy breaks out at this time because of the greatest pain in his heart. He starts to cry and does not care how others will look at him, and his crying hits readers’ hearts even weeps still after they finished their reading.
4. Conclusion
From the above discussion, we can see that the little boy is essential to the novel in two aspects: in helping to show the old man’s so-called “grace under pressure” and to move and inspire the readers. It is not exaggerated to say that the work could not be the work we see now without the child. The image of the child is clear and discernible in readers’ mind, the more description of the boy, the stronger feeling we feel of the old man. The boy is just like the snow at the top of the mountain. The mountain becomes deeper and more valiant because of the existence of the snow. The old man is like the mountain, it is unnecessary for him to talk too much, because the readers can feel him when they read the little boy.
Notes
[1] ---- [19] The Old Man and the Sea, Simon & Schuster Inc. 1995
Bibliography
1. Burhans Jr. . S. Clinton. “The Old Man and the Sea: Hemingway’s Tragic Vision of Man,” in Ernest Hemingway: Critiques of Four Major Novels, ed. Carlos. Baker. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1962, p.155.
2. Carlos. Baker. Hemingway: The Writer as Artist, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1972, p.309
3. Changyaoxin. “A Survey of American Literature” [M]. Tianjin:Nankai University Press, 1990.
4. Ernest Hemingway. “The Old Man and the Sea, Carlos. Scribner’s sons”, New York, World Publishing Corporation, Beijing, 1989
5. Kenneth Graham. “commentary” in York Notes: The Old Man and the Sea. Beijing: World Publishing Corporation, Beijing, 1991
6. K Singer. “Hemingway: Life and Death of A Giant”. Holloway House Publishing company[M], 1963
7. P camapuh. “The Old Man and the Sea”, Moscow, Foreign language Publishing House[M], 1963
8. William Faulkner. “Shnandoah” (1952), in Hemingway, The Critical Heritage, ed. Jeffrey Meyers, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, Boston and Henley, 1982, p.414.
9. 董衡巽 海明威谈创作[M].生活. 读书. 新知三联书店, 1985年, 第140, 51, 3, 145, 40页
10. 董衡巽 海明威研究[M].中国社会科学院出版社, 1980年, 第14, 3, 120, 98, 169, 292, 97, 9, 3, 108, 11, 294, 241页
11. 胡经之,王岳川 文艺学美学方法论[M].北京大学出版社,1994年,第71页
12. 王长荣译,罗伯特.E.斯皮勒 美国文学的周期[M].上海外语教育出版社,1990年, 第213页
13. 李启光 老人与海赏析[J].见外国文学研究, 1983年第四期,第84页
14. 吴然 海明威传[M].陕西人民出版社,1987年第150, 162, 160页
15. 维基百科,自由的百科全书 http://zh.wikipedia.org
《名利场》的现实意义初探-《名利场》的艺术特色
从《老人与海》看海明威作品的写作风格