英语本科毕业论文THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA”.doc

1. Introduction “The Old Man and the Sea” is the masterpiece of Hemingway, owing to which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954. It recovered Hemingway’s literary image when many critics believed that his talent was dead. Life artistically recurred in the book and it revealed the philosophy of life. Hemingway’s thinking about human life and society is contained in it. Among all his works, Hemingway liked “The Old Man and the Sea” the most. He liked comparing writing to hunting and once said that the book was the greatest and most beautiful lion he caught. Indeed, “The Old Man and the Sea” makes a summary for Hemingway’s literary career. Compared with “A Farewell to Arms”, “The Sun Also Rises” and “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, it possesses a kind of transcendence. According to Su Shunqiang(2006), this transcendence is reflected from two aspects: the maturity of the world outlook and the perfection of character traits. “This book, however, is not nihilistic or deeply pessimistic. More than any of Hemingway’s earlier works it reconciles us to our human condition. Compare it, for instance, with ‘A Farewell to Arms’, and we see the distance Hemingway has traveled” (Hovey, 1966). The special type of hero in Hemingway’s novel is called the code hero, which means “grace under pressure”. Santiago, the protagonist of “The Old Man and the Sea”, is the perfect code hero. “That’s why he is more broadly representative of the human race than any other Hemingway character. In fact, he is precisely the sort of figure so far absent from Hemingway’s fiction” (Hovey, 1966). Why is Santiago so prominent compared with other characters that Hemingway moulded? Why is Santiago regarded as the perfect code hero who reflects the perfection of character traits? This paper will explain these questions through the analysis of Santiago’s character. The first part of this paper is a brief introduction. In the second part, the character of Santiago was analyzed. The relationship between Santiago’s c