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1、Analysis on the Persistence and Courage of Santiagos Character in The Old Man and the Sea老人与海中圣地亚哥毅力和勇气的形象分析ContentI. IntroductionA. About the writer B. About the book II. The Persistence and Courage of SantiagoABefore out of the seaa. The image of Santiagob. Talking with manolinB. After out the sea
2、a. Hook the marlinb. Struggle with marlin C. Back homea. Struggle with marauding sharksb. Dreaming lionsIII. The great SantiagoA. Strong willpowerB .The sea hero ReferencesI. IntroductionA. About the writer Hemingway, Ernest (1899-1961), one of the most famous American novelist, short-story writer a
3、nd essayist, was the winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature. Still a teenager, Hemingway volunteered for war work and was wounded on the Italian front in 1918, the basis for his first major book A Farewell to Arms (1929). His fascination with grace under pressure was explored in his writing o
4、n bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon (1932), and he returned to Spain in 1937 to cover the Spanish civil war, and he distilled the experience in his greatest novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). In World War II he was a thrusting war correspondent with US forces in Europe. After the war he summar
5、ized his philosophy with marvellous economy in The Old Man and the Sea (1952). Repeated accidents and alcoholism sapped his vitality and he shot himself in 1961. Hemingways writing career began in high school and continued until his death in 1961, Several of his works were published posthumously, an
6、d he had been an international literary celebrity for more than a quarter of a century. B. About the book The Old Man and the Sea (1952) ends came round to of the Hemingways writing career. With vivid characterization, simple language, and profoundly implicating meaning, The Old Man and the Sea earn
7、ed its author the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for 1952, and it helped him to win Nobel Prize for Literature two years later. The Old Man and the Sea is a tragic adventure story. Sustained by the pride of his calling, the only pride he has left, a broken old fisherman ventures far out into the Gulf Str
8、eam and there hooks the biggest marlin ever seen in those waters. Then, alone and exhausted by his struggle to harpoon the giant fish, he is forced into a losing battle with marauding sharks; they leave him nothing but the skeleton of his catch.In The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway further ex
9、plores the masculine theme of man renting challenges and struggling alone, manifesting extreme determination and fortitude in the face of certain defeat, and living with grace under pressure”.（殷雪迎, 95年04期）The portrayal of the old fisherman Santiago reflectes the qualities and values that the author
10、admired most: courage, dignity and the power to endure. Stylistically, The Old Man and the Sea is written in simple sentence structure.II. The Persistence and Courage of SantiagoABefore out of the seaa. The image of SantiagoSantiago is an old fisherman, for eighty four days old Santiago has not caug
11、ht a single fish. At first a young boy, Manolin, has shared his bad fortune, but after the fortieth luckless day the boys father tells his son to go in another boat. From that time on Santiago works alone. Each morning he rows his skiff out into the Gulf Stream where the big fish is. Each evening he
12、 comes in empty-handed. The years has ran off to leave deep trace on his body. He is old but not decrepitude, his appeasement and the vibrant heart become fresh and clear contrast. Hemingway describes his image appearance and the eyes, expressing an old man outward appearance of old with inside of s
13、trength. “The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars fro
14、m handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.” “Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.”(Hemingway, 2001:02). These two kinds of hostile strengt
15、hs express Santiago is a persistence and courage character person. This kind of confrontation makes the reader produce new expectation to the person, also behaving the activity of thing to launch vast mental space and environment space. In addition, failure and bad luck are permanent in other people
16、s eyes, but to old man do not result in what influence. He still believes he will also have good luck. He can also lend experience and deep technique to catch to a real heavy rain.Manolins parents decide that the old man was now and definitely salao, which is the worst form of unlucky (Hemingway,200
17、1:01). This sentence proclaims one of the novels themes, the heroic struggle against unchangeable fate. Indeed, the entire first paragraph emphasizes Santiagos apparent lack of success. For example, It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty. And most powerfully, Th
18、e sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat (Hemingway,2001:01). This type of descriptive degradation of Santiago continues with details of his old, worn body. Even his scars, legacies of past successes, are old as erosions in a fishless desert (Hemin
19、gway, 2001:02). All this changes suddenly, though, when Hemingway says masterfully, Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated (Hemingway,2001:02). This draws attention to a dichotomy between two different types of success: o
20、uter, material success and inner, spiritual success. While Santiago clearly lacks the former, the import of this lack is eclipsed by his possession of the later. This triumph of indefatigable spirit over exhaustible material resources is another important theme of the novel. Also, Santiagos eye colo
21、r foreshadows Hemingways increasingly explicit likening of Santiago to the sea, suggesting an analogy between Santiagos indomitable spirit and the seas boundless strength. b. Talking with manolin “I may not be as strong as I think,” the old man says, “But I know many tricks and I have resolution.”（H
22、emingway, 2001:16）. “The old mans tone is heroic and self-confident, he knows the bad situation of own physical strength, but he believes very again oneself care the advantage of ambition and experience”(刑嘉锋，1999年03期). Let us know mankind first at the conflict in the nature is the destiny that cant
23、succeed in escaping failure of, but the failure is of no account, important is we have to have confidence, dignity, and courage, develop own spirit to the extreme limit, know our real ability. Hemingway complicates the matter further by identifying Santiago with turtles, those creatures which blindl
24、y， literally devour the feminine man-of-war. The main significance of this identification, however, is Santiagos likeness to the sea and the various creatures which inhabit it is living waters. About the turtles, Santiago says Most people are heartless about turtles because a turtles heart will beat
25、 for hours after he has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too and my feet and hands are like theirs (Hemingway, 2001:24). This identification is important as it corroborate our understanding of Santiagos indomitability, the quality of undefeatedness Hemingway no
26、ted early in the novella; with his body destroyed, his heart, his spirit, will fight on, and his heart, his spirit is persistence and courage. This foreshadows the harrowing task Santiago is about to face with the marlin. Also, Hemingway tells us that Santiago eats turtle eggs for strength and drink
27、s shark liver oil for health. In this way, he internalizes the characteristics of the sea and adopts them as his own. B. After out the seaOn the eighty-fifth day Santiago rows out of the harbor in the cool dark before dawn. After leaving the smell of land behind him, he sets his lines. “He thought,
28、I keep them with precision, only I have no luck anyone, but who know? Maybe today, every day is a new day, its better to be lucky”. (Hemingway,2001:25) The old man is filled with a hope; not to accept defeat to the personality of destiny is the spirit that the old man talks failure never.a. Hook the
29、 marlinSantiago waits a bit for the marlin to swallow the hook and then pulls hard on the line to bring the marlin up to the surface. The fish is strong, though, and does not come up. Instead, he swims away, dragging the old man and his skiff along behind. Santiago wishes he has help from Manolin. A
30、lone, though, he must let the fish take the line it wants or risk losing it. Eventually, the fish will tire itself out and die. But four hours later the fish was still swimming steadily out to sea, towing the skiff, and the old man was still braced solidly with the line across his back (Hemingway,20
31、01:39).b. Struggle with marlin As the sun goes down, the marlin continues on in the same direction, and Santiago losts sight of land altogether. The result is a curious stalemate. As Santiago says, I can do nothing with him and he can do nothing with me.Not as long as he keeps this up (Hemingway, 20
32、01:41). He wishes for the boy again and muses that no one should be alone in their old age.But it is unavoidable (Hemingway,2001:41). As if in response to this expression of loneliness, two porpoises come to the surface. Seeing the frolicking couple, Santiago remarks, They are good.They play and mak
33、e jokes and love one another. They are our brothers like the flying fish (Hemingway, 2001:42). Santiago then remembers a female marlin he and Manolin caught. The male marlin has stayed beside the boat in despair, leaping in the air to see his mate in the boat before he disappeared into the deep ocea
34、n. It is the saddest thing Santiago has ever seen. Something then takes one of the baits behind Santiago, but he cuts the line to avoid distraction from the marlin, wishing Manolin is there to watch the other lines. Expressing his resolve, Santiago says, Fish, Ill stay with you until I am dead (Hemi
35、ngway, 2001:46). He expresses ambivalence over whether he wants the fish to jump, wanting to end the struggle as quickly as possible but worrying that the hook might slip out of the fishs mouth. Echoing his former resolve though with less certainty, Santiago says, Fish, I love you and respect you ve
36、ry much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends (Hemingway,2001:48). Although he is alone and no longer strong, he has his skill and knowing many tricks. He waits patiently for the fish to tire. If Santiago gives it up kills the fish before and alone back home with empty, he will not feel ver
37、y tire, but he is not to do that. He choose to struggle along with the marlin. He keeps on fighting with the fish because he believes himself. This is Santiagos character:persistence and courage. Santiago continues his obsession with proving his worthiness to the hooked fish. He says, Ill kill him.i
38、n all his greatness and glory. Although it is unjust, but I will show him what a man can do and what a man endures (Hemingway,2001:60). Again, the fish is construed as a noble superior, the death of which would be unjust. A man can refer to a human being or a male. As Hemingway usually understands t
39、o conflate the noblest qualities of human beings with the noblest qualities of the male sex, I think it is best to read the statement both way at once. Making Santiago a representative for all humankind serves primarily to heighten the allegorical nature of the novel.Santiago has told the young boy
40、Manolin on several occasions that he is a strange old man, strangeness here is synonym for nobility, something which normal people apparently lack. He must now prove it; the thousand times he had proved it mean nothing. Now he was aproving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought abou
41、t the past when he was doing it (Hemingway,2001:60). This is a difficult passage to interpret as it could be read as an expression of Santiagos particular psychology, as a matter of fact, he never think about the past and always needs to prove himself as each new situation arose, or as a broader sta
42、tement about nobility, one which holds that nobility is not a real quality of character but of actions. Given the novellas aforementioned emphasis on allegorical generality, it seems safe to accept the latter reading. As with the necessity of having ones worthiness recognized by others, this alienat
43、ion of nobility from the person to his deeds complicates Hemingways internal standard of manhood.C. Back homea. Struggle with marauding sharksA desperate struggle ensues in which Santiago manages to kill the fish and tie it to his boat, only to find that on the way home he has to fight a more desper
44、ate struggle with some dangerous giant sharks, which eat up the marlin, leaving only a skeleton. The old man brings it home and goes to bed to dream, almost dead with exhaustion. There is no luck for Santiago, but struggling with sharks maybe make Santiagos eventual misfortune more powerful. Here in
45、 Santiago we see again the spirit of the noble, Hemingway type of individualism, contending with a force he knows it is futile to battle with .He keeps on fighting because he believes that “a man is not made for defeat.A man can be destroyed but not Defeated.”(常耀信，2003:231) The old man wins very har
46、d in this struggle with fish, though the result of the conflict is hard. He struggles with marlin and sharks expresses that choice limit the physical power of the struggler. Santiago, for all this trials and tribulations, remains the same unsuccessful but undefeated soul as before.b. Dreaming lionsF
47、inally, Santiago dreams young lions of African beach, “He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of fights, contests, and his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lion on the beach” (Hemingway, 2001:18), he is old now and his youth and strength is left behind him. All above shows dream gives his
48、 bravery. Where he sailed as a young man Santiago himself was and the young man Manolin is now. Conventionally regarded as kings of the animal world, the young lions symbolize quality such as courage, strength, grace, dignityin short, all the qualities of a champion that Santiago holds dear in his o
49、wn youthful memories, and he would bequeath to Manolin. Here is age bequeathing to youth whatever pieces of the species collective knowledge age possesses. Here, too, is age recalling its youth and reliving that youth vicariously in the vigor of the young. In this commingling of Santiagos youthful reminiscences with his hopes for Ma