毕业设计论文《老人与海》人物形象分析论文终稿

1、毕业设计论文老人与海人物形象分析论文终稿 毕 业 论 文姓名学 号1XXXXXXXXXX0083 导师姓名古艳东二年月毕业论文承诺书本人承诺本人已经了解北京语言大学的毕业论文写作的有关规定本人的论文是在指导教师指导下独立完成的研究成果整篇论文除了文中已注明出处或引用的内容外绝没有侵犯他人知识产权对本论文所涉及的研究工作做出贡献的个人和集体均已在文中以明确方式注明签 名_ 日 期_AN ANALYSIS OF THE CHARACTER IMAGE IN THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA老人与海人物形象分析StudentStudent ID NoMajorSupervisor He

2、 Xin-xin 1XXXXXXXXXX0083 English Gu Yan-dong Continuing Education CollegeBeijing Language Culture UniversityJuly 2012本科生毕业论文评阅书论文题目论文题目中文老人与海人物形象分析学生姓名学 号所在院系专 业何欣欣1XXXXXXXXXX0083外国语学院英语导师姓名古艳东指导教师意见评语成绩百分制导师Outline1 Introduction12 The background221 The American society at that time222 Hemingways li

3、fe experience23 The positive character of Santiago331 Santiagos confidence and courage432 Love of nature and respect for life533 Expectation for the Future64 Complexity of Santiagos character741 Santiago as a code hero742 Santiagos overt aggression85 Conclusion8Works Cited10AbstractErnest Hemingway

4、1899-1961 a famous American writer is considered as one of the most important and outstanding writers in the 20th century of the world He has written many well known works in hie lifeAmong his books The Old Man and the Sea 1952 is the most famous one In this novel Hemingway further explored the them

5、es of man meeting challenges and struggling alone showing extreme determination and courage in face of the defeats and living with grace under pressure This thesis is intended to probe into the characterization of Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea from the following aspects confidence and courage

6、love of nature and respect for life expectation for the future Also this thesis analyses the dual character of Santiago Through the analysis of Santiago a conclusion can be drawn when facing cruel social reality and miserable fate man should be brave and should struggle with all the pains and suffer

7、ings to love and treasure life KeywordsThe Old Man and the Sea complexity of character characterizationAN ANALYSIS OF THE CHARACTER IMAGE IN THE OLD MAN AND THE SEAIntroductionThe Old Man and the Sea is about an old Cuban Fisherman Santiago and his battle against a giant marlin For 84 days he just d

8、idnt catch a single fish but he did not lose heart Finally he hooked a giant marlin A desperate struggle happened in which Santiago managed to kill the fish and then tied it to his boat However more dangerous fighting was in store for him On his way home fierce sharks began to attack him and he had

9、to fight against them which ate up his catch-the giant marlin Nothing was left but a skeleton Finally the old man brought the left skeleton home and went to bed and had a dreamThe thesis consists of three parts The first part deals with the background of The Old Man and the Sea The second part is ab

10、out the positive character of Santiago The third part focuses on the dual characteristics of Santiago2 The backgroundThe background is very important to study Hemingway This chapter will introduce the background from two aspects the American society at that time Hemingwayss life experience21The Amer

11、ican society at that timeWhen it came to the twentieth century a series of wars broke out The Wars especially the First World War and the Second World War brought great affection to the life of people They brought violence devastation blood and death The Americans who used to pride themselves on the

12、 material progress and the advance of civilization found at that time their dream was totally destroyed by the occurrence of the First World WarThe whole world of America had undergone a dramatic social change a transformation from order to disorder Strikes took place in several big cities because o

13、f the industrial depression the rate of unemployment went up due to the oversupply of goods farmers were driven off their land owing to the poor harvest of the crops-all this resulted in the Crash of the Stock Market in 1929 which marked the beginning of The Great Economic Depression in the 1930s Be

14、sides political corruptions organized crimes and the growth of radical labor force made the disorderly society more turbulent In such a cold indifferent and turbulent society the life of American people became a nightmare of poverty and absolute misery They were hopeless and helpless in face of this

15、 Everything seemed to be disintegrating all of a sudden and an ordered rational existence proved to be impossible People became less certain about what might arise in this changing world and more cynical about accepted standards of honesty and morality They had feelings of fear loss disorientation a

16、nd disillusionment They no longer had the hopeful attitude towards their nation and themselves In this period there was a deep spiritual crisis in the society22 Hemingways life experienceHemingway was born in Oak Park Illinois just outside Chicago in 1899 and died by suicide in Ketchum Idaho in 1961

17、 Influenced by his parents Hemingway loved art and sports and enjoyed hunting fishing adventures and other kinds of activities which provided him with a lot of materials for his future literary works He was a master of the objective prose style which became his trademark After leaving high school he

18、 rejected the possibility of college education and became a newspaper reporter for the Kansas City Star In 1917 American young people joined the war actively Hemingway volunteered for war duty in this year as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross in Italy In 1918 he was severely wounded at the front

19、 He spent three months in hospital in Milan and was awarded a medal In 1921 Hemingway who armed with a letter of introduction from the successful writer Sherwood Anderson set off for Pairs There he lived the life of an American literary expatriate talking quarreling traveling being influenced and ad

20、vised by Gertrude Stein boxing with Ezra Pound He worked with energy in literary creation Based on his own experience he published many excellent short stories and his famous long works Among them The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms caused great shocks in the literary circles These works were

21、highly praised because of their deep and profound ideas and unique writing styles Therefore Hemingway firmly established his literary reputation In 1937 he acted as a war correspondent in the Spanish Civil War supporting the justice side but gaining freshly disillusioned insight into the muddle and

22、injustice that afflicts both sides in any war For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1940 was the most notable result of his Spanish experiences After that in 1952 Hemingway published The Old Man and the Sea which immediately received extreme acclaim The Old Man and the Sea won not only the Pulitzer Fiction Pri

23、ze in 1952 but also the Nobel Prize for literature in 19543 The positive character of SantiagoThe Old Man and the Sea is a song of praise about human spirit Through the description of the sufferings Santiago endures and his courageous behavior in his fights with the marlin and the sharks Hemingway i

24、ntends to tell us his philosophy of life life is not a plain sailing but is painful and complex The only way to survive is to face difficulties and misfortunes in life with honor dignity courage and endurance When faced with the misfortune and miserable fate man should not be discouraged instead he

25、should be brave confident determined and optimistic and struggle against them At the same time man should be full of hope for the future This is the just right spiritual qualities human beings should have In other words to be a human being is to behave with honor and dignity to accept ones duty with

26、out complaint and most importantly to display a imum of self-control31 Santiagos confidence and courageThe characters in Hemingways novels are always strong brave and endurable They always experience all kinds of difficulties and sufferings and they can endure them silently They are never discourage

27、d Once they fight they will get the victory The firm and unbending characteristic is what we call the spirit of steel-willed man which is one main characteristic of Hemingways writing The Old Man and the Sea has reached the cli and becomes the symbol of this kind of spiritThe major character Santiag

28、o in The Old Man and the Sea is that kind of steel-willed man He is confident and hopeful in spirit and is courageous in action His confidence and courage are gradually presented during conflicts that happen when he goes to sea catches a marlin and struggles against sharksThe old mans courage and st

29、rength are shown from his brave struggle against sharks In the returning trip the more dangerous and terrible disasters piled up in him schools of sharks came to attack the marlin of the old man His rivals were so powerful and fearful that he couldnt escape his defeat But the old man had no fear at

30、all and prepared for the fight In The Old Man and the Sea Hemingway also writes about the courage with which men face the tragedies of life that can never be remedied Santiagos message is that man can be destroyed but not be defeated Santiago will die but the example of his heroic struggle will live

31、 He must continue killing sharks up to the end even though he knows it is hopeless because only in this way can he redeem the initial act of going out too far or of ruining the marlin or himself Meeting death on his own terms is in part the reason behind Santiagos decision to venture out so far Too

32、proud to be the laughingstock of the village or to accept his physical decline Santiago will challenge nature and die if necessary rather than live in order to be rejected and humiliated by nature and his fellow fisherman Such feelings explain why he is never tempted to let go of the line not even f

33、or one moment32 Love of nature and respect for lifeHemingway loves nature and his yearning towards the harmonious relationship between man and nature is reflected in The Old Man and the Sea through the vivid description of its beauty and Santiagos unity with all the sea creatures All the creatures a

34、re full of beauty and vitality in The Old Man and the Sea The old man has a sweet dream at night before he sets out to the sea He dreams of Africa with beautiful beaches high capes mountains and lionsUnlike the other fishermen who take the ocean merely as a kind of object from which they are able to

35、 get a lot of economic benefits Santiago looks at the ocean with love and respect In The Old Man and the Sea Santiago and the sea are dependent on each other for survival and integrated with each other Once on the sea he shows his love to nature the sea and the creatures in the sea When talking of t

36、he sea Santiago always employs the pronoun her which is used for female The old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favors And if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them Herzberg and 1985173 The sea is the old fishermans hom

37、e and it provides necessities to him in a sense He is attached to the sea in his blood As a fisherman Santiagos whole life depends on the fishes Though he admires the beauty nobility calmnessgreatness and dignity of the fishes and says they are his brothers or friends what he really has to do is not

38、hing but killing them for his purpose of living The reason why he goes far out to sea is that he wants to catch the fish to eat or sell for money so that he can keep him alive and feed many people Without the necessary materials taken from the natural world no one can survive33 Expectation for the F

39、uture The story is basically a sad one People cannot but admit that the old man does have a right to be sad for he has indeed tried his best and his defeat is almost inevitable He is too far out in the sea and there are so many evil traps out there on the sea How can an old man cope with them alone

40、The world before him is simply like this if he does not sail far enough out at sea he wont catch anything like the situation Santiago is in during the first 84 days but if he sails too far he will certainly lose what he catches That is the lesson that the old man learns in the end However at the end

41、 of the story we also have a glow of hope the boy and Santiago plan another trip and agree to make enough preparations Corresponding to this content the story develops along a single plot The old mans trips to the sea run through the whole story from beginning to end The cycle is from defeat to defe

42、at However the first defeat and the latter defeats are different in that the latter ones are the results of some hard and strenuous struggle and they also foresee the next round of hard fighting So we can compare this kind of structure to a spiral the end of one ring is always higher than the starti

43、ng point of the next ringThe story of Santiago explains the existence of a more real and stirring force Santiago is a hero He is so devoted to fishing and so crazy about that beautiful and noble fish This kind of goal in life is noble He also loves fighting-fighting on the sea on sports ground etc H

44、e tries all his best to win victory He does not only live to win victory he seems to live to fight He is disappointed about numerous defeats We have no right to blame him for these defeats because it is not his fault and he has done his best He never gives up trying In the beginning he has caught no

45、 fish at all for 84 days he has the company of a little boy out in the sea but because of his bad luck and defeat the boy is forced by his parents to leave and go out to the sea with other fisherman Here the heros bad luck and defeat are permanent in others eyes but to Santiago it does not matter mu

46、ch as he still believes that he will have good luck again He will be able to catch a big fish with his rich experience and great skill The old Man said I may not be as strong as I think But I know many tricks and I have resolutions The old man is confident and self-assured He knows clearly he is no

47、longer as strong as he used to be and he has nothing to depend on but his power and experience His words are brief and powerful with little explanation but He knows clearly what sort of advantages he has and to what extent he can win And for the dilemma he has to face he also has great ideas of how

48、to win a fair fight through his tricks and resolution Here we can see that his determination to struggle is firm and his hope for the future is strong His limitations lie in those of the society into which he was born because that society does not offer much hope His limitations are also due to Hemi

49、ngway the author who was so disappointed on his return from the Second World War The fact that Santiago can face up to the defeats and go on trying should be well appreciated He knows that there is no hope for him to bring in the marlin he goes on fighting until the sharks eat up the fish Although h

50、e loses the battle there is a little brilliance and exciting places in the failure The spiritual victory goes like the old mans own words Pain does not matter to a man A man is not made for defeat A man can be destroyed but not defeated His heros spirit of facing failure bravely should be praised An

51、d this attitude is good and realistic Toward the end of the novel the old man is again dreaming of the lions Beside him is the boy who is also eager to fight which shows their attitudes toward life in the future He does not cry over his misfortune does not yield to bad luck and does not bend before

52、failure It is the lion in his dream which carries a symbol of strength and bravery that shows Santiagos optimism about life and future In this sense we can say that the old man is a great hero a true winner4 Complexity of Santiagos character41 Santiago as a code heroFor eighty-four days Santiago has

53、 not caught a single fish but he does not feel discouraged He goes far out into the sea and hooks a giant marlin A 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 desperate struggle with other danger

54、ous giant sharks which eat up the marlin leaving only a skeleton The old man brings it home and goes to bed almost dead with exhaustion Here we see Santiagos noble spirit again He contends with a force he knows it is futile to battle with but he keeps on fighting because he believes that A man is no

55、t made for defeat A man can be destroyed but not defeated Herzberg Ernest Hemingway 16 42 Santiagos overt aggressionAlthough the novella The Old Man and the Sea portrays Santiago as an almost otherworldly figure-a saintly benevolent and gentle man-it simultaneously portrays him as a strongly aggress

56、ive figure Santiagos acts of aggression against the sharks are of course defensible because these appetite-driven antagonists instinctually seek to violate his prize The most flagrant of Santiagos aggressions is the episode that Manolin recalls at the beginning of the novella Santiago asks whether M

57、anolin can remember when as a five-year-old child new to the boat he was almost killed when Santiago brought in a green fish-one not sufficiently exhausted while being reeled to the boatManolin mentions no apology from Santiago for this untoward episode The old man may have felt no embarrassment over the event and thought that he had done nothing to apologize for He may have felt it would not have been manly to apologize