小男孩在《老人与海》中的作用_英语论文

On the Role of the Little Boy in The Old Man and the Sea

摘要

《老人与海》讲述了一位古巴老渔夫，与一条大马林鱼在湾流中搏斗的故事。它是美国作家海明威最著名的小说之一，并在1952年出版后，为海明威先后赢得了普利策奖和诺贝尔文学奖。当海明威后来谈到《老人与海》这不小说的成功因素，他曾将小说中的小男孩马诺林与老人圣地亚哥相提并论。然而，自小说出版以来，众多的文学评论家们都将研究重点放在了小说主题“优雅下的风度”、小说中的象征主义、英雄主义等，而对小男孩这一角色的研究却往往被忽视。

本文主要从两个方面分析了小男孩在小说不可替代的作用：第一，从小说的主题来看，小男孩帮助凸显了老人的重压，以及在这种重压下所表现出的风度，使得老人的性格特征和硬汉形象更加清晰可辨。同时小男孩也帮助表现了作者海明威的乐观主义精神。第二，就读者而言，小男孩将老人引到读者面前，使读者了解了更多关于老人的生活态度和性格特征，因此，小男孩在牵引和启发读者方面起着重大作用，他对老人的情感态度也潜移默化地影响着读者对老人的感受。

关键词：小男孩 老人 作用 

Abstract

The Old Man and the Sea tells a story about an old Cuba fisherman who fought with a great marlin in the gulf stream. It is one of the most prominent novel of the American writer Hemingway. And after the publication of this novel, it earned Hemingway the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Nobel Prize in literature. When later Hemingway talked about the reasons for the novel’s success, he valued the little boy and the old man equally. However, in recent years, researches have been done on topics such as the old man’s “grace under pressure”, the symbolism and the heroism in the novel and so on. And the little boy’s role in this novel has been neglected. 

This paper focuses on the discussion of the little boy’s indispensable role from two main aspects: first, as far as the theme of the novel is concerned, the little boy helps to increase the old man’s pressure and highlights the old man’s grace under pressure and makes the old man’s image of “tough guy” and his characters more distinguishable. Secondly, from the perspective of readers, the boy helps to present the image of the old man to readers and helps them know more about the old man’s attitudes and personalities. Therefore, the boy plays an important role in moving and inspiring readers by his emotion towards the old man.

Key words：the boy  old man  role

Contents

Introduction 1

1. To Increase the Old Man’s Pressure 2

2. To Show the Old Man’s Grace 4

3. To Move and Inspire Readers 6

Conclusion 10

Bibliography 11

Acknowledgments 12