The peculiarities of language and style of Ernest Hemingway’s novel 'Islands in the Stream'
Міністерство
освіти й науки, молоді та спорту України
Полтавський
національний педагогічний університет імені В. Г. Короленка
Факультет
філології та журналістики
Кафедра
англійської та німецької філології
Бакалаврська
кваліфікаційна робота
зі
спеціальності Філологія. Мова та література (англійська)
ОСОБЛИВОСТІ
МОВИ ТА СТИЛЮ Е. ГЕМІНГВЕЯ В РОМАНІ “ОСТРОВИ В ОКЕАНІ”
Виконав:
студент IV курсу, групи
Науковий керівник:
канд. філол. наук, доцент
Полтава
2012
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PART 1. E. HEMINGWAY AS A
REPRESENTATIVE OF THE AMERICAN PROSE OF THE 20TH CENTURY
1.1 The Life Story of E.
Hemingway
PART 2. THE FEATURES OF THE
WRITER’S PEN
.1 Economical Style of the
Author
.2 The Flavor of the Spanish
Language
.3 The Technique of Flashback
and Reflecting the Events of His Own Life
.4 Tragic Mood of Most of His
Works3. THE PECULIARITIES OF THE NOVEL “ISLANDS IN THE STREAM”
3.1 Stark Minimalism of Writing
Style in the Novel
.2 The Reflection of the
Author’s Life and World History in the Novel
.3 The Impressionistic
Techniques of the Writer in the Novel
.4 The Implication and the
Manners of Expressing It in the Novel
PART 4. METHODS OF USING THE
NOVEL “ISLANDS IN THE STREAM” AT LESSONS
INTRODUCTION
the social demands of society in the
field of foreign language study set the challenges of the spiritual development
of the learners, improvement the humanistic content of the study, a more
complete implementation of educational and developmental potential of educational
subject in relation to the personality of each learner. The primary objective
of foreign language study in secondary schools is to develop the pupil’s
personality, able and willing to participate in cross-cultural communication
and self-improve in the sphere of the study activity. Communicative and
socio-cultural development of a pupil by means of a subject “foreign language”
is carried out by the proper implementation of country-study approach. This
approach provides learning a language closely related to the foreign language
culture, which includes a variety of useful information about the history,
literature, architecture, lifestyle, habits and traditions of the people of the
country the language of which is studied. Country-study lessons promote a pupil
to keep on further study of the country-study material on his own. And that is
the country study to serve as a support for maintaining motivation, as it
includes such two aspects:
) teaching language, its general and
special features and preparing a learner to use this knowledge in practice;
) giving information about the
country, the language of which is studied, making a learner to take up the
culture of native-speaking countries.to K.S. Kirichevskaya, country-study
material includes original literature, folklore, painting, music works and
everything that can tell something about the country the language of which is
studied in any aspect including language, customs, goods, clothes, dinnerware
and just their images and especially literature [21, с.
28].
There is a great deal of foreign, in
particular, English and American writers of fiction worth attention. Some of
them are Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Evelyn
Waugh, Theodore Dreiser, William Somerset Maugham,
James Aldridge, Ernest Hemingway.Hemingway has
raised special interest of scholars, linguists and
just people for much time. His late works except for the novel “The Old Man and
the Sea”, which is the subject of numerous literary works, remain
under-researched and have various contrasting estimates. This is mostly because
of the fact that the many of these works were published after his death (“A
Moveable Feast” 1964, “Islands in the Stream” 1970, “The Garden of Eden” 1986,
“True at First Light” 1999).biographies and fundamental studies of Hemingway’s
literary activity published both in the USA and in our country, have incomplete
material. One of such works is “Hemingway and Heroism” by L. Gurko, published
in 1963 before the publication of a Hemingway’s book of memories “The Movable
Feast” [31,с. 216].
Books of one of the best American scholars researching Hemingway’s writing, K.
Beyker, such as “Hemingway. The History of Life” and “The Writer as an Artist”,
published in the 60-70s, relate mainly to the works of Hemingway, issued during
life of the writer [31, с. 229].
S. Donaldson in his monograph “Force of Will. Life and Works of Ernest
Hemingway” gives a more detailed analysis of the novel “Islands in the Stream”
integrating it into the whole system of works of E. Hemingway [31,
с. 231].our country literary studies in
60-70s biographical method is actively used to study the writing of Hemingway.
There is a book written by the well-known researcher of Hemingway’s works I.A.
Kashkin “E. Hemingway. Critical and Biographical Essay” (1966). In this book
the author refers only to the writer of those novels and stories that were
published during his lifetime. Referring to the writer’s works of 40’s-50’s, I.
A. Kashkin compares two works - the novel “The Old Man and the Sea” and the
novel “Across the River and Into the Trees”, noting correctly that they are
different in mood, style and type of a character, though they were created in
the same time [27, с.38].the
book of B.T. Gribanov “Ernest Hemingway” the history of writer’s works creation
and their perception of American criticism were described. Gribanov also refers
to the life circumstances that formed the basis of the book of memoirs “The
Movable Feast”. Just as in many biographies of Hemingway by other American and
foreign authors (K. Baker, P. Griffin, and S. Kauffmann, B. Gilenson), Gribanov
consider this work Hemingway as a kind of “piggy bank” of his statements about
the writer’s work. Gribanov also refers to the creative history of the trilogy
“of the sea”, parts of which were such novels as “Islands in the Stream” and
“The Gardens of Eden”, published in 1970 and 1986 [20,
с. 109].of separate periods of Ernest
Hemingway’s literary activity, the characteristics of his art world were given
in such works: Charles Fenton “Discipleship of Hemingway. The Early Years”
(1961), K. Beyker “The Writer as an Artist” (1972), Leedskiy “The Creativity of
Hemingway” (1973), Finkelstein “Hemingway, the Novelist. The Years of the 20’s
and 30’s” (1974). These books devoted to the works of Hemingway which were
published before his death. However, they can serve as a methodological basis
for studying the writer’s posthumously published works and changing some
established views to the late works of Ernest Hemingway as a whole.works of
American and local researchers published in 80-90’s are few and also largely
based on the biographical method. Some of them are the researches by J. Meyers,
K. Lynn, J.B. Nelson, and G. Jones, B.A. Gilenson. Thanks to the mentioned
researches of Hemingway’s late works, it is possible to obtain new data on the
life and writing of the writer.the works of local and American literature,
Hemingway’s works are put into the context of American and world literature
development; the writer’s posthumously published works are not included here.
It can be found in such books as “Literary History of the United States”
(1988), “The Modern Realist Novel of the United States. 1945-1980” (1988),
“American Literature of the Twentieth Century” (1984), “Modern American Novel”
(1964). Here the researchers focus their attention on universally accepted
“top” works of Ernest Hemingway, especially of the novel “The Old Man and the
Sea”. Such novels as “Gardens of Eden”, “Islands in the Stream”, a book of
memories “The Movable Feast” are not researched by the authors of mentioned
above works. However, these things need to be analyzed from the contextual
approach.local literary studies many researchers turn to the analysis of the
specific genre, stylistic features of prose of the writer, the problem of a
character in his works. These are the article by A. Kashkin
“Content-Form-Content”, a section on of the Mayants’ book “Man Alone Can’t Go…”
[31, с.33].
Many papers are devoted to the problem of subtext in the books of Ernest
Hemingway. In particular, this problem was studied by Kashkin, Zasursky. T.
Motyleva in her book “Foreign Novel Today” (1966) stops on the problem of the
relation of the epic poetry and the novels of the writer [12,
с. 93].
B. Dneprov in his book “The Ideas of Time and Form of Time” studies the
transformation of the genre and stylistic features of works of Ernest Hemingway
on the example of a novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls” making emphasis on the
strengthening of epic factor in it [12, с.93].
There are works, both foreign and local, considering Hemingway as a master of
landscape. They use an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of
Hemingway’s works (V. Ivanov, V. Yatsenko, A. Kazin).above things of
literature, turned to the works of Hemingway’s 20-30’s, including the novel “For
Whom the Bell Tolls”, provide us a methodological framework for study of the
stylistic features of creativity and genre of late works by Hemingway. There
are no domestic researches studying this problem from such methodological
approaches. However, this aspect of the writer’s late writing need further
study. Posthumously published works of the writer are not well-understood.novel
“Islands in the Stream” was released in 1970. Some individual pages of American
literary studies were devoted to it, among which are “The Power of Will. Life
and Works of Ernest Hemingway” (1977) by S. Donaldson, “Hemingway. Biography”
(1985) by J. Meyers, ”Hemingway” (1987) by K. Lynn. In details the creative
history of the novel was described by K. Baker. There are very few local
studies on the novel “Islands in the Stream”. Following the publication of the
novel in Russian there appeared an article “The Characters and the Conflict of
the Unfinished Novel” (1971) by I. Kantorovich and the review of A.S. Norilsk
(1972). In the article of I. Kantorovich “Islands in the Stream” is compared
with “For Whom the Bell Tolls” pointing to anti-fascist orientation of these
works [13, с.
99].
A.S. Norilsk pointed to atmosphere of despair, of the dead-end in the novel, so
they have some common features with the literature of the “stream of
consciousness” [9, с.
116].,
there is an objective need for the study of late writing by Hemingway. First of
all posthumously published works should be studied. So this is the thing to
determine the relevance of my research work.object of the research is Ernest
Hemingway’s “Islands in the Stream”.subject of the research is the language and
stylistic peculiarities of this work.aim of our research is to find out the
peculiarities of language and style of Ernest Hemingway’s novel “Islands in the
Stream”. To achieve the aim the following tasks were put forward:
) to get acquainted with the
biography of the prominent writer Ernest Hemingway;
) to analyze Ernest Hemingway’s
works in general;
) to find out the features of Ernest
Hemingway’s pen;
) to analyze the novel “Islands in
the Stream”;
) to determine the language and
stylistic peculiarities of the novel “Islands in the Stream”.research methods
such as bibliographical, analytical, descriptive, comparative were
used.scientific novelty of the research is that for the first time the features
of Ernest Hemingway’s works were detected and systemized in this area.practical
value is that this material is directed to be used in English and special-course
classes as a help in teaching English thanks to which pupils not only study
English lexis and grammar, but also take up the culture of English-speaking
countries.work consists of introduction (presenting the topicality of the
problem and the main aspects of making the research), four parts of the main
content (three theoretical and one practical), conclusions, bibliography
including 48 sources and applications.
PART 1. E. HEMINGWAY AS A
REPRESENTATIVE OF THE AMERICAN PROSE OF THE 20TH CENTURY
1.1 The Life Story of E. Hemingway
hemingway language style novel
Influential American writer of the
20th century famouse for his novels and short stories was born in July 21, 1899
in the town of Oak Park near Chicago in a wealthy family. He was the second of
six children of doctor Edmund Clarence Hemingway and his wife Grace Ernestine
Hall. His father, who was not only a good surgeon, but also an excellent hunter
and fisherman, played and important role in the educating of Ernest. Every
summer, Ernest lived in a father’s summer cottage on Lake Vallun, where he
learned fishing and hunting, learned the nature, customs and history of his
native land. Along with his father he went not only to hunting and fishing, but
also to the Indian village, where Clarence Hemingway treated settlers free of
charge. The memories of these all formed the basis for one of the first
writer’s short stories “In the Indian Village”. When Ernest was twelve years
old, his paternal grandfather, taking part in the Civil War, presented the boy
the first gun in his life. And since that moment hunting and fishing were his
the most favorite activities. The grandfather revealed the boy all the secrets
of fishing known to no one but him.only educational institution that Ernest
Hemingway finished in his life was a school in Oak Park. At school ages the boy
was very fond of sports. He was one of the best sportsmen of the school: he
played football and water polo, went in for swimming and boxing. And not less
than sports, he admired literature.
After finishing school, he firmly decided to become a journalist. In 1917
Ernest went to Kansas City, where he became a reporter of the newspaper “Kansas
City Star”. Thanks to work as a reporter he improved his powers of observation,
visual acuity; his work was a great experience he needed in further life.
Besides, the environment, the level of the newspaper for which he worked,
helped the future writer to get major skills of journalism. And a hundred
“rules” made for newspaper “Star” reporters by the founder, largely coincided
with Hemingway’s understanding of creativity: “Use short sentences. Use short
first paragraphs. Use vigorous English, not forgetting to strive for
smoothness. Be positive, not negative [33, с. 12].
Being a mature writer Hemingway considered these rules as the best ones he had
ever written in keeping with. He believed that no person who felt and wanted to
write truthfully would not write well if he rejected these rules.spring of 1918
Hemingway went to Europe: he went as a volunteer to the Italian-Austrian front,
and stayed in the U.S. Medical Corps. Here he was badly wounded in both legs.
Having operated him twelve times, one after another, doctors found on him 227
wounds, took out of his legs twenty-eight fragments. For courage and bravery Hemingway
won the Italian military awards. Demobilized in January 1919 he arrived to
America. There he worked as a reporter, devoting all his free time to writing,
and gravitated to Europe. In 1921 he received from the Toronto editorial office
suggestion to become its European correspondent and send the material on his
own. Along with his wife, pianist Hadley Richardson, Hemingway went to Europe
for several years and settled in Paris.
As a correspondent, Hemingway traveled a lot, visited many countries, sending
to the editorial office sketches from Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Austria,
Switzerland, Turkey.
In December 1923, having quitted
the career of journalist, Hemingway returned to Paris as a freelancer. Paris
period was very bright and rich for Ernest Hemingway. He met such writers as
James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Gertrude Stein and Francis Scott
Fitzgerald.1923 in Paris his first collection, “Three Stories and Ten Poems”,
was published, and in 1924 - his booklet “In Our Time”, which contained
twenty-four miniatures. The author expected these stories and
miniature-epigraphs to them to create an overall image of “our time” - so
tragic and troubled time. After war, in peace time, he told of those incurable
injuries the recent war caused mankind. The story collection comprised
continuous autobiographical character, Nick Adams. By the book “In Our Time”
Hemingway displayed himself as the author of a particular topic - anti-war and
the “lost generation” - and style, marked by restraint and laconic narrative
style.1926 Hemingway wrote a novel “The Sun Also Rises”, which is also known as
“Fiesta”. This was a story about a group of American expatriates living in
Europe after the First World War. In this novel the Hemingway’s style was
crystallized, it was characterized by specific “chopped” dialogues omissions or
implications and absence of the author’s marks [33,
с.12]. The protagonist of the novel was
Jake Barnes, a journalist and writer, which seemed internally devastated and
spiritually broken off. He told his personal tragedy: he was shot and wounded
in the battle and the consequences were too grave for him as for a man. To run
away somehow from the memories, to get rid of dark thoughts about him, he and
Brett Ashley - the woman he loved - became frequent visitors of Montmartre
taverns, having fun at fiesta.won the world fame when wrote his novel “A
Farewell to Arms” (1929). It displayed the evens at the Italian-Austrian front
in 1917. The author created a striking image of life in war, oppressive
melancholy of hospitals. The style of the novel was characterized by extreme
restraint, “telegraphic style” [33,
с.18].
But beneath the external simplicity a complex content, the world of thoughts
and feelings lurked. Hemingway said that the writer had to know well of the
things he wrote about, in such case he could omit much details and, if he told
the truth, the reader would feel everything omitted as if it was not omitted [33,
с.19].proved “the theory of the iceberg”
which demanded from the writer to be able to choose the most important and most
characteristic events, words and details saying that literary work seemed to
him like an iceberg only the seventh part of which was seen above the level of
water; the writer had to throw out everything he could throw: those things
would change his iceberg and all the omitted details would fade beneath the
water; but if the writer missed something he didn’t know his story would have
holes [23, с.19].1930
Hemingway and his wife returned to America. They bought a house in Key West, a
fishing village located on the southern edge of Florida. Hemingway went in for
boxing, hunting for deer, elks and quails in the states of Idaho and Wyoming,
catching big fish. He ordered and equipped its own yacht “Pillar” to go fishing
by it. In 1934, along with wife, he went to Africa to his first safari -
hunting big animals. Before leaving to Africa, he visited Spain and Paris once
more, attended fiesta in Pamplona, met his Spanish friends and
matadors.
In 1932 Hemingway’s “Death in the Afternoon” was published - a book of
sketches, dedicated to fighting bulls that gave the writer an opportunity to
express love to Spain and its people, its nature, customs and arts. The next
book of essays, “Green Hills of Africa” (1935) was a diary of
safari, in which interesting observation of the African tribes, the fauna,
descriptions of landscapes and hunting were combined with reflections of art,
of literary work, of the essence of life and death.Hemingway’s stories widely
published in the early 1930’s in American magazines were collected to a book
called “Winner Take Nothing” (1933). The characters of the stories were the
people from the lower classes of society, the people who suffered from physical
and psychological injuries of uncommunicativeness. In 1936 “The Snow of
Kilimanjaro” was released. It was a story about physical and creative
destruction of a writer Harry. It outlined the problem of lost talent of a
writer tempted by material prosperity. The next year the novel “To Have and
Have Not” was printed. The events described in it took place in America. The
main character of the work, Harry Morgan, turned a smuggler; because of poverty
he stepped to the way of crime and went down the thorny way of his insight [1,
c.36].the summer of 1937 Hemingway met Martha Helhorn, a journalist who went to
Key West to take writer’s interview. A few years later, having been to Spain,
they returned to the States together and become and got married.work of
Hemingway in the late 1930’s was closely related to his participation in the
anti-fascist struggle of Spanish people. He purchased a column of health cars
and sent them to Spanish Republicans. In the spring of 1937 he arrived to
Madrid. He stayed in Spain one and a half year, wrote essays “The Spanish
soldier”, “The Madrid Drivers”, a scenario of the film “The Spanish Earth”.
Spanish events became the theme of his play “The Fifth Column” and the novel
“For Whom the Bell Tolls”. Since the early 1940’s Hemingway lived in Cuba.
During World War II, he took part in hostilities. In 1942-1943, by his armed
yacht “Pillar”, he repeatedly went out to the Caribbean Sea to hunt for German
submarines. In 1944 the writer came to England, took part in the landing of
American troops in Normandy and fought for the “Siegfried Line” and the
liberation of Paris. During the war Hemingway worked at a book about the sea
which remained unfinished and was published only in 1970. It was named “Islands
in the Stream”.London Hemingway met military correspondent Merry Welsh, they
liked each other. In March 1945, Hemingway returned to America, parted with
Martha Helhorn and along with Mary settled near Havana, in his estate. In 1950
his new novel “Across the River and Into the Trees” appeared. The protagonist
of the work was colonel Richard Kentuell, fifty-year-old soldier who went
through two world wars. Having turned out to be in Venice after the Second World
War, he was going through his last love - love to a young beautiful countess
Renate. The general tone of the story was gloomy: ill Kentuell, feeling the end
getting near, summed up disappointing results and committed a suicide [1,
c.44].1952 Hemingway published a story “The Old Man and the Sea” for which he
received the Pulitzer Prize, the highest literary award of the United States,
and the Nobel Prize in 1954.1950 Hemingway acquired nostalgic mood, he visited
his memorable places and countries, took part in the African safari, went to
bullfighting in Spain four times, and in 1956 he visited Paris. Twice he fell
in plane crash. In 1957 he wrote a book about Paris in twenties, which was
printed after his death, entitled “The Movable Feast”.1959 Hemingway and Merry
settled in Ketchum, Idaho. During his last years the writer felt sick, suffered
both physically and mentally. In one conversation Hemingway said that the man
had no right to die in bed, he had to die in a battle or to send a bullet in
his temple [33, с.28].
In July 2, 1961, being in hard depression, he committed suicide, having shot
himself with a rifle.
Hemingway’s genius as an American
original was evident long before he produced his novels that are today
considered masterpieces of American literature. Both critics and readers have
hailed his short stories as proof that a pure, true American literature was
finally possible. American literature was no longer merely watered-down British
reading fare. American literature had at last come into its own. Hemingway set
the standard - and the writers who came after him honored his achievement.
Hemingway’s style proves to be
equally complex and worthy of study, as he was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1954. His terse prose requires the reader to make inferences and
construct meaning beyond the words on the page. This novel provides multiple
opportunities to explore how a writer uses syntax and diction to create meaning
and enhance his purpose. He uses understatement to follow a description of the
fatigue and sickness that had struck the Italian army, underscoring his disgust
and horror of the conditions that soldiers endured; he employs
stream-of-consciousness to reinforce the drunken stupor that Henry finds
himself in to numb the pain associated with war; and his use of dialogue forces
the reader to be influenced by the speech of the characters to explore his or her
own thoughts on the subject.
In short, Hemingway’s stylistic
influence on American writers has been enormous. The success of his plain style
in expressing basic yet deeply fell emotions contributed to the decline of the
elaborate prose that characterized American writing in the early 20th century.
Legions of American writers have cited Hemingway as a major influence on their
own work [9, c.57].is interesting that his works remain topical; they don’t
lose their value for long time. We can see their reflection in modern fiction,
music, painting and other spheres of human spiritual activities. His novels and
short-stories are included into school and high-school study programme and
actively used in the process of teaching English as they contain a lot of lexical,
grammatical and stylistic patterns, interesting idioms; cultural information;
philosophical thoughts and many other things helping master the language and
take up the culture of the native-speakers or just to widen one’s outlook.
PART 2. THE FEATURES OF THE WRITER’S
PEN
.1 Economical Style of the Author
’s style is the most-discussed topic
in our literary course. What is style? There is very lot of
definitions.Sainsbury suggested the following interpretation of style: “Style
is the selection and allocation of resources of language, in which some,
transmitted content also plays important but minor role. The style consists of
the choice of words used, further selection and arrangement of these words, the
structure of sentences, which are made of these words, the location of the
phrases in sentences and sentences in paragraphs. The style does not go beyond
a paragraph, but inside it reaches its highest level” [17,
с.13].to I.R. Halperin, style is a
system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in
communication. It is thus to be regarded as the product of a certain task set
by the sender of the message [17, с.14].Free
Online Dictionary we can also find a few notions of style. According to it,
style is:
) the way in which something is said,
done, expressed, or performed;
2) the combination of distinctive
features of literary or artistic expression, execution, or performance
characterizing a particular person, group, school, or era;
) a quality of imagination and
individuality expressed in one's actions and tastes [10].we
can sum up that in our case style is the amount of personal features of writing
techniques and methods and use of them by the writer to aim the task set by
him. Now let’s consider the style of E. Hemingway.the main characteristics of
Hemingway’s writing style we can admit:) stark minimalism in creating images;
2) strict selection of words;
3) descriptions without
embellishment;
) short declarative sentences;
5) a lot of dialogues;
6) language accessible to the common
reader;
) presence of Spanish language [1,
c.43].are some examples. An excellent one is found in “A Clean Well-Lighted
Place”. In this story, there is no maudlin sentimentality; the plot is simple,
yet highly complex and difficult. Focusing on an old man and two waiters,
Hemingway says as little as possible. It was probably most influenced by his
early work as a cub reporter for “The Kansas City Star”. There he was forced to
adhere to a stylebook for young reporters, which included the following advice:
“Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English, not
forgetting to strive for smoothness. Be positive, not negative” [20, с.
68].some of the best of Hemingway’s much-celebrated use of dialogue occurs in
“Hills Like White Elephants”. When the story begins, two characters - a man and
a woman - are sitting at a table. We finally learn that the girl’s nickname is
Jig. Eventually we learn that they are in the cafe of a train station in Spain.
But Hemingway tells us nothing about them - neither about their past nor about
their future. There is no description of them. “In Our Time”, like all of
Hemingway’s writing, uses simple, declarative sentences with little or no
description of emotion.
This spare, carefully honed and
polished writing style of Hemingway was by no means spontaneous. When he worked
as a journalist, he learned to report facts crisply and succinctly. He was also
an obsessive revisionist. It was reported that he wrote and rewrote all, or
portions, of “The Old Man and the Sea” more than two hundred times before he
was ready to release it for publication.
When Hemingway was awarded the Nobel
Prize in literature in 1954, his writing style was singled out as one of his
foremost achievements. The committee recognized his “forceful and style-making
mastery of the art of modern narration” [20, с.73].many
readers, the essential characteristic of the Hemingway’s style is simplicity
and accuracy of word choice. That description, while accurate, can be
deceptive.
“Simplicity” is not the same thing
as short, grammatically simple sentences. “Precision of word choice” does not
mean an abundance of unusual words in order to achieve precision. And
Hemingway’s style cannot so easily be explained as in his own often quoted
advice to write the story and then remove the adjectives and adverbs.
At the conclusion of “For Whom the
Bell Tolls”, you will have a distinct picture of the places, the objects and
people in the story. If you diagrammed or sketched them, they might be somewhat
different from another reader’s mental picture. This distinctness gives the
reader the feeling of being there. Beyond question this effect is achieved by a
heavy use of nouns and verbs. If there is an object in the scene he is
relating. Hemingway will mention it. If a character moves, Hemingway will
mention it.
Hemingway’s economical writing style
often seems simple and almost childlike, but his method is calculated and used
to achieve complex effect. In his writing Hemingway provided detached
descriptions of action, using simple nouns and verbs to capture scenes
precisely. By doing so he avoided describing his characters’ emotions and
thoughts directly. Instead, he provided the reader with the raw material of an
experience and eliminated the authorial viewpoint. Hemingway made the reading
of a text approximate the actual experience as closely as possible. Hemingway
was also deeply concerned with authenticity in writing. He believed that a
writer could treat a subject honestly only if the writer had participated in or
observed the subject closely. Without such knowledge the writer’s work would be
flawed because the reader would feel the author’s lack of expertise. In
addition, Hemingway believed that an author writing about a familiar subject is
able to write sparingly and eliminate a great deal of superfluous detail from
the piece without sacrificing the voice of authority [30, с.111].success
of his plain style in expressing basic, yet deeply felt emotions contributed to
the decline of the elaborate Victorian-era prose that characterized a great
deal of American writing in the early 20th century. In contrast, a complex
style uses long, elaborate sentences that contain many ideas and descriptions.
The writer uses lyrical passages to create the desired mood in the reader,
whether it is one of joy, sadness, confusion, or any other emotion. For
example, American author Henry James uses a complex style to great effect in
novels such as “The Wings of the Dove” (1902): “The two ladies who, in advance
of the Swiss season, had been warned that their design was unconsidered, that
the passes would not be clear, nor the air mild, nor the inns open - the two
ladies who, characteristically had braved a good deal of possibly interested
remonstrance were finding themselves, as their adventure turned out,
wonderfully sustained” [35, с.99].the
beginning of his writing career in the 1920s, Hemingway’s writing style
occasioned a great deal of comment and controversy. Earlier works relied more
heavily on colloquial dialogue to communicate action and rarely included
lengthy descriptive passages. Basically, a typical Hemingway’s novel or short
story is written in simple, direct, unadorned prose. Possibly, the style
developed because of his early journalistic training. The reality, however, is
this: before Hemingway began publishing his short stories and sketches,
American writers affected British mannerisms. Adjectives piled on top of one
another; adverbs tripped over each other. Colons clogged the flow of even short
paragraphs, and the plethora of semicolons often caused readers to throw up
their hands in exasperation. And then came Hemingway.of the greatest writing
techniques of the writer was “the principle of iceberg”, only eighth part of
which could be seen above the level of water, and the rest seven parts were
hidden beneath the water. The novelist believed that that was the way the
writer had to create his works: he had not to say everything; most of the
content had to be embedded in the subtext [23, с.
36]. Poetics of Hemingway is characterized by a lot of hints and omissions. He
described only the facts, but it was easy to reveal complex psychological
processes, emotional drama of characters they contained deep inside. Avoiding
detailed descriptions, copyright explanations, “self-revelation” of characters,
he turned a lot of stories to short dramatic scenes, having as little author’s
explanations as dramatic remarks had. Words were indifferent and neutral; they
often helped not reveal, but hide thoughts and experiences. When a man felt
very bad, when pain strangled him, he spoke about some not important things -
about food, traveling, weather, sports. The internal tension was seen only in
the intonation, in broken syntax, in the matters of pauses, in perverse
automatic-like repetition of the same phrase. Only in moments of high emotional
tension the hidden things broke outside by some word or gesture. Hemingway was
considered as the master of selection and deliberate sequence of facts. He
gravitated to the expression and laconism, focusing on the details that brought
in a great emotional stress. Thanks to his skill in using hints, he reached
maximum expression of a detail. Such detail
allowed the author not only to display some fact or phenomenon, but also to
convey the inner pathos of the narrative. Realistic symbols strengthened the
sound of lyrical works, gave them a philosophical polysemy.is true that
Hemingway often leaves the adjectives and adverbs to the reader. The resulting
effect is all become more vivid and memorable. An excellent example is the
description of the sights and smells both inside and outside the cave, at the
opening of Chapter 5 of “For Whom the Bell Tolls”: “Robert Jordan pushed aside
the saddle blanket that hung over the mouth of the cave and, stepping
out, took a deep breath of the cold night air. The mist had cleared away and
the stars were out. There was no wind, and, outside now of the warm air of the
cave, heavy with smoke of both tobacco and charcoal, with the odor of cooked
rice and meat, saffron, pimentos, and oil, the tarry, wine-spilled smell of the
big skin hung beside the door, hung by the neck and the four legs extended,
wine drawn from a plug fitted in one leg, wine that spilled a little onto the
earth of the floor, settling the dust smell; out now from the odors of
different herbs whose names he did not know that hung in bunches from the
ceiling, with long ropes of garlic, away now
from the copper-penny, red wine and garlic, horse sweat and man sweat dried in
the clothing (acrid and gray the man sweat, sweet and sickly the dried
brushed-off lather of horse sweat), of the men at the table, Robert Jordan
breathed deeply of the clear night air of the mountains that smelled of the
pines and of the dew on the grass in the meadow by the stream. Dew had fallen
heavily since the wind had dropped, but, as he stood there, he thought there
would be frost by morning” [5, с.112].
At the same time, Hemingway does not avoid modifiers altogether.’s words are
essentially just words like any other words, but the way he stirs them together
is his own unique formula, a stylistic recipe that no other writer can
recreate. There are sentences that only Hemingway could get away with because
we know that Hemingway wrote them. Take this short sentence from “For Whom the
Bell Tolls”: “He was dead and that was all” [5, с.633].
This is and always will be a Hemingway’s sentence.
Much has been made of Hemingway’s
dialogue, through which you get the feeling of being at the scene. Yet when the
dialogue is transferred to the motion picture screen, directors should be
careful to keep it from sounding stilted and formal, because its effectiveness
does not depend on reproducing the exact words (including the “uh’s” and
“er’s”) that people utter in real life. Hemingway also doesn’t often punctuate
his dialogue with italics, capital letters, ellipses, and exclamation points to
suggest emphasis. The effectiveness lies in stating with utmost simplicity the
heart of what the characters mean.
Hemingway has often been described
as a master of dialogue, in story after story, novel after novel, readers and
critics have remarked: “This is the way that these characters would really
talk” [31, с.141]. Yet, a close
examination of his dialogue reveals that this is rarely the way people really
speak. The effect is accomplished, rather, by calculated emphasis and
repetition that makes us remember what has been said.is a master of dialogue.
It’s not so much that he is recreating precisely how individuals speak, but
through his brilliant use of repetition, he is able to make the reader remember
what has been said.
2.2 The Flavor of the Spanish
Language
Hemingway’s actual Spanish and his
attempt to render the flavor of Spanish in English have been criticized as
frequently inaccurate by people who know Spanish better than he did. An exiled
loyalist commander, Gustavo Duran, read the manuscript of “For Whom the Bell Tolls”
before it was published and was critical of Hemingway’s Spanish, although
impressed by the story [32, с.29].
A more contemporary Spanish critic has called the language abstract when it
should be concrete (to properly mirror real Spanish) and solemn when it should
be simple [32, с.30].
Talking about speech of his Spanish
characters, stylistic features peculiar to “For Whom the Bell Tolls” should be
noted. They concern Hemingway’s deliberate attempt to reproduce in English the
flavor of the Spanish language. Spanish (like other languages) preserves a
special second-person singular pronoun and related verb form such as English
formerly had (thou, thy, thee). This form is used in speaking to another person
in a familiar manner. Hemingway uses the antiquated English form to better
approximate the speech of his Spanish characters. Readers differ in their
reactions to this device. Some find it awkward and distracting. Others find
that it begins to sound natural after a while. You’ll recognize other English sentences
that display strange word order or style, such as “That this thing of the
bridge may succeed” [32, с.
46]. This kind of construction is also an attempt to capture the flavor of the
Spanish language.
Hemingway also tries to convey the
extremely physical and earthy - often crude - dialogue of Spanish peasants
(particularly when they are upset with each other). Today, when there is very
little censorship in the publishing industry, there would be no problem in
printing the exact English equivalent of what Hemingway wanted his Spanish
characters to say. But in 1940 there was a problem in using obscenities. So one
of Hemingway’s solutions was simply to quote the original Spanish word or
phrase. It’s then up to the reader to check with a Spanish-English dictionary
to learn how crudely someone has insulted someone else.
2.3 The Technique of Flashback and
Reflecting the Events of His Own Life
The technique of flashback is used
sparingly but effectively. The most notable example is in Chapter 10 of “For
Whom the Hell Tolls”, where Pillar describes the brutality that Pablo inflicted
on the leading men of a Nationalist town his band had taken: “And in that
moment, looking through the bars, I saw the hail full of men flailing away with
clubs and striking with flails, and poking and striking and pushing and heaving
against people with the white wooden pitchforks that now were red and with
their tines broken, and this was going on all over the room while Pablo sat in
the big chair with his shotgun on his knees, watching, and they were shouting
and clubbing and stabbing and men were screaming as horses scream in a fire.
And I saw the priest with his skirts tucked up scrambling over a bench and
those after him were chopping at him with the sickles and the reaping hooks and
then some one had hold of his robe and there was another scream and another
scream and I saw two men chopping into his back with sickles while a third man
held the skirt of his robe and the Priest’s arms were up and he was clinging to
the back of a chair and then the chair I was standing on broke and the
drunkard and I were on the pavement that smelled of spilled wine and vomit” [5,
с.
633]. Strictly speaking, this is indirect flashback, since it comes through
Pillar’s narration, rather than through a directly presented scene.more
significant flashbacks include Jordan’s painful recollection in Chapter 30 of
his father’s suicide and Maria’s moving account in Chapter 31 of her abuse at
the hands of Nationalist soldiers, and many other things both in this and other
novels.
Describing the events, Hemingway
attempts to create as real image as possible. There is little doubt that the
events in his fiction reflect the events of his own life. His writing has
always been susceptible to tragedy. When one begins to read a significant
amount of his work, one notices an element almost always lacking: the happy
ending. Not only can Hemingway describe life “as it is”, he is also adept at
describing life “as it is not”. Life is not a cliché
bed of roses, a care-free world in which lovers walk hand in hand into a
setting sunset. No, the sun also rises, and if its rays are too hot or too
bright, or if it stays visible for too long, the roses will wilt and die.
Hemingway never shies away from exploring the tragedies of life and living, of
death and dying, of love and loving [19, с.222]’s
true and often overlooked genius, however, lies in his ability to construct a
fiction which is more realistic and truer than any life event could ever be.
Hemingway’s literature has always
been susceptible to tragedy. When one begins to read a significant amount of
his work, one notices an element almost always lacking: the happy ending. Not
only can Hemingway describe life “as it is”, he is also adept at describing
life “as it is not”. Life is not a cliché
bed of roses, a care-free world in which lovers walk hand in hand into a
setting
sunset [16, с.212]. Hemingway
never shies away from exploring the tragedies of life, of death, of love, of
living, of dying, of loving.
The reason of that were the
conditions and events, spiritual and social state of that time. After the
Second World War, Americans rushed into the mainstream escapism, individualism;
lost ideals, faith in themselves, in society; become mentally unstable, imbued
with political apathy [16, с.218].
American journalists dubbed the generation of these years “silent”. Rejection
of the common “ideal”, mass culture, economic domination was broadening all
more. There appeared books, examining the problems associated with the American
way of life, which became popular at once. Pathos of many works of writers of
that period was the result of referring to American tragedy of the time. They
contained writer’s strong resistance against greed, possessiveness, meanness
characteristic of the U.S. These works revealed the contradiction between
material progress and spiritual impoverishment, democratic ideals and reality.
So it’s not strange that similar sentiments were typical for creativity of
Hemingway. Having had a creative and spiritual rise with the initiation of the
antifascist struggle in the second half of the 30s - first half of the 40s, he
was strongly disappointed in the postwar American society, having forgotten the
lessons of the recent war.mood, in some degree, is the characteristic of the
most works of Hemingway. It was also the result of ideological, personal and
spiritual crisis of the writer. In the second half of the 40’s Hemingway had a
creative slump. Severe physical and mental state after experiencing at the
front, a divorce with Martha Gellhorn, numerous injuries he received in the
second half of the 40s affected the health of the writer and led him to a
weakening of his creative potential., such conditions, both objective and
subjective, led to a writer’s crisis of vision, and this promoted him to create
special type of a character, a special type of a conflict [16, c.224].
So we’ve got the idea that the main
characteristics of Hemingway’s writing style are: stark minimalism in creating
images; strict selection of words; descriptions without embellishment; short
declarative sentences; a lot of dialogues; language accessible to the common
reader and presence of Spanish language.
The essential characteristic of the
Hemingway’s style is simplicity and accuracy of word choice. He usually misses
adjectives and adverbs while creating a picture. This gives the reader the
feeling of being there. This effect is also achieved by a heavy use of nouns
and verbs. Hemingway’s economical writing style often seems simple and almost
childlike, but his method is used to achieve complex effect. In his writing
Hemingway provided detached descriptions of action, using simple nouns and
verbs to capture scenes precisely. By doing so he avoided describing his
characters’ emotions and thoughts directly. Instead, he provided the reader
with the raw material of an experience and eliminated the authorial
viewpoint.of the greatest writing techniques of the writer was “the principle
of iceberg”, only eighth part of which could be seen above the level of water,
and the rest seven parts were hidden beneath the water. The novelist believed
that that was the way the writer had to create his works: he had not to say
everything; most of the content had to be embedded in the subtext. Poetics of
Hemingway is characterized by a lot of hints and omissions. He described only
the facts, but it was easy to reveal complex psychological processes, emotional
drama of characters they contained deep inside.
He uses a lot of dialogs through
which you get the feeling of being at the scene. Yet when the dialogue is
transferred to the motion picture screen, directors should be careful to keep
it from sounding stilted and formal, because its effectiveness does not depend
on reproducing the exact words (including the “uh’s” and “er’s”) that people
utter in real life. Hemingway also doesn’t often punctuate his dialogue with
italics, capital letters, ellipses, and exclamation points to suggest emphasis.
The effectiveness lies in stating with utmost simplicity the heart of what the
characters mean.of Spanish language is another feature typical for Hemingway’s
pen. He tried to reproduce in English the flavor of Spanish language. He uses
the antiquated English form to better approximate the speech of his Spanish
characters, strange word order or style. Hemingway also tries to convey the
extremely physical and earthy - often crude - dialogue of Spanish peasants
(particularly when they are upset with each other).technique of flashback is used
sparingly but effectively. Describing the events, Hemingway attempts to create
as real image as possible. The events in his fiction usually reflect the events
of his own life. His writing has always been susceptible to tragedy. The reason
of that were the conditions and events, spiritual and social state of that
time. Pathos of many works of writers of that period was the result of
referring to American tragedy of the time. They contained writer’s strong
resistance against greed, possessiveness, meanness characteristic of the U.S.
These works revealed the contradiction between material progress and spiritual
impoverishment, democratic ideals and reality. So similar sentiments were
typical for creativity of Hemingway.
Tragic mood, in some degree, is the
characteristic of the most works of Hemingway. It was also the result of
ideological, personal and spiritual crisis of the writer. Thus, such
conditions, both objective and subjective, led to a writer’s crisis of vision,
and this promoted him to create special type of a character, a special type of
a conflict.
PART 3. THE PECULIARITIES OF E.
HEMINGWAY’S NOVEL “ISLANDS IN THE STREAM”
.1 Stark Minimalism of Writing Style
in the Novel
his novel “Islands in the Stream” E.
Hemingway maintained his writing traditions in general. The plot of the novel
is not complicated still it contains inside the important truth the author
wished to express. There are more dialogues than paragraphs, and present
paragraphs are not long. The language of the novel is simple and accurate, even
sharp a little. There are not many adverbs and adjectives in the work and those
present are accurate and strict. The descriptions are poor, without
embellishment. Let’s consider these things in details on the example of the
novel’s text.plot of the novel is simple but holds very important things
inside. Among the plenty of lines, some of which are unnecessary at first
sight, there appears the bitter truth of life - the truth of evil war have been
brought to mankind for more than twenty centuries already [15, с.208].
The first part of the novel is positive and light. Thomas Hudson enjoyed
himself spending time with his three sons. They were his life, so he cared of
nothing but the children he loved so much. We can find in the work that Thomas
Hudson “was going to enjoy life within the limits of the discipline that he
imposed and work hard. And today he was very happy because his children were
coming in the morning”[6, c.11]. When the children came, he ate and drank with
them, went for a walk and fishing enjoying the time with his children, he was
really happy and, seemed, nothing could break such a picture of human
happiness.the bitter truth didn’t let him wait for it for long. Having changed
the mood of the story in the second and the third parts of the novel the author
showed that Thomas’ life described at the beginning was too happy to be real;
it couldn’t last for long time. After his two sons died in the accident, and
later the war took his eldest son, the heart and the life of Thomas Hudson was
broken forever. Still we can see that he tried to handle with himself. And here
we can find another important thing the author wished to say. The man can be
destroyed, but he can’t be defeated [2, c.33].text of the novel consists of a
great deal of dialogs, as usual, without explanations, which seem to be just
sharp replicas. Here is some example.
He ought to be over soon. We’re
going to eat with Johnny Goodner.
What men like you and Roger Davis
and Johnny Goodner that been around stay around this island for I don't know.
It's a good island. You stay here,
don't you?
I stay to make a living.
You could make a living in Nassau.
Nassau, hell. There's more fun here.
This is a good island for having fun. Plenty money been made here, too.
I like to live here[6, с.77].dialogs
are of various themes. Everything going on is written by the author with a help
of dialogues. And it is not strange as E. Hemingway is considered as the master
of a dialogue [13, c.84].language of the novel is simple and accurate, even
sharp a little. General vocabulary is used; no complex long words or
complicated terms. The language is similar to colloquial. This makes the novel
easy-reading and understandable for readers of any age. There are not many
adverbs and adjectives in the work and those present are accurate and strict.
“It was really too good a gun to keep on a boat but Thomas Hudson was so fond
of it and it reminded him of so many things, so many people, and so many places
that he liked to have it with him and he found that, in the sheepskin case,
once the clipped wool was well impregnated with Fiend-oil, the rifle was not
harmed at all by the salt air. A gun is to shoot anyway, he thought, not to be
preserved in a case, and this was a really good rifle, easy to shoot, easy to
teach anyone to shoot with, and handy on the boat. He had always had more
confidence shooting it, as to being able to place his shots at close and
moderate range, than any other rifle he had ever owned and it made him happy to
pull it out of the case now and pull back the bolt and shove a shell into the
breech”[6, c.24]. In this extract we see not many adjectives, but if they
present, they are accurate and necessary for general understanding of described
picture or event and, as usual, bring no connotation meaning.difference from
his early works, the novel, being published after the writer’s death, contain
more descriptions than all of the rest of his works. It can be explained by the
fact that it was published posthumously, perhaps, he didn’t finish the work and
had a lot of things to do with it. The descriptions in the novel are poor,
without embellishment. One of examples is the description of the place where
Thomas Hudson lived at the very beginning of the novel. “The house was built on
the highest part of the narrow tongue of land between the harbor and the open
sea. It had lasted through three hurricanes and it was built solid as a ship.
It was shaded by tall coconut palms that were bent by the trade wind and on the
ocean side you could walk out of the door and down the bluff across the white
sand and into the Gulf Stream. The water of the Stream was usually a dark blue
when you looked out at it when there was no wind. But when you walked out into
it there was just the green light of the water over that floury white sand and
you could see the shadow of any big fish a long time before he could ever come
in close to the beach”[6, c.3]. So everything here was described as it was, in
all details, with no waste things mentioned, with very few adjectives, by
general words; still such author’s style of creating pictures doesn’t interfere
us to get the idea of how this place looked. Even more, there was some space
for imagination left by the writer for everyone could imagine his own island in
the stream on which Thomas Hudson’s house lied. The writer created the core,
and readers should add everything they believe lack on their own [24, c.199].,
in general, the style of the novel is kept in frames of general writing rules
of E. Hemingway - of principles of simplicity, accuracy, hard choice of words
and writing as short as it is possible.
3.2 The Reflection of the Author’s
Life and World History in the Novel
Sometimes E. Hemingway looks for an
answer to the questions, what is truth and what should people do in the society,
which in itself is basically hostile to the truth and the human person? Along
with his characters Hemingway goes down a hard way to find answers to these
questions.
Here is the truth to which he comes.
The man must fight against evil, even if the forces of evil are stronger than
him. Fight to the end without bowing the head, not giving up. Man is not
created to suffer defeat; he can be destroyed but not defeated. This truth was
expressed in the story “The Old Man and the See”. And this simple truth also became
the basis for the novel “Islands in the Stream”. It also contains some another
Hemingway’s leitmotif: labor and duty. Throughout the book the character of the
novel possesses two wishes: to work well and honestly keep his duty. Having
suffered heavy blows, having lost two younger sons, and then the third, the
hero of the novel says: “Let’s face it. Your son is lost. Your love is lost.
The glory has been abandoned long ago. The only thing remained is duty, and you
need to keep it” (this refers to the great soldier’s duty in the war against
Nazi barbarism) [6, c.155].title of the first part of the novel is “Bimini”.
Bimini are two small islands of the Bahamas group in the Atlantic Ocean not far
from Cuba. They are well-known for their exotic beauty. From the biography of
Hemingway we know that he visited Bimini, caught big fish in its water.exists
an ancient Indian legend connected with the islands of Bimini, from which they
got their names. On the islands of Bimini - as says the legend - there is a source
of eternal youth water: having washed by this water, a bent old man turns into
a slender young man. Spanish explorers of passed centuries, enchanted by
wonders of the New World, believed in this wonderful legend and aggressively
searched for the mythical islands with their magical source. Among them was the
Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of Florida [11, c.118].by the blue sea lived a
painter, Thomas Hudson, having many features similar to Ernest Hemingway. Like
Hemingway, Thomas Hudson is whether soldier, whether sailor. He traveled a lot,
spent his youth in Paris, where he belonged to the same group of people of
literature and art, with whom Hemingway was associated in his Paris’ days. Like
Hemingway, Hudson went through the war and at night when the house was shaking
from the Atlantic surf beats, he recalled the days when the earth shook beneath
volleys of the guns of his battery. Like Hemingway, he worked selflessly,
persistently seeking the highest perfection, sometimes recasting his creations
again and again. Just as Hemingway, Hudson lived a stormy life; he loved many
women, made friends with many good people.is assumed that by giving the
character peculiar to him in so many features, the writer also gave him some of
his thoughts. Some reserchers consider that similiarity of the author and his
character is one of the reasons why the novel was left unfinished. Perhaps the
natural reticence prevented the writer to reveal him completely to the public
[14, с.166].beyond
the threshold of the house of Thomas Hudson is the sea, which he liked so much
that nowhere else does want to live. The sea with its clear green and blue
waves, lagoons and reefs, with its joys and perils, water sports and
big-fishing. The sea, which Hudson wrote on the canvas, as Hemingway wrote it
on paper [14, c.169] .was surrounded by friends, people of various types of
society and occupation; friends who can be trusted as himself, who can be
relied on under any circumstances, who helped out at any difficult moment. With
the arrival of the children (as well as Hemingway, Hudson had three sons) for
the summer holidays in the house reigned a complete and unlimited happiness.
But in Hemingway’s books, as well as in human life, grief and sorrow are the
things that always somewhere close to happiness: life is hard, but a person so
vulnerable under her blows. Once a telegram brought evil tidings: his two
younger sons died along with his mother in a car accident. Thomas Hudson went
through all the circles of hell, and there were a lot of circles in the hell
and they do not have clear boundaries. Then came the war. It took his third son
[22, с.
176].second part of the “Islands in the Stream” - “Cuba” - in which the action
unfolded against the backdrop of the last World War, written in a different emotional
and rhythmic manner from the first one. The second part of the novel breathes
the atmosphere of war and feeling of impending tragedy.the West, some critics
declared war to a major cross-cutting theme of Hemingway’s works. Of course, he
strongly displayed the First World War (“A Farewell to Arms”), and the war in
Spain (“For Whom the Bell Tolls”), and the Western Front in World War II
(“Across the River and Into the Trees”). But we are inclined to express
cross-cutting theme of Hemingway’s works differently: a man against war [2,
c.54].Hemingway hated “puta querra” as the characters of this book did. There
was, however, the war, from participation in which an honest man could not
escape. Like his eldest son John, Thomas Hudson became a soldier in the war
against fascism. But, getting to know his reasoning, the reader should remember
that the American attitude toward the thinking of the Second World War and,
more importantly, to the role their state and government played in it, for
understandable reasons evolved in different way than the Soviet man [2, c.59].,
even in the far from battlefields corners of the globe the pulse of war was
felt. A small detail allows us to accurately determine the approximate duration
of this part of the novel: Hudson read a newspaper on the fighting in the
Apennine peninsula. Allied landings in Calabria, and then in the Bay of
Salerno, was held in September 1943, the events of the novel took place in the
winter, and then it was the penultimate or the last winter of the war. In other
words, the events took place at the final stage of the war, when the Soviet
Army inflicted blow after blow to the fascist troops and over Nazi Germany had
already hung the specter of imminent defeat. But it still resisted, and
resisted fiercely [28, c.136].the vastness of the Atlantic Hitler’s command
attempted to inflict the greatest possible damage to allied shipping, paralyze
their supply lines. German submarines based in the ports of occupied France and
Franco’s Spain, reached the American coast, sending to the bottom every ship of
the countries of the Allied Powers. The naval and air forces of the United
States and Britain waged a systematic hunt for enemy submarines. In close
proximity to the coast in the operations against submarines also small boats of
the Coast Guard took part [28, c.144].we know, Hemingway in 1942-1943, blessed
by the U.S. Naval Command, hunted submarines on his boat “Pillar” near Cuba. He
had on board the necessary military equipment, including machine guns, antitank
guns, and depth charges. The crew of “Pillar” consisted of nine persons, proven
friends of the commander - Spanish Republicans who had immigrated to Cuba after
the triumph of Franco. Hemingway did not manage to sink a German submarine, but
his reports have helped to detect the enemy. So the action of Thomas Hudson and
his crew in the novel to a certain extent based on personal experiences of
Ernest Hemingway.that period, described in this part of the novel, Cuba
officially belonged to the camp of the United Nations, who fought against the
fascist powers. However, the order in Cuba was then a very peculiar. By a few
cursory strokes in a conversation with a casual acquaintance of Hudson at the
bar, the writer draws the manners of the old Cuba, with its corrupt to the bone
brain authorities, corrupt from top to bottom, manners of ill-fated country,
where the loud phrases of bourgeois politicians during election campaigns could
not hide their dirty machinations in the pursuit of personal enrichment, where
even the laying of water, so essential to the population, becomes a source of
profit. No wonder why under these conditions, which later were cut off by the
Cuban revolution, the island was infested with Nazi agents. It maintained
constant radio contact with German submarines. Hence those need who hunted them
needed secrecy [19, c.300].’s team was disguised as a scientific expedition.
Almost all members of the crew were the Spanish republicans, of Basque
nationality. They have their own accounts with the Nazis. Hudson was connected
with them a by strong friendship. But on the coast he was very lonely.
Recently, he received the news of the death of his eldest son, a military
pilot. Hudson tried in vain to forget it, forbids himself to think about the
grief.core of the third part of the novel is a persecution and destruction of
the Nazi squad of sailors who committed grave crimes against humanity, which
are typical for the practice of the armed forces of Nazi Germany.group of
sailors from the German submarine, wrecked or damaged by depth charges from
aircraft, landed on a small island to take in possession the necessary for
escape things, such as fishing schooners, food supplies, fresh water.
Apparently, they planned to get to any port where the ships came in Franco’s
Spain, and through then return to their forces. Having decided to cover their
tracks, they killed the entire population of the fishing village, including
women and children as if those people stayed alive, they would tell about
German troop strength, its arms. But having committed brutal crimes, Nazi
sailors placed themselves outside the law, burnt all the bridges. They didn’t
deserve to be forgiven. Now, if they caught up with the chase, the only thing
that was left is to fight to the end, to sell life as expensive as possible
[19, с.
306].same occurred to the Nazi regime in Germany. Staining it by monstrous
crimes, the very tip of the fascist signed a judgment by its own hand, made
retribution imminent. The leaders of the Nazis had only to sit as long as
possible in their bunkers, sending to die more new cohort of Germans, and then
- to take poison, or wait for a loop.to escape retribution, the sailors from
the sink Nazi submarine exhibited skill and courage, that courage which is
called the courage of despair. Thomas Hudson and his team followed them
stepping on their heels, as the inexorable fate in Greek drama. And the
criminals were overtaken. They had to fight. Description of the fight, at the
very beginning of which Hudson received a fatal wound, was written by a great
master, moreover, a master who had seen similar scenes by his own eyes. As on
many pages in other works of Hemingway, the writer tried to reflect here the
belief that a person would manifest itself fully to the end in a moment of
mortal danger [14, c.114].and his friends fought like heroes, they fought the
way all the heroes of Hemingway were able to fight. It was not their fault that
in the heat of battle they could not perform their main task - to take a
prisoner, which could provide the necessary information about the actions of
the German submarine fleet. Yet this failure bitterly blackened the last hours
of Thomas Hudson.Robert Jordan’s from the novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, the
character of “Islands in the Stream” found his death in battle against fascism,
the greatest evil of our age. Hudson performed his duty to the end. Maybe if he
gave immediately the helm to other hands after the injury and did something
with his wound, he would be still alive. However, bleeding, Hudson did not quit
the helm. Losing strength, he never ceased to command in the battle.thoughts of
Thomas Hudson were about his work. He looked at the blue sky, which he always
so loved, the lagoon, which he would never paint.the mind of dying Hudson pure
Hemingway’s thought occurred: “Human life is not worth much in comparison with
his affair” [6, c.253]. Thomas Hudson performed his duty: he painted good
pictures; he fought bravely against the enemy. With a clear conscience he went
beyond the verge forever. Beyond the verge of life as well went the great
writer Ernest Hemingway, having left here the novel about Thomas Hudson, so
similar to him.
3.3 The Impressionistic Techniques
in the Novel
The thing that remains unchanged in
the style of Hemingway in the 40-50’s is his sincere love to impressionistic
techniques. In the most books of the late period frequently references to the
Impressionists can be found. In an interview with J. Plimpton Hemingway said:
“I learned a lot in my craft from artists as well from writers” [30, c.244].
Among the first important ones to play a role were French Impressionists,
especially Monet and Manet. The similarity with Impressionism in the manner of
Hemingway’s pen is not in the details but in the ability to carry the whole,
the overall impression by them. Just as painters the writer creates in his
literary works pure color, contrast, movement, prevailing in the world and
changing it every minute. “Hemingway’s prose allows to combine in short phrases
the things which in the works of his predecessors were detailed and separate: a
description of the environment and the transfer of the psychological state of
characters, action and landscape” [1, c.139]. Short, smart sentences of the
writer is an analogue of light, separate pure color swabs of Impressionists,
which from a distance seem to be a real life full of moods and changes.example,
an extract from the novel “Islands in the Stream” based on the transfer of
certain visual impressions, is transformed by its clarity and precision to the
complete emotionally charged picture: “The tide was running out fast and the
lights of the boats shone on the water that showed green in the light and moved
so fast it sucked at the piling of the docks and swirled at the stern of the
big cruiser they were on. Alongside of the water where the light was reflected
off the planking of the cruiser toward the unpainted piling of the dock where
old motorcar and truck tires were tied as fenders, making dark rings against
the darkness under the rock, garfish, attracted by the light, held themselves
against the current. Thin and long, shining as green as the water, only their
tails moving, they were not feeding, nor playing; only holding themselves there
in the fascination of the light” [6, c.140].in the paintings of the Impressionists,
every scene is described by Hemingway, whether a portrait, a landscape or a
history of the past, everything becomes a kind of unity of subjective and
objective principles, not only taken the impression from the outside, but also
colored by the mood of the artist. Tom, remembering his childhood days spent in
Paris, combines in a few sentences is not only a variety of pictures of the
past (close people, the dog Shnautz, nature), but the impression from them that
he had experienced as a child: “Just you and snow and our dog Schnautz and my
nurse. She was beautiful. And I remember mother on skis and how beautiful she
was. I can remember seeing you and mother coming down skiing through an
orchard. I don’t know where it was. But I can remember the Jardin du Luxembourg
well. I can remember afternoons with the boats on the lake by the fountain in
the big garden with the trees. The paths through the trees were all graveled
and men played bowling games off to the left under the trees as we went down
toward the Palace and there was a clock high up on the Palace. In the fall the
leaves came down and I can remember the trees bare and the leaves on the
gravel. I like to remember the fall best” [6, c.192]. The last sentence of the
passage as a unifying tone of painters-impressionist returns us to the present
and give a nostalgic tone to these few sentences.’s landscape, portrait,
interior - everything from traditional descriptions - is broken, included in
the action. Descriptions do not interrupt the story; they contain actions,
sensations of characters, making the reader implicated in it.the Impressionists
often wrote a series of papers on one topic or one species under different
lighting and mood, Hemingway also has his favorite picture (Paris of 20’s,
living with his first wife, spring, rain), which he is never tired to remember
and describe [48, c.279]. However, some fundamental differences between
Impressionists’ painting and literature should be noted., in contrast to the
paintings, in the literary work a few writing styles may be combined. For
example, in an episode of the novel “Islands in the Stream” describing the
scene of bathing on the deck of the boat, Ernest Hemingway combines the
principles of writing of Expressionists, Impressionists and Cézanne:
“On the stern they were all bathing naked. They soaped themselves and stood on
one foot and another, bending against the lashing of the rain as they soaped
and then leaning back into it. They were really all brown but they looked white
in this strange light. Thomas Hudson thought of the canvas of the bathers by
Cezanne and then he thought he would like to have Eakins paint it. Then he
thought that he should be painting it himself with the ship against the roaring
white of the surf that came through the driving gray outside with the black of
the new squall coming out and the sun breaking through momentarily to make the
driving rain silver and to shine on the bathers in the stern” [6, c.63].,
contrasts characterizing this passage (white light, dark body, black squall, sudden
movements, white surf) is taken from expressionists; sharp, structured pattern,
flatness - from Cezanne. The common mood of the picture - a look from a
distance at the instantaneous state of nature - is a feature of impressionists
[45, c.90]., the impressionistic techniques will not do if the writer shows
war, suffering and violence. Therefore, in the novel “Islands in the Stream”
they are used less frequently, mainly in the description of a landscape or a
state of a human soul in moments of nostalgia, which are based on sketchy,
fragmentary, and that feeling of novelty of memories that are inherent to best
pictures of impressionists (especially their series, written on the same topic)
[45, c.91].basis of impressionistic manner of writing is crisp and clean single
stroke, which is typical for the creative manner of Hemingway. His style is
characterized by simplicity and clarity of details. Hemingway seldom uses
similes and metaphors in his early works, and this principle remains with him
on the pages of his late works. And those comparisons and metaphors, which
Hemingway did use, as a rule, perform a limited function: just refinement of
vision a thing: “These comparisons suggest, but do not judge” [48, c.201].
Hemingway’s pen is characterized not by a dominant of metaphors and words with
transferred meaning, but words and ideas having direct meaning. For example,
the poetic descriptions of nature in some parts of the novel “Islands in the
Stream” is created not by means of use of special high-vocabulary, detailed
comparisons and metaphors, but by the clarity, sharpness and tangibility of
each word that brings to life well known to every reader sensation and
presentation: “Thomas Hudson was steering on the topside and he headed her out
over the bar and ran straight out toward where he could see the dark line of
the Gulf. The water was so calm and so very clear that they could see the
bottom clearly in thirty fathoms, see that the sea fans bent with the tide
current, still see it, but cloudily, at forty fathoms, and then it deepened and
was dark and they were out in the dark water of the stream” [6, с.54].
3.4 The Implication and the Manners
of Expressing It in the Novel
The texts in literary works are
rarely kept completely in the author’s voice manner. In literary works there
are different manners of telling. Various manners (ways, shapes) of thinking
and speaking are restored there. In this case not only the author’s word is
significant, but also strange one (“foreign”). According to the widespread
concept of Bakhtin, “the author does not speak this language... he speaks
through this objectified, moved away from his mouth language… Discord and
variety of telling manners are included to a novel and they form a coherent
literary system in it” [39, с.101].
Of course, the most direct message about the character and his world is
expressed by direct speech, both by dialogues (polylogues) and monologues [39,
с. 104]. This is the position of L.Y.
Ginsburg based on a large study of factual material.the novel, there are two
kinds of dialogues. In its syntactic structure, they do not differ from
solitary monologues, sometimes pronounced at the time when no one can hear
them, so their structure is kind of programmatic statements of the
protagonist.second type of dialogues includes those ones which hide the true
state of the character inside them. The appearance of such dialogues in the
novel is called for by “the inner demand of activity, use of energy, filling
the vacuum, which a man can’t bear. It may be kind of the most affordable
substitute for action, and sometimes pointless. To protect against inactivity,
boredom, emptiness any perception, any memories, associations, surfaced on the
surface of the ceaseless flow of fragments of inner speech can be used” [34,
с.59].these conversations fill the
vacuum of communication, they are a kind of repository of implication that is
subject-psychological givens, guessed only in the words that make up the text
of the work [34, с.66].
Every element of the implication in the novel bears the same deep
dissatisfaction with the life of the protagonist.scholars sometimes include to
“space” of literary text (apart speech) depicted by the writer things, even
expressed by him ideas, concepts, meanings, that is, artistic content. The
words “text” and “work” in such cases are synonymous. In this context, we
understand the word “text” as a proper voice brink of a literary work that is
allocated to it, along with subject-like aspect (the world of the work) and the
ideological and conceptual sphere (artistic content). In this case, it is
correct to say that in his “late” works Hemingway often takes the implication
out of ideological and semantic scope of the text. In his books of 40-50’s the
writer displays the inner speech of the character right during the (his
original remarks “toward” self-replicas)
[35, c.88].the novel “Islands in the Stream” of
everything going on in the soul of the character, the reader learns from his
internal monologue, a kind of “word of mouth”. One of the few examples of
classic implication in the novel “Islands in the Stream”, comparable with the
best early implications of Hemingway, is a conversation between Thomas Hudson
and Lil (the second part of the novel, the scene in the bar). In the
intonation, style, and nothing meaning conversation with her protagonist Clever
Lil understands his hidden meaning, guessing the awful truth about the death of
Thomas the younger.Hudson is looking for meaning of life, because of this in
the structure of his image the most important thing is solitary monologue
speech. In the novel “Islands in the Stream” we can observe the intersection of
the author’s words and the word of the character, which is reflected even at
the level of syntax. The author often expresses his thoughts by the mouth of
his character. “The participants in the verbal-literary text statements are
consistent with the author’s position and expressing it at the same time, never
exhaust what is embodied in the novel. Turning to a reader, the writer does not
make a speech of direct verbal reasoning, but by created images, in particular,
images of characters as the carriers of speech” [34, c.71]..M. Bakhtin said
that in the novel “Islands in the Stream” strange speech shown in a certain
light is not expressly parted from the author’s speech: the limits of
deliberately vague and ambiguous, often taking place within a single syntactic
whole [35, c.96].character of the novel “Islands in the Stream” has a great
life experience, he is involved in social and historical conflicts; he
communicate with many people. All these things make him often speak or think
about different events. The structure of this novel contains a lot of secluded
and referred monologues (according to the terminology of V.E. Halizeva).
“Referred monologues (as opposed to replicas of a dialogue) are not limited in
scope, usually thought out in advance and clearly structured. They can be
played repeatedly (while preserving the meaning), in different situations...
Monologue, in other words, is limited in time and place of speaking much less
than dialogic speech, it can easily be extended to the width of a human
existence” [1, c.163]. In solitary monologues a man is focused primarily on
himself, so they are important and play a major role in the structure of the
image of Thomas Hudson.Hemingway in the exposition of the novel “Islands in the
Stream” begins to give an objective description of physical appearance and
temper of his character, but then, just a few pages later, he transferred to
the transfer of his inner speech. The narration in the novel always go from the
third person, but a sense of nearness of the character and the author, their
thoughts is so full that we have the impression that either Thomas Hudson
thinks about himself from the third person, or Ernest Hemingway says of
himself, as of Thomas Hudson: “I do not know almost what there is to know about
living alone and he had known what it is to live with someone that you loved
and that loved you. He had always loved his children but he had never before
realized how much he loved them and how bad that he did not live with them. He
wished that he had them always and that he was married to Tom’s mother. Then he
thought that was as silly as wishing you had the wealth of the world to use as
intelligently as you could; to be draw like Leonardo or paints as Pieter
Brueghel... He smiled in the night thinking about Roger. Then he pitied him
until he thought how disloyal it was and how Roger would hate pity and he
stopped it and, hearing them all breathing quietly, he went to sleep. But he
woke again when the moonlight came on his face and he started to think about
Roger ...” [6, c.28].the important role of inner speech of the character in the
novel “Islands in the Stream” (possibly due to the incompleteness of the book)
it can be seen that the structure of the novel at this stage of its creation
contains some author characteristics of his characters that the writer did not
have time to develop in their actions. For example, characteristics of the sons
of Thomas Hudson remained not revealed. The eldest son, according to the
characteristics given in the novel, was of a cheerful disposition, even though
his face in the state of quiet took almost tragic expression. His middle son
was affectionate and endowed with a sense of justice. The younger son was born
a tricky boy [35, c.113].in his novel “Islands in the Stream” E. Hemingway
maintained his writing traditions in general. The plot of the novel is simple
but holds very important things inside. The text of the novel consists of a
great deal of dialogs, as usual, without explanations, which seem to be just
sharp replicas.language of the novel is simple and accurate, even sharp a
little. General vocabulary is used; no complex long words or complicated terms.
The language is similar to colloquial. This makes the novel easy-reading and
understandable for readers of any age. There are not many adverbs and
adjectives in the work and those present are accurate and strict.difference
from his early works, the novel, being published after the writer’s death,
contain more descriptions than all of the rest of his works. The descriptions
in the novel are poor, without embellishment.novel reflects the life events of
the writer and some pages of history. E. Hemingway created a character very
similar to him. It is assumed that by giving the character peculiar to him in
so many features, the writer also gave him some of his thoughts. Some
researchers consider that similarity of the author and his character is one of
the reasons why the novel was left unfinished. Perhaps the natural reticence
prevented the writer to reveal him completely to the public. Just as Thomas
Hudson, the writer had three sons which tragically died. He lived at the sea,
created masterpieces, went fishing and drank a lot of strong drinks. He took
part in the war described in the novel, fought against fascism, hunted
submarines on his boat near Cuba and, at last, disappointed about everything,
died. So the actions of Thomas Hudson and his crew in the novel to a certain
extent based on personal experiences of Ernest Hemingway.pictures he used the
methods of Impressionism. It was expressed in the ability to carry the whole,
the overall impression by described details. Short, smart sentences of the
writer is an analogue of light, separate pure color swabs of Impressionists,
which from a distance seem to be a real life full of moods and changes. As in
the paintings of the Impressionists, every scene is described by Hemingway,
whether a portrait, a landscape or a history of the past, everything becomes a
kind of unity of subjective and objective principles, not only taken the
impression from the outside, but also colored by the mood of the artist.the
Impressionists often wrote a series of papers on one topic or one species under
different lighting and mood, Hemingway also has his favorite pictures. of
impressionistic manner of writing is crisp and clean single stroke, which is
typical for the creative manner of Hemingway. His style is characterized by
simplicity and clarity of details. Hemingway seldom uses similes and metaphors
in his early works, and this principle remains with him on the pages of his
late works. And those comparisons and metaphors, which Hemingway did use, as a
rule, perform a limited function: just refinement of vision a thing.the novel,
there are two kinds of dialogues. In its syntactic structure, they do not
differ from solitary monologues, sometimes pronounced at the time when no one
can hear them, so their structure is kind of programmatic statements of the
protagonist.second type of dialogues includes those ones which hide the true
state of the character inside them. The appearance of such dialogues in the
novel is called for by “the inner demand of activity, use of energy, filling
the vacuum, which a man can’t bear. It may be kind of the most affordable
substitute for action, and sometimes pointless. To protect against inactivity,
boredom, emptiness any perception, any memories, associations, surfaced on the
surface of the ceaseless flow of fragments of inner speech can be used”.the
novel “Islands in the Stream” of everything going on in the soul of the
character, the reader learns from his internal monologue, a kind of “word of
mouth”. Here we can observe the intersection of the author’s words and the word
of the character, which is reflected even at the level of syntax. The author
often expresses his thoughts by the mouth of his character.narration in the
novel always go from the third person, but a sense of nearness of the character
and the author, their thoughts is so full that we have the impression that
either Thomas Hudson thinks about himself from the third person, or Ernest
Hemingway says of himself, as of Thomas Hudson.the important role of inner
speech of the character in the novel “Islands in the Stream” (possibly due to
the incompleteness of the book) it can be seen that the structure of the novel
at this stage of its creation contains some author characteristics of his
characters that the writer did not have time to develop in their actions.
PART 4. METHODS OF USING THE NOVEL
“ISLANDS IN THE STREAM” AT LESSONS
it has been said before social
demands of society in the field of foreign language study set the challenges of
the spiritual development of the learners, improvement the humanistic content
of the study, a more complete implementation of educational and developmental
potential of educational subject in relation to the personality of each
learner. The primary objective of foreign language study in secondary schools
is to develop the pupil’s personality, able and willing to participate in
cross-cultural communication and self-improve in the sphere of the study
activity [21, c.19].and socio-cultural development of a pupil by means of a
subject “foreign language” is carried out by the proper implementation of
country-study approach. This approach provides learning a language closely
related to the foreign language culture, which includes a variety of useful
information about the history, literature, architecture, lifestyle, habits and
traditions of the people of the country the language of which is studied.
Country-study lessons promote a pupil to keep on further study of the
country-study material on his own. And that is the country study to serve as a
support for maintaining motivation, as it includes such two aspects:
) teaching language, its general and
special features and preparing a learner to use this knowledge in practice;
) giving information about the
country, the language of which is studied, making a learner to take up the
culture of native-speaking countries [21, c.26].are two aspects the teacher can
aim using right authentic material and optimal methods of teaching.how can we
use E. Hemingway’s novel “Islands in the Stream” to develop foreign language
skills of pupils? Firstly, the novel can be used both as material for
listening, reading, speaking, writing and any other kind of general work at
usual lesson. In such case the teacher creates beforehand some tasks according
to the fact what English language aspect he would like to emphasize. For
instance, he can take some fragment for reading it in the class to test or
develop pupil’s listening and understanding skill, so after reading the extract
he can make some questions or tasks such as the following.
) Listen to a few statements based
on the text, put “+” if the statement is right, and put “ - ” if it is not.
) Answer the questions based on the
text.
) Tell in few sentences how you have
understood the text etc [20, c.99].to develop spoken skills the teacher can
create communication situations to discuss the text, ask pupils to retell some
extract of it, to express pupil’s own opinion to the text., the novel can be
used at special course lessons to give information about the culture of the
country: literature, history, traditions, lifestyle, politics etc. Thus from
the novel we can learn some historic facts of the country, its place in the
Second World War, what kind of people Americans are, what they usually do in
peace time and in wartime [20, с.118].novel
also can be good material for study stylistics on the example of it, both in
general and of a certain author, in our case, E. Hemingway. Here the teacher
creates more serious tasks connected with analysis and deep understanding of
the novel. Such sort of work is up to major form pupils. At such lessons the
following algorithm of working at the text can be quite optimal.
. The subject matter of the text.
What is the story about? Give its subject in one word or in short phrase, e.g.
family relation, snobbery.
. Setting of events. Where does the
story take place and when? Does the setting matter of the story or could it
take place equally well in some other place and at some other time? Has the
narrator emphasized certain details? Which? Why? What functions does the
setting have?
. Composition of the text. What is
the exposition, complication, climax, and denouement? Are the elements of the
plot ordered chronologically? Is the action fast or slow moving? Which episodes
have been given the greatest emphasis? Is the plot (the sequence of events) of
major or minor importance?
. The type of narration. (e.g.
description, character drawing, account of events, dialogue, interior,
monologue).
. Characters. Main and minor
characters, the protagonist and antagonist. Who are the characters? What are
they like: in appearance, in habits of speech and behavior? What are their
names? Does it have any significance? What method does the author use to
describe the characters (direct or explicit - indirect or implicit)? Does he
use direct characterization amply or sparingly? Personal features of the
characters. How do their actions and doings characterize them? The speech of
characters (as a means to reveal the character’s individual experience, his/her
culture and psychology, social position, profession and so on). In the course
of the story do the characters change as a result of their experience? What is
the relationship between the characters and how is the relationship pointed
out? What contrasts and parallels are there in the behavior of the characters?
Are the characters credible? Do they act consistently? If not, why?
. The narrator. What tells the
story? Is it told by one of the characters, by a narrator outside the story or
by whom? Is it a third-person narrative with the omnipresent author who moves
in and out of people’s thoughts and comments freely on what characters think,
say and do? If the story is told by one of the characters, does it help to make
it more effective? Describe the participation of the narrator in the events.
. Mood and tone. In what key is the
text written? How is the mood achieved? Does it change general slant of the
text? Is it lyrical, melancholy, satirical, humorous, pathetic, unemotional?
Hove can you prove it? Is the general tone matter-of-fact, sentimental,
moralizing, bitter, ironical, sarcastic? What attitude to life does the story
express?
. The language peculiarities of the
text. What sort of language is used? Is it simple or elaborate, plain or
metaphorical? Lexical and grammatical peculiarities. Expressive means and
stylistic devices: their role in the text (what is the author’s aim to use
them? E.g. The author sympathizes with the main characters. We feel it because
he uses such epithets as…). Is the author successful in the portrait of his
subject and in conveying his feelings? Is he successful in portraying the
characters? Are the images created in the genuine, poetic, fresh, trite,
hackneyed, stale? Are there symbols in the text?
. The message of the text. What is
the author’s point of view on the problems raised in the story? What does the
author proclaim in his story? Is the end of the text clear-cut and conclusive
or does it leave room for suggestion? Can there be alternative interpretations
of the text?
. The title of the text. Try to
explain the title of the text. Is it metaphorical or symbolic?
. Summary of the text. Sum up the
text in 4-5 sentences.
. Your own opinion of the story.
Confirm it by the text [22, c.119].it is reasonable to use the novel “Islands
in the Stream” for the analysis of all kinds of texts: additional texts, texts
that are chosen for group and individual home reading, and as a basis or
material for any other activities at lessons. Doing so the teacher makes pupils
learn general and special features of the language and prepares them to use
this knowledge in practice, and provides learning a language closely related to
the foreign language culture, which includes a variety of useful information
about the history, literature, architecture, lifestyle, habits and traditions
of the people of the country the language of which is studied. And this
promotes pupils to keep on further study of the material on their own.
CONCLUSIONS
the beginning of the work we’ve set
the aim to determine the peculiarities of E. Hemingway’s novel “Islands in the
Stream”. Having analyzed his writing in general and on the example of the novel
we can make the following conclusions.
The main characteristics of
Hemingway’s writing style are: stark minimalism in creating images; strict
selection of words; descriptions without embellishment; short declarative
sentences; a lot of dialogues; language accessible to the common reader and
presence of Spanish language.
The essential characteristic of the
Hemingway’s style is simplicity and accuracy of word choice. He usually misses
adjectives and adverbs while creating a picture. This gives the reader the
feeling of being there. This effect is also achieved by a heavy use of nouns
and verbs. Hemingway’s economical writing style often seems simple and almost
childlike, but his method is used to achieve complex effect. In his writing
Hemingway provided detached descriptions of action, using simple nouns and
verbs to capture scenes precisely. By doing so he avoided describing his
characters’ emotions and thoughts directly. Instead, he provided the reader
with the raw material of an experience and eliminated the authorial
viewpoint.of the greatest writing techniques of the writer was “the principle
of iceberg”, only eighth part of which could be seen above the level of water,
and the rest seven parts were hidden beneath the water. The novelist believed
that that was the way the writer had to create his works: he had not to say
everything; most of the content had to be embedded in the subtext. Poetics of
Hemingway is characterized by a lot of hints and omissions. He described only
the facts, but it was easy to reveal complex psychological processes, emotional
drama of characters they contained deep inside.
He uses a lot of dialogs through
which you get the feeling of being at the scene. Yet when the dialogue is
transferred to the motion picture screen, directors should be careful to keep
it from sounding stilted and formal, because its effectiveness does not depend
on reproducing the exact words (including the “uh’s” and “er’s”) that people
utter in real life. Hemingway also doesn’t often punctuate his dialogue with
italics, capital letters, ellipses, and exclamation points to suggest emphasis.
The effectiveness lies in stating with utmost simplicity the heart of what the
characters mean.of Spanish language is another feature typical for Hemingway’s
pen. He tried to reproduce in English the flavor of Spanish language. He uses
the antiquated English form to better approximate the speech of his Spanish characters,
strange word order or style. Hemingway also tries to convey the extremely
physical and earthy - often crude - dialogue of Spanish peasants (particularly
when they are upset with each other).technique of flashback is used sparingly
but effectively. Describing the events, Hemingway attempts to create as real
image as possible. The events in his fiction usually reflect the events of his
own life. His writing has always been susceptible to tragedy. The reason of
that were the conditions and events, spiritual and social state of that time.
Pathos of many works of writers of that period was the result of referring to
American tragedy of the time. They contained writer’s strong resistance against
greed, possessiveness, meanness characteristic of the U.S. These works revealed
the contradiction between material progress and spiritual impoverishment,
democratic ideals and reality. So similar sentiments were typical for
creativity of Hemingway.
Tragic mood, in some degree, is the
characteristic of the most works of Hemingway. It was also the result of
ideological, personal and spiritual crisis of the writer. Thus, such
conditions, both objective and subjective, led to a writer’s crisis of vision,
and this promoted him to create special type of a character, a special type of
a conflict.
In his novel “Islands in the Stream”
E. Hemingway maintained his writing traditions in general. The plot of the
novel is simple but holds very important things inside. The text of the novel
consists of a great deal of dialogs, as usual, without explanations, which seem
to be just sharp replicas.language of the novel is simple and accurate, even
sharp a little. General vocabulary is used; no complex long words or
complicated terms. The language is similar to colloquial. This makes the novel
easy-reading and understandable for readers of any age. There are not many
adverbs and adjectives in the work and those present are accurate and
strict.difference from his early works, the novel, being published after the
writer’s death, contain more descriptions than all of the rest of his works.
The descriptions in the novel are poor, without embellishment.novel reflects
the life events of the writer and some pages of history. E. Hemingway created a
character very similar to him. It is assumed that by giving the character
peculiar to him in so many features, the writer also gave him some of his
thoughts. Just as Thomas Hudson, the writer had three sons which tragically
died. He lived at the sea, created masterpieces, went fishing and drank a lot
of strong drinks. He took part in the war described in the novel, fought
against fascism, hunted submarines on his boat near Cuba and, at last,
disappointed about everything, died. So the actions of Thomas Hudson and his
crew in the novel to a certain extent based on personal experiences of Ernest
Hemingway.pictures he used the methods of Impressionism. It was expressed in
the ability to carry the whole, the overall impression by described details.
Short, smart sentences of the writer is an analogue of light, separate pure
color swabs of Impressionists, which from a distance seem to be a real life
full of moods and changes. As in the paintings of the Impressionists, every
scene is described by Hemingway, whether a portrait, a landscape or a history
of the past, everything becomes a kind of unity of subjective and objective
principles, not only taken the impression from the outside, but also colored by
the mood of the artist.the Impressionists often wrote a series of papers on one
topic or one species under different lighting and mood, Hemingway also has his
favorite pictures. of impressionistic manner of writing is crisp and clean
single stroke, which is typical for the creative manner of Hemingway. His style
is characterized by simplicity and clarity of details. Hemingway seldom uses
similes and metaphors in his early works, and this principle remains with him
on the pages of his late works. And those comparisons and metaphors, which
Hemingway did use, as a rule, perform a limited function: just refinement of vision
a thing.the novel, there are two kinds of dialogues. In its syntactic
structure, they do not differ from solitary monologues, sometimes pronounced at
the time when no one can hear them, so their structure is kind of programmatic
statements of the protagonist.second type of dialogues includes those ones
which hide the true state of the character inside them. The appearance of such
dialogues in the novel is called for by “the inner demand of activity, use of
energy, filling the vacuum, which a man can’t bear. It may be kind of the most
affordable substitute for action, and sometimes pointless. To protect against
inactivity, boredom, emptiness any perception, any memories, associations,
surfaced on the surface of the ceaseless flow of fragments of inner speech can
be used”.the novel “Islands in the Stream” of everything going on in the soul
of the character, the reader learns from his internal monologue, a kind of
“word of mouth”. Here we can observe the intersection of the author’s words and
the word of the character, which is reflected even at the level of syntax. The
author often expresses his thoughts by the mouth of his character.narration in
the novel always go from the third person, but a sense of nearness of the
character and the author, their thoughts is so full that we have the impression
that either Thomas Hudson thinks about himself from the third person, or Ernest
Hemingway says of himself, as of Thomas Hudson.the important role of inner
speech of the character in the novel “Islands in the Stream” (possibly due to
the incompleteness of the book) it can be seen that the structure of the novel
at this stage of its creation contains some author characteristics of his
characters that the writer did not have time to develop in their actions. Thus,
in the result of hard work at the set problem, the aim of the research work was
completely achieved.
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APPLICATION A
Few Portraits of Ernest Miller
Hemingway
APPLICATION B
Covers of Some Books of Ernest
Hemingway