英语毕业论文=论《白象似的群山》中海明威独特的写作风格.doc

英语毕业论文
论《白象似的群山》中海明威独特的写作风格

Abstract
Being distinguished from many great American writers, Hemingway is famous for his unique writing style. He changes the traditional literary works from tedious style into a kind of concise “telegraph style”. As a matter of fact, his short story--- Hills like White Elephants fully reflects his unique and classic writing style. The story seems simple, but actually artful. Hemingway captures the essence of the plain dialogue of usual life, so a reader may be under an illusion that he was present at the site of the story. And he adds sentiment into concise language. In Hills like White Elephants, the perfect symbolism about “white elephant” and the characteristic ending constructed by Hemingway further gives prominence to his ability in language. Especially, his famous Iceberg Theory is employed perfectly in this story. Hemingway creates a unique writing style that brings a great influence to American letters, even to Europe and all over the world.
Key Words
Dialogue; conciseness; symbolism; writing style; Iceberg Theory

摘　要
在众多伟大的美国作家中，海明威以其独特的写作风格而著称。他改变了传统文学作品冗长、沉闷的风格，创造了一种简洁的电报式文体。而他的短篇小说《白象似的群山》完全体现了他的这种独特而经典的写作风格。小说虽看似简单，却极富艺术性。他抓住了人们日常对话结构的精髓，给读者创造了一种身临其境的感觉。而其简洁的文字后面也蕴藏了丰富的情感。小说中关于白象的完美象征以及海明威式的经典结尾，突出了海明威在语言方面的能力。尤其是他的著名的冰山原则，在此小说中发挥到了极致。海明威创造了一种独特的写作风格,而他的这种风格对美国,以至于欧洲,乃至整个世界文坛都产生了重要影响。
关键词
对话；简洁；象征；写作风格；冰山原则

Introduction
Hemingway, who is very famous for his creation of a new and unique writing style, is one of the most influential writers in American literary history during the 20th century, so he is undoubtedly to be the focus of the researchers all over the world. But from all the researches on him, it is easy to find that authors are always focusing on his several long-novels and his The Old Man and the Sea to show his unique writing style. As a matter of fact, his unique writing style is fully and exactly reflected by his short stories, which are drawing more people’s attentions. So this essay takes Hemingway’s short story---Hills Like White Elephants as the focus to give a brief introduction on his unique writing style.
Hills Like White Elephants is one of the most classic short stories of Hemingway. Among all the comments on it, the one by Milan Kundera, a famous Czech writer, is surely attractive and profound. He specifically makes an analysis about the hidden elements of the story, the different characters of the two and so on, especially the real dialogue structure which is simple, clear and beautiful in his minds, contrasting with the drama dialogue structure. And in Researches on Hemingway, edited by Dong Hengxun, the English critic H. O. Bates in his works mainly refers to Hemingway’s concise writing style.
But to sum up, most of the researches on Hemingway’s unique writing style are systematic and theoretical. And the analysis about Hills Like White Elephants although are profound, but not all-round. Accordingly, this essay is based on the purpose that fully shows all the Hemingway’s unique writing style in Hills Like White Elephants and to deepen the readers’ understanding on Hemingway’s unique writing style and his short stories.

Ⅰ. A Brief Introduction to the Author and the Story
Dating back to American literary history, Hemingway is considered as one of the most celebrated and influential writers in the 20th century. Being distinguished from other famous American writers, Hemingway, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954 for his mastery of the art of modern narration, helps to accomplish a reformation in the literary circles. As a great language master who had contributed a great deal to the American literature, Hemingway had a legendary life experience: He came into being a journalist for the Kansas City Star after school and then being a soldier in the First World War, which provided him with a serious physical wound. Actually, he also took part in the Second World War and the Spanish Civil War, again wounded physically and spiritually. That is why his works are usually related to the subject of war. And then he went to Paris where he met some famous writers who helped him a lot in his writing. With such rich personal experience, Hemingway wrote out many excellent works which fully reflected his unique writing style and his unique writing style gradually came into being. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a famous Colombian writer, who had ever said that he was greatly affected by Hemingway, held that Hemingway builds up a reputation for himself just for his short stories. As a matter of fact, contrasting with Hemingway’s long fictions, such as The Sun Also Rises(1926), A Farewell to Arms(1929), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)and his The Old Man and the Sea(1952) which are well-known today, his short stories are not very familiar to readers as his fictions mentioned above. However, it doesn’t mean that his short stories are less artful than his long fictions. They are also highly estimated. And among all of Hemingway’s short stories, Hills Like White Elephants is undoubtedly to be a classic one, which was quite worth reading and one of the most typical short stories in the 20th century.
As we all know, Hills Like White Elephants was written in 1927 and was an important piece in Hemingway’s second collection of short stories---Men Without Women. It is a simple but artful story and the content of it just can be condensed to
one sentence that an American man tries to persuade a girl to have an operation when they are waiting for the train at a station. The whole story consists of the simple and usual dialogues of the two figures, and the focus of them are just roused by a metaphor that “the hills like white elephants”, made by the girl. But obviously, the man doesn’t pay his attention to such focus, for he is fully occupied in persuading the girl to have the operation. Obviously, tense conversation ensues between the man and the girl, and the story ends without any clear resolution, leaving the reader to find the possible outcomes. In general, that is the feature of Hemingway’s writing style.
For the Hills Like White Elephants, many comments had been made upon it, but the one from Milan Kundera, a famous Czech writer, is undoubtedly profound and perfect. In Milan Kundera’s Les testaments trahis, he spends many words to talk about the Hills Like White Elephants, especially make a striking contrast between the plain dialogue structure of Hemingway and the dialogue structure in the drama to give prominence to the simplicity, the clarity, the lucidity, the beauty and the melody of Hemingway’s plain dialogue. And his explanation of the figures’ characters and the hidden story is penetrating. Of course, the dialogue structure emphasized by Kundera is just one aspect of Hemingway’s unique writing style, but the other styles aren’t mentioned. Apart from Milan Kundera, there are many other critics that give different narratives of the Hills Like White Elephants from one or more than one aspects of Hemingway’s writing style, the relationship between the male and female basing on the female’s views, etc. However, if taking the writing style in Hills Like White Elephants as the focus, the comments on it are not all-round. So this essay aims at introducing the Hemingway’s writing style in his Hills Like White Elephants comprehensively, including his plain dialogue, concise language, perfect symbolism, characteristic ending and the deliberate hiding which is the so-called “Iceberg Theory”. It is just such unique style that makes Hemingway win a high reputation in the literary circles that has accomplished a reformation on the traditional literature. But before expounding the views on the unique writing style of Hemingway, it is absolutely necessary to talk about his development to a new writing style so as to let the reader deeply understand the uniqueness of his writing style.
Ⅱ.Hemingway’s Development to a New Writing Style
A. The Writing Style of Modern European Literature During 19th Century
The 19th century is the century of greatest change in the European literary circles in that this is the period when a new colloquial writing style was born which was created by Mark Twain, whose use of vernacular speech revolutionized he language of American fiction. But obviously, it is only Ernest Hemingway that inherited and developed his colloquial style.
As Milan Kundera said, in the early 19th century the novels were carefully structured with a series of scenes by Scott, Balzac (Milan Kundera 134). In his opinion, their novels were full of specific description, scenes, dialogues and plots which are usually seen in the drama. Looking back to the European literary history in the 19th century, a fact is evident to readers that the novels of all the writers, excepting Mark Twain, were full of long and complex sentences, blooded adjectives and adverbs, etc. In fact, the one who had read the novels of Balzac or Henry James, who were the representative writers of that century, will get the fact that Balzac tends to portray the outer actuality and the image of the figures carefully and Henry James likes to show his ability in superposing the modifiers. Their descriptions are undoubtedly specific and elaborate, but to some extent, tedious and boring. The novels in the 19th century are inclined to describing specifically and deeply with rich elaborate details about the outside or objective environment. It seemsthat if a novel lacks of any of the elements mentioned above, it would not be considered as a successful one. Therefore, after narrating a whole story, a novel with hundreds of thousands of words even millions of words is born. In fact, such writing style is very popular in the literary circles at that time when reading novels to be certainly a good method to amuse people. But with time goes on, literature also needs new blood to fill in to keep up with the development of the society and to meet the needs of people, who are gradually busy in pursuing wealth and have no enough time and spirit to spend in reading the too long and too difficult novels. With such time coming, the style of conciseness is asked for
to meet the needs of new times. It is just Hemingway that has changed the traditional tedious writing style into a type of new concise style, purifying the literary language.
B. The Formation of Hemingway’s New and Unique Writing Style
Hemingway’s style is characterized by short and simple real-life dialogues, concise language with very few adjectives and adverbs, deliberate omission and so on, instead of the tedious style of the 19th century. Among so many writers, Hemingway becomes the only one person who has successfully developed a new writing style in Modern European Literature; there are several reasons for it. First of all, as mentioned before, in 1917, Hemingway worked as a journalist for the Kansas City Star, which is one of the best newspapers in American at that time. This newspaper asks for using short sentences, vivid and active language and reporting directly, so Hemingway learned that writing style should be trained as life. Of course, this experience benefits the formation of his so-called “telegraph style” greatly. Secondly, being under the illusion that the war is fine and attractive, Hemingway began his experience as a soldier in the First World War, even later in other wars, but in the battlefields, he was seriously hit. Bloody war shatters his dream; meanwhile, it provides him not just a wounded body and a hurt heart, but the rich sources of writing. So, for what he usually expresses in his works, he was viewed as the representative of the “lost generation”. Therefore, as a spokesman of the “lost generation”, Hemingway has already had a kind of unique style of his own. And, Hemingway’s success is related to the helps from other famous writers. Such as, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Fitzgerald and so on, who give much indications and guidance on his writing. Furthermore, he absorbed the colloquial language of Mark Twain. Because of all the elements, the feature of Hemingway’s writing style is gradually appearing.
It is Hemingway that changes the traditional Modern European literary style of tediousness into a writing style of simplicity. In his the Hills Like White Elephants his unique writing style is absolutely reflected.
C. The Influence of Hemingway’s Writing Style
Noted for his unique writing style and devotion to the literature, Hemingway has exerted considerable influence on the later novelists. The writer, Wu Xiaodong, reckons him as a writer who deeply affected other writers. His concise language, short and simple sentences purify the American literature, and his colloquial style is very popular in European and American literary circles since the late 20th century. John O’Hara, who made a memorial speech for Hemingway on the New York Times of July3, 1961, held that in history no one else can directly affected so many writers,
especially the young writers( Dong Hengxun 383). Hemingway is considered as an author who deeply affects the writing style of both the long novels and the short stories of American. Now that the influence of Hemingway’s writing style which brings a big reputation to him is so great, it is quite worth discussing it from his works---Hills Like White Elephants.
Ⅲ.Discussion on the Writing Style in Hills Like White Elephants
A. Real-life Dialogue
Milan Kundera pays a compliment to Hemingway in his Les testaments trahis that Hemingway captures the real dialogue structure. Assuredly, being different from such writers who structure their works in absolutely literary language, Hemingway creates a kind of real-life dialogue style, the obvious feature of which is that it goes on face to face without narrating by the third party. Actually, the dialogue in Hills Like White Elephants is just a fragment of the dialogue in actual life so that the first impression the reader gets when he starts reading it is that he were listening. Looking at the following dialogue chosen from it:
"And if I do it you'll be happy and things will be like they were and you'll love me?"
"I love you now. You know I love you."
"I know. But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like white elephants, and you'll like it?"
"I'll love it. I love it now but I just can't think about it. You know how I get
when I worry."
"If I do it you won't ever worry?"
"I won't worry about that because it's perfectly simple."
"Then I'll do it. Because I don't care about me."
"What do you mean?" "I don't care about me."
"Well, I care about you."
"Oh, yes. But I don't care about me. And I'll do it and then everything will be fine."
"I don't want you to do it if you feel that way." (qtd. in Long Maozhong, Yan Jinglan and Wang Hui 386 )
Omitting all the description on the speaking tone, facial expression and actions, the dialogue with the form of only answers between the two figures comes to the reader as