Santiago, an old fisherman, is the last tragic hero created by Hemingway, and also the final summary of the tough guy character created by him all his life. Santiago is a poor and unfortunate old fisherman. His fate is tragic, but he is also a failed hero and an "unbeaten loser". Hemingway's tough guy character is attached to Santiago like an elf, which is a symbol of Hemingway's "tough guy" spirit. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, he is a powerful embodiment of Hemingway's iceberg principle.

San Diego is an "old man fishing alone in a boat in the Gulf Stream". Life and years torment the old man, making him "emaciated and emaciated, with deep wrinkles on the back of his neck" and "every part of his body looks old", but his eyes are "as blue as the sea, happy but not depressed". At the beginning of work, the old man is catching up with "unlucky (that is the worst word for bad image)". Eighty-four, eighty-four days, he didn't even catch a fish, which is really unfortunate for a fisherman who lives by fishing. Even a child who has been with him for a long time will leave him on the 40th day.

The tragic fate of the old fisherman is an artistic reflection of Hemingway's own experience. Hemingway participated in two world wars and the Spanish War. People haven't woken up from the nightmare of the world war, and all kinds of puzzles such as disillusionment and loss are bothering people. Post-war society is a chaotic and desolate scene, and the absurdity of war and society has brought Hemingway deep spiritual and physical creation, which can be described as a narrow escape. This is also one of the manifestations of the aging of the old fisherman Santiago. In addition, we find that Hemingway didn't publish any important works in the ten years after "For whom the bell tolls" 1940, but "Crossing the River into the Forest" published by 1950 was unanimously criticized by the media. "Many critics even assert that Hemingway's intelligence has dried up and there is nothing new" [vii]. This situation is very similar to that of the old man in San Diego at first. The old man was unlucky and couldn't catch fish for 84 days in a row. When he was sitting in a hotel by the sea, the fishermen around him laughed at him or sympathized with him.

San Diego must catch a big fish to prove that he is an "eccentric old man", or that he has strong courage and perseverance, to accomplish tasks that others can't replace, and to be a widower's glory and dignity. Hemingway emphasized dignity and glory, and he had planned to use "human dignity" as the title of this article. For Hemingway, it is necessary to write "the best work that can be written in a lifetime". "Tactically, the publication of The Old Man and the Sea can refute the view that I am a finished writer" [viii]. Hemingway realized that the completion of this work "The Old Man and the Sea" would make "other excellent and mature works greatly inferior to it". I "will try to write better in the future, but it will be difficult ... I am a professional writer and know this work very well." Santiago, an old fisherman, also realized that "85" was an auspicious day and "you can catch a thousand pounds of fish". [ix] After catching the biggest fish he has ever caught or even seen in his life, the old man Santiago exhausted all his energy, not only empty-handed, but also scarred; However, Hemingway did not publish any works until he finally committed suicide after writing this excellent work. While he was writing The Old Man and the Sea, another novel, The Island in Rapids, was published by his wife on 1970.

Although Hemingway said: "What people say about symbolism is nonsense", the author believes that it is inseparable from Hemingway's dual personality to shape the old fisherman Santiago into an "unbeaten loser". Tragedy transcends his failure and sublimates the meaning of existence. After his failure, his words and deeds reflected Hemingway's outlook on life and code of conduct. Spiritual victory gives these losers and their creators dignity and courage to be human beings, and at the same time, it also masks their cowardice and naturalistic fatalism with a romantic color. Grut Stein, Hemingway's teacher, commented on Hemingway's character like this: "He used cruelty as a shield to cover up his amazing timidity and sensitivity." Ku Singh, the author of Hemingway Biography, also said: "Hemingway looks rough, strong, brave and manly, but deep down, he has a woman's intuition, which is kind, warm and easy to cry." However, Professor Jeffrey Manas, a famous Hemingway scholar, pointed out very directly: "Externally, he tried his best to suppress his sentimental side and put on an uninhibited man image." It is precisely because of Hemingway's careful cover-up that we misjudge and subconsciously agree with his tenacious spirit in a formulaic way. Hemingway's sentimental side is also reflected in the old fisherman Santiago. See how Santiago wakes up the little boy in the morning. "He held the child's foot gently, and then he held it until the child woke up." [x] This is the delicate and warm side of the old man, but this side is strongly concealed by Hemingway, which may be closely related to his dual personality. In the real and fictional world, chasing and describing failure without admitting failure has become a good medicine for Hemingway's inner anxiety and pain.

The situation of the old man is deteriorating step by step in order to show Hemingway's "grace" under "heavy pressure". Under such heavy pressure, the failure of the old man is particularly tragic. At first, he went to sea every day, but he didn't catch a fish for 40 days in a row. This failure is bad enough. Later, the death of the child Mallory made the treatment of the elderly look bleak, and the final experience was even more miserable. However, in this situation of "from failure to failure", Santiago perfectly embodies Hemingway's tough character: when his big fish was eaten by a shark with only a skeleton left, he asked himself, "But what defeated you?" "Nothing ... I went too far." The old man bravely admitted his failure, but he absolutely believed in his own strength. I believe that even if he fails, he is still brave. I believe that he was not defeated by the shark in spirit, because it was the shark that was destroyed, not himself. It is based on the brave and indomitable spirit of dealing with failure that Santiago realized: "Once defeated, things will be easy." So "now just steer the boat as nimbly as possible to your own port." When the battle is over and the glory is gone, Santiago has completed the rest of his works so peacefully and calmly, which perfectly embodies the "elegant demeanor under pressure". If life is an arena, nature is the background of life. At this moment, Santiago has completely surpassed this nature, transcending the hardships, glory, success or failure in his life.

The symbol of Santiago's "elegant demeanor under heavy pressure" and the war mentioned by the author have pushed Hemingway to physical and mental disability. The cruelty of the war, the hypocrisy of the rulers and unnecessary bloodshed have changed Hemingway's ambition of "saving world democracy" when he was young.

World War I shaped Hemingway's fundamental view of human society and seriously influenced his creative tone. In Hemingway's eyes, the world is full of violence and hypocrisy; Death inevitably awaits the first person. This is another symbol of the tragic fate of Santiago, Hemingway's hero. To survive in this society, we must establish a set of survival rules for ourselves, that is: "in life, you can't win, you must never give up." You can try to live in silence; Give up emotional entanglements and don't look at yourself; Seeking fun in outdoor sports and taking' tough guy character' as the pillar of life "[xi] It is this set of survival rules that makes Hemingway successfully create a typical tough guy image. Even when he was driving a fishing boat, "there was a perforated sail with some flour bags on it, such as a flag that marked failure." God doomed the old man to failure, but he still showed a calm attitude towards failure. Sixteen years later, Hemingway realized the true meaning of the story of the old fisherman. He turned the true story of Cuban fishermen into a fable permeated with philosophy of life. Hemingway no longer simply tells this story, but rubs it into his own life experience, emotions and thoughts. "One-eighth" comes from living materials, and the remaining "seven-eighth" is the artistic truth and symbol that needs to be explored through imagination.

It can be seen that the symbol of San Diego shows the ambiguity of meaning. Although there is some hazy atmosphere in it, we still have to admit that San Diego is the best embodiment of Hemingway's tough guy spirit.

Mallory is the best complement to "tough character"

"Fortunately, I have a good old man and a good child, but writers have forgotten these things recently." [xii] Hemingway once proudly compared the little boy with the old man when talking about the success factors of the novel. Thus, the little boy Mallory plays an indispensable role in The Old Man and the Sea. However, the real material of the novel, in the sea, is not a little boy, but he occupies a lot of space in the novel. This is Hemingway's artistic creativity and originality. To study the symbolic factors in The Old Man and the Sea, the little boy Mallory is obviously worthy of readers and critics' scrutiny.

The child has been learning to fish from the old man since he was five years old. The child's character reflects the old man's character from another side. Although the child is very young, he is not very naive. I learned not only the fishing skills from the old people, but also the spirit of self-respect and self-improvement, and learned to understand the hardships of life and the responsibilities of men. Young shoulders have long been accustomed to the life of going out fishing in the morning. Even if they "doze off while walking" [xiii], they will still say, "What is this? That's what men do. " [xiv] hit the floor's forceful words fully show the "Hemingway-style" spirit of the tough guy.

In the old man's subconscious, children are another stage of his life, because it is impossible for a person to dream of two selves, so although he gets along with children day and night, he "never dreamed of children when dreaming." It is the parents' decision to leave the child. The old man didn't want to embarrass the child, so he was not allowed to follow him and the little boy was not allowed to be affected by the old man's bad luck. The child insisted on coming back many times. Even if the old man's failure was just around the corner, the reality confirmed the old man's failure and his repeated decisions, but he could not stop the child. He is not afraid of failure, despises failure, and bravely faces failure, because in the heart of the little boy, Santiago is a "magic fish" and "alien". The return of children helps to show Hemingway's "elegance under pressure". The appearance of the little boy is by no means a dispensable ornament, but has its symbolic significance, is the sustenance of the continuation of human life in the future, and is the source of strength for tough guys not to bow to their fate. It was with the encouragement of the children that Santiago struggled hard. He realized: "If it weren't for my children, I would have been finished. It's impossible not to admit it." In the struggle with fate, he thought of his children several times, "if only the children were here!" " Everyone has children, life will be bitter and happy, there will be disasters and hopes, and human society will be interesting and endless.

It is Hemingway's unique artistic creativity to ruthlessly take away Mallory, the only little boy, and live alone with the old man from San Diego. It was taken away because the old man was unlucky and because the children's parents forced them to climb higher branches. It is also because Hemingway lived in a decaying society. As an upright and sober intellectual, Hemingway saw through the hypocrisy and corruption of society on the one hand. However, although he has the qualities of courage, knowledge, self-confidence and perseverance, he has been overwhelmed by long-term struggle and thinks that no matter how hard he tries, he can't change this dark reality. Therefore, he felt depressed and tired, hopeless of hope and victory, and gradually became a real spiritual winner, eager to comfort himself with spiritual victory and get rid of it.

It is driven by this mentality that Hemingway showed sympathy for the weak, contempt for the rich and dissatisfaction with the gap between the rich and the poor. So when the old man felt lonely, miserable and failed, the child finally made up his mind to return to the old man. The return of the child showed that he ignored his father's authority and fisherman's superstition about luck. "Fuck luck, I want luck to come with me." [xv] "I don't care about my family" [xvi] Before my child returned, the old man's struggle was isolated, and he was doomed to failure anyway. The child's words show that he has matured under the inspiration of the old man's heroism, and he vaguely feels a little joy and bright hope in his failure.

The sea is a symbol of Hemingway's living environment.

The sea plays an important role in the whole story. This is the material world on which Santiago lives, and it is also the whole content of his life. The sea prepared a mysterious big fish for him, which provided him with a place to show his incomparable courage and perseverance. From an aesthetic point of view, the sea is a meaningful freehand painting.

In the vast and mysterious sea, she is kind and beautiful, but sometimes she can be so cruel and come so suddenly. Those birds flying on the sea have to look for water and make subtle and sad calls ... ",but" the old man always regards the sea as a woman, whether she is pampered or not. " "Why do thieves and powerful birds make birds like Haiyan so weak and slender, and why can the ocean be so cruel sometimes?"

Although Santiago also thinks that "the ocean is kind and beautiful", he emphasizes that "the ocean can be so cruel and come so suddenly", and those weak birds can only make "weak and sad calls". What Santiago reveals here is obviously the cruel dissatisfaction with the sea and sympathy for the weak birds like Haiyan. If we contact the reality of the United States at that time, McCarthyism ran rampant in the United States [xvii], and the democratic and progressive forces were madly persecuted. The whole American society is full of suspicion and terror. However, as a keen-eyed journalist, a staunch anti-fascist fighter and a writer with a sense of justice, Hemingway conveyed it to readers through The Old Man and the Sea. So we should at least pay attention to the theory that the ocean in San Diego will suddenly become cruel. Why do you have to repeatedly explain San Diego's sympathy for birds in the sea? The author only mentioned petrel and little black petrel, two birds belonging to the same sea. "I am particularly sorry for the weak little black petrel." When anti-McCarthyism was rampant in the United States, American producers did not form a confrontational force, many producers and democratic progressives were tried and imprisoned, and the American people experienced an unprecedented catastrophe. It is in the face of this specific cruel reality that Hemingway wrote "a bird like a petrel" as a creature unable to resist the wind and waves, and chose it as the representative of suffering from "the cruelty of the sea". The "bird like a petrel" in the novel symbolizes American producers, Americans and democratic progressives. We also noticed that the sea is always "black", "black" or other dark colors, as if the sea is covered with a black veil and the sea is "cruel". Isn't this a symbol of the social reality that McCarthyism has darkened America?

But Hemingway endowed the sea woman with body and soul. Women in the sea contain a lot of fertility and possibilities, and can prepare a huge fish for the elderly. Her vastness is enough for the elderly to enter the field of experiencing the unknowable and unknown mysteries of reality, and her vastness is enough for the elderly to live forever. The relationship between Santiago and nature is mainly reflected in his dependence and struggle against the sea. The United States is a multi-ethnic country, and the cultures of all ethnic groups meet on the ocean and are imported into the United States through the ocean. The source of American culture must also be traced back to the Aegean culture of European culture. This is also an important reason why Hemingway chose "the sea" as the living environment of fisherman Santiago. The profoundness of culture is not for "kind and kind" women.

When a person is at sea, San Diego watches the sunrise and sunset, watches the moon disappear, keeps company with fish and birds, and talks with Feng Shui. He also became a part of the sea. "The ocean is kind and beautiful" and finally gave the old man a marlin "two feet longer than the boat". But the ocean is cruel-then these sharks took the big fish he had worked so hard to catch and broke his "glory". The loneliness and happiness, struggle and failure of the elderly are all related to the sea. The relationship between the old man and the sea is to rely on and fight against the sea. He not only got the living conditions and skills from the sea, but also got friends and opponents from the sea. The sea is the place where he lives and fights, and it will be his final destination, which has a very important relationship with Hemingway.

Hemingway is just a writer who describes men. He describes men who can show grace under heavy pressure. "None of Hemingway's works can be called a female-centered protagonist or a work with female readers as the main object" [xviii]. Edmund wilson, Hemingway's contemporary critic, said: "The women in his works are unreal" [xix], which is due to his mother's lofty conceit, arrogance and selfishness. Hemingway was extremely disgusted with his mother's sheer male chauvinism and bossiness. Even years after his mother's death, Hemingway said angrily in front of his friends that his mother was hermaphrodite, and his mother's "masculine" behavior caused Hemingway's mental disorder-he thought he lacked real maternal love, which made him show obvious Oedipus complex when he was in love and always fell in love with women older than him. This fact also indirectly reflects his desire and determination to find an ideal mother replacement in the first half of his life. "Women are the biggest source of his anxiety" [xx]. The disharmony between parents in marriage and Agnes (1899), who is seven years older than Hemingway, refused to get married, all reflected Hemingway's extremely fragile character. This reality made Hemingway feel uneasy and painful, so his spirit became a good medicine to heal his soul. So "kind and beautiful sea" became the ideal embodiment in his heart.

Therefore, this "meaningful" freehand brushwork became a silhouette of Hemingway's living environment.

Sharks are powerful representatives of evil forces.

There are many different explanations about the symbolic meaning of "shark" in the novel, such as symbolizing revenge, symbolizing time, symbolizing death and so on. But Hemingway himself made it very clear. "That damn shark ... is like income tax. I work hard and am lucky. I got a handsome check, so the income tax followed me like a shark, biting and eating in chunks with sharp teeth. This is not what the old man said, but what I said. " [xxi] Obviously Hemingway's "shark" here is a symbol of evil forces in his world.

That huge white marlin bone on the beach. As a witness of the fierce chase between the old man and marlin and the desperate struggle with sharks, it can be said that it is both a symbol of victory and a symbol of failure. It is this subtle unity of opposites and mutual transformation that makes us see the Hemingway-style tenacity attached to it for the first time. For marin, the author describes it throughout. It is big and beautiful, two feet longer than the old man's fishing boat. It is elegant. It is a huge shadow when diving in the water layer, and it is silver when jumping out of the sea. It led its pursuers to advance rapidly and calmly on the vast sea surface, and dyed the waves behind them dark red. These descriptions are not only suitable for the scenery of the whole sea, but more importantly, they make this marlin become a grand and great symbol of nature in comparison with lonely old people and drifting ships, reflecting the strength and brilliance contained in the black and thin trunk of its pursuers and conquerors. Inspired by the symbolic image of Marin, the description of the whole novel has gained richer connotations.

The marlin San Diego saw seems to be "higher and stronger" than us humans, and he also saw the "fearless" of sharks. In fact, writing about fish is also about writing about people. Because the old people know that "what a person can do" and "this will always kill that" is actually a symbol of the "law of the jungle" in capitalist society. After being eaten by sharks, the only "white fish bone" left by Marin is another epitome of war.

The war made Hemingway's confused psychological quality develop into a basic personality characteristic. 19 18 In July, Hemingway was hit by a shell at the front line in Italy and was seriously injured. At that time, he was less than 19 years old. This war had a decisive influence on Hemingway's life and creation. He said that this was "the largest, cruelest and worst-directed massacre in the history of the earth." Whoever doesn't write like this is lying. "[xxii] War has destroyed human civilization, destroyed the youth's fantasy of a better life, and destroyed the morality and values based on humanitarianism. The ugliness, misery and aimlessness of western youth living under capitalist conditions seen in the war have also become the victims of stubborn and unfathomable skepticism and pessimism, thus creating a "lost generation". Hemingway has had a "lost history" since he was a teenager. The war caused his spiritual and physical creations to be incomparable, so Hemingway said, "My impression of World War I is terrible." "The wounds left by the war on the writer's mind are hard to heal." [xxiii] Hemingway's anti-war sentiment, which makes people angry, has outstanding performance in his works on various war themes. So at the bottom of the "small iceberg" with white fishbone, there are still seven or eight points that may symbolize cruel war.

When Santiago wanted to catch a big fish, he really caught a big fish that he had never heard of. His praise for the big fish, its huge body, graceful posture, great strength and gorgeous colors, can make people think that it symbolizes the miracle that people are eager to create, the grand goal to achieve, and even the lofty ideal to achieve. And those sharks that keep coming to devour and bite big fish can be regarded as symbols of various destructive evil forces plundering, creating disasters and preventing people from reaching their ideal situation.

As for why Santiago praised another kind of shark (mako shark), Hemingway, who has always been polite, said through Santiago that his attitude towards various hostile forces was different. Hemingway once said, "I would rather have an honest enemy than many hypocritical friends." The mako shark may symbolize the kind of "honest enemy" that Hemingway likes. The novel focuses on the shark's vigorous swimming posture, quick response, sharp teeth, straightforward and brave attack and no fear. Hemingway also vividly described its death. But Santiago praised the poise and strength of mako, and he didn't forget that mako was his "enemy". He stabbed the shark to death with "an extremely vicious heart that wants to kill each other." However, San Diego's attitude towards star sharks is completely different. Star sharks eat rotten things, are greedy and ferocious, and smell bad. They also sneak up on turtles, bite people and swim in the sea, and their attack methods are disgusting. Santiago despises this shark very much, but he knows their power deeply. This is how Hemingway shows people the "seven eights" under the iceberg in his works.

More three-dimensional symbol images

Hemingway told his readers that "something deeper is what you see after you understand it". When we really understand the old man and the sea, we will understand that not only the old man, children, the sea and fish have certain symbolic significance. There are many "deeper things" in this work.

For example, the "lion" in the novel appears repeatedly in the works, and the old man even met the "lion" from love love love. Obviously, as another name for strength and courage, the constant appearance of "lion" in the novel constitutes a very clear symbol: it symbolizes the fighting spirit of the old man in pursuit of strength and courage, and this fighting spirit is the embodiment of Hemingway's tough guy character.

In addition, in The Old Man and the Sea, the softball player DiMaggio, the black strongman wrestling with the old man, the eagle with long black wings circling around the sea to find the target, and the tuna eaten by the old man all have certain meanings, all of which have the characteristics of Santiago's image. They conform to the environment in real life and works, but they are all symbols used by Hemingway to convey "meaning". This is incompatible with the symbolist writers' preference for the so-called "subjective truth" and their arbitrary construction of symbolic images in front of the distorted objective world. This difference may be an important reason why Hemingway is unwilling to accept the symbolism crown.

Hemingway also implicitly expressed his extreme pessimism about American reality through symbolic descriptions. There are many scenes in the novel that can be reminiscent of getting into trouble from Jesus. When San Diego saw the star shark, his cry was like "a man's involuntary cry when he felt a nail go through his hand and plunge into the wood." The implied "one person" here is "Jesus crucified", and another example is Santiago "sitting there with his mast on his back". His sleeping position is "with his arms straight out and his hands up, just watching." Through these symbolic descriptions, the author implies that Jesus in America was crucified again and the spirit of Christ was dead. It is through this silent and subtle way that a Christian may be able to convey his great sorrow to the vast majority of his compatriots who believe in Jesus Christ and the world.