An Analysis Of The Old Man And The Sea From The Perspective Of Ecocriticism

Ernest Hemingway, as one of the most important representatives in the "Lost Generation", has already revealed his speciality throughout the world in a unique way. When he was still a child, he has already, under the influence of his father, come into close contact with nature and gradually formed a kind of complicated emotion or attitude towards the physical environment. The novella The Old Man and the Sea is actually the perfect embodiment of the existence of this thought.The novella The Old Man and the Sea written by Ernest Hemingway, by way of the meticulous description for the fishing process of Santiago, expresses the contradictory thought of the author facing with the complicated relation between human beings and nature. In the novella, the described nature not only has its volcanic temper and disposition, but also contains the great heart just as the mother of earth. In addition,"the sea", as one part of the novella’s title, and also functioning as an essential source of human survival and development, runs through the whole story. The fighting spirit of the big marlin makes us deeply moved by the ecological beauty of our nature.The thesis will interpret the specific text The Old Man and the Sea from three angles of ecocritism in the following six chapters. The first chapter involves the introduction to the background information of Ernest Hemingway and the literature review of the novella, The Old Man and the Sea, at home and abroad. The second chapter reviews the development process of ecocritism ideas and views of representative theories and expounds the theories of the three aspects of ecocritism-deep ecology, ecological aesthetics and ecofeminism. In Chapters Three, Four and Five, a thorough textual analysis interpreted from these three angles of ecocritism is conducted. Finally, we draw the conclusion in Chapter Six. The thesis sums up the three angles of ecocritism in The Old Man and the Sea, displays the different attitudes of Santiago towards nature and some sort of counterattacks from nature, and further proves that an important topic is still necessary to be focused on the complex relation between human and nature.