淺析海明威《乞力馬札羅山的雪》中的死亡主題和意識(shí)流寫作手法【畢業(yè)論文】

1、<p><b>　　（20_ _屆）</b></p><p><b>　　本科畢業(yè)設(shè)計(jì)</b></p><p><b>　　英語(yǔ)</b></p><p>　　淺析海明威《乞力馬札羅山的雪》中的死亡主題和意識(shí)流寫作手法</p><p>　　On Death Theme

2、and the Stream of Consciousness in The Snows of Kilimanjaro</p><p><b>　　Abstract</b></p><p>　　Death theme and the stream of consciousness have long been important aspects for the lit

3、erary criticisms of Hemingway’s works in western countries. However, Chinese scholars have mainly focused on Hemingway’s novels in dealing these two aspects which can also be adequately reflected in his short stories. He

4、mingway’s short stories are closely related to his personal experience and are valuable for us to take the interpretation of Hemingway’s exploration on death theme and the stream of consciousn</p><p>　　Key w

5、ords: Hemingway; short story; death theme; the stream of conscious</p><p><b>　　摘 要</b></p><p>　　死亡主題和意識(shí)流寫作手法一直是西方國(guó)家對(duì)海明威作品的兩大批評(píng)方向。然而，在中國(guó)，人們主要通過(guò)海明威的長(zhǎng)篇小說(shuō)來(lái)研究這兩大方面。其實(shí)，它們也可以通過(guò)海明威的短篇小說(shuō)充分體現(xiàn)出

6、來(lái)。這些短篇小說(shuō)和他的人生經(jīng)歷息息相關(guān)，值得我們對(duì)于他的死亡主題和意識(shí)流寫作方式做進(jìn)一步的研究和探索。本論文以《乞力馬札羅山的雪》為細(xì)讀文本，探討海明威作品的死亡主題和意識(shí)流寫作手法。</p><p>　　關(guān)鍵詞：海明威；短篇小說(shuō)；死亡主題；意識(shí)流寫作手法</p><p><b>　　Contents</b></p><p>　　1Backg

7、round Information1</p><p>　　1.1The Death Theme and the Stream of Consciousness1</p><p>　　1.2Literature Review2</p><p>　　2Hemingway’s view of Death theme in The Snow of Kiliman

8、jaro3</p><p>　　2.1Characterization4</p><p>　　2.2Setting5</p><p>　　2.3Plot6</p><p>　　3Hemingway and his stream of consciousness in The Snow of Kilimanjaro7</

9、p><p>　　3.1Hemingway and his stream of consciousness7</p><p>　　3.2The function of Hemingway’s stream of consciousness8</p><p>　　3.3The Characteristics of Hemingway’s Stream of Con

10、sciousness10</p><p>　　4The significance of his death theme and the stream of consciousness10</p><p>　　5Conclusions12</p><p>　　Bibliography14</p><p>　　Acknowledgem

11、ent15</p><p>　　Background Information</p><p>　　In 1918, Hemingway participated in WWI. While driving a car through an Italian territory and war zone, he was wounded by shrapnel. During his 20 m

12、onth stay in the hospital for treatment, 237 pieces of shrapnel were removed from his legs alone. His serious injury left him with insomnia and post traumatic stress disorder. In 1936, the Spanish Civil War broke out; he

13、 rushed to the front as a journalist, and witnessed the life and death in the Spanish Civil War. During World War II, he once again we</p><p>　　Several years later, his mother gave him the revolver with whic

14、h his father had committed suicide. An accompanying card showed the words, “Maybe you want to save it.” To this he replied, “I really do not know what this means.” (Scott Donaldson, 2000)Those legendary, unique, and comp

15、lex experiences visibly strengthened the understanding of his life. Furthermore, serious illness further colored his imagination concerning death, which inspires complex neurotic sentiments, as well as religious myste<

16、;/p><p>　　Hemingway conceived of death as something that is absolutely inescapable, which is the largest and most horrifying concept in reality. His works have a great mysterious force that deprives people of t

17、heir rights and tears up their subjective imagination and blind optimism in the space of a moment. Using myriad literary images, Hemingway wants to convey the truth about this life experience. All mankind is doomed to li

18、ve on in degradation, setting their hopes and cares aside. </p><p>　　The Death Theme and the Stream of Consciousness</p><p>　　Hemingway’s short stories carry more symbolic meaning than his novel

19、s. It was his short stories that guaranteed his status as a master therein. His works are pieces of conscious art; the creation of his characters and the description of the environment carry a strong and rather distinct

20、 imagery. He said: "The purpose of writing is to convey to the readers every feeling, vision, place and emotion."(Yu Ye, 2004) In fact, as long as you read his works carefully, the focus of his short stories wi

21、ll</p><p>　　The Death Theme</p><p>　　"Death Studies" is not optimistic. People have a common psychological avoidance to death. If someone mentioned death normally, it may cause the con

22、sideration of misery. In fact, death is not a threat; it is a challenge to the people and all living things. Is it death if the heartbeat and breathing have stopped? Some people wonder when exactly to declare death. Doe

23、s it happen when the brain dies? Then what about a vegetative state? Death is a matter of medicine, religion, psychology, literatu</p><p>　　The Stream of Consciousness</p><p>　　If we regarded

24、 the subjective life of people as a stream of consciousness, then the outside of life of people can be called the life stream. Stream of consciousness is the reflection of the life stream, but stream of consciousness can

25、 also be counter-productive actions of characters in the life stream. The two influence each other. Traditional realistic novels not only include the stream of consciousness, but also write the life stream. Generally, th

26、e life stream is the subject, and the stream o</p><p>　　Literature Review</p><p>　　With the topic of Death Theme and the Stream of Consciousness in Hemingway's works, Liu Junping (1991) poin

27、ted that The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1938) is one of the outstanding short stories of Ernest Hemingway's works. This novel got praised from all sides of world when published in 1936. If all works of Hemingway contain a

28、 stream of the Black Death theme, we can also feel the death in slowly in this work when flow goes with the undercurrent sorrow and dark rhythm. According the Li Yanan (2007) l,</p><p>　　Lan Xinwei (2005) po

29、inted out that Hemingway created a void world in many of his short stories. The figures' feature in this world is either old and lonely, or confused and disappointed. The figures in his novel are incompatible with mo

30、dern society. Either they isolated and far away from the familiar land and people, or they had desperate loneliness, inner pain, and even suicide. They had not the spiritual sustenance and lost the direction of life. In

31、short, they lived with nothing with a deep s</p><p>　　When it comes to Hemingway, Zhao Yanjie (2003) pointed out that Ernest Hemingway's life and his creation have a special relationship. As a writer, he

32、 cannot avoid the nihilistic mourned to after the profound understanding of life, and the helpless and distress from the less literary imagination and creation of aging, and have to need the death theme to maintain the h

33、igh reputation to achieve another kind of perfection. So the shadow of death is everywhere, and the smell of death diffuses around.</p><p>　　Hemingway’s view of Death theme in the snow of Kilimanjaro</p&g

34、t;<p>　　“Kilimanjaro is a snow covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai "Ngàje Ngài," the House of God. Close

35、to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.” </p><p>　　This quotation in italics seems have little relationsh

36、ip with the whole story. It just looks like a statement of fact, and Hemingway himself did not answer. (Sun Huaxiang, 1991) In fact, this quotation points at the theme of the book: with the imperfect of the journey of li

37、fe and the hopeless and confused in the life, eternal only can be obtained in the death. First of all, readers will think: "In hot Africa, what does the leopard want to do to the top of the frigid peaks? And what do

38、es Harry, t</p><p>　　Hemingway's short stories, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, portray a cold, absurd, unknowable world for us. In such a world, people can not find the meaning of life, and there is only empt

39、iness and hollow in the life. Therefore, the Hemingway character faced the world without the value of real life, felt that they had been alienated in this society and world, became a deserted, lonely, aimless existence.

40、According to what Wanghua (2005) was written, "Whether it is to Hemingway or his character in his </p><p>　　Hemingway created a void world in many of his short stories. In Yu ye’s comment (2004) that th

41、e figures in his novel are incompatible with modern society. Either they isolated and far away from the familiar land and people, or they had desperate loneliness, inner pain, and even suicide. They had not the spiritual

42、 sustenance and lost the direction of life. In short, they lived with nothing with a deep sense of emptiness in the world.</p><p>　　The "nasty bird" (vulture) circled Harry overhead and casted thei

43、r shadow as death enveloped all implies that death is unavoidable and people can not escape. Hyena's bark has a strong symbolic significance in the book. Initially, the whimper of hyena is a predictor of anxiety, sug

44、gesting Harry faced a ruthless world outside.</p><p>　　Characterization</p><p>　　Hemingway's Harry is neither a hero nor a coward, and he has neither the Hamlet-like melancholy, nor drive li

45、ke Romeo’s love. Harry, like millions of ordinary people, wants to make his life full of value by working hard and thinking, but he suffered a loss after he lived in the wilderness from World War II. "The figure und

46、er Hemingway's pen is not the people who live with an ideal or a dazzling Superman. </p><p>　　According to Zhang na’s thoughts (2004), Hemingway describes a real world and the existence of biological spe

47、cies in this world. We repeated life's setbacks, and there is no other way to get though, no one knows what we can get, and no one knows whether it will progress. This is not only the starting point of Hemingway, but

48、 also the foundation of his constant creation of new characters and new plot. There are many different characteristics of human nature, but Hemingway’s main idea of descriptio</p><p>　　What's more, there

49、 is a certain intention that Hemingway shows the decadence and death of a talented writer in the snow of Kilimanjaro. Hemingway had frankly acknowledged that Harry’s image has his own shadow. The time that the novel was

50、published was just that Hemingway was at the top of his game. It is insignificant whether Hemingway means to make the snows of Kilimanjaro to himself and other American writer as a warning. What is important is that the

51、novel undoubtedly has such practical signi</p><p><b>　　Setting</b></p><p>　　“The cot the man lay on was in the wide shade of a mimosa tree and as he looked out past the shade onto th

52、e glare of the plain there were three of the big birds squatted obscenely, while in the sky a dozen more sailed, making quick-moving shadows as they passed.”</p><p>　　This was a scene with Harry. Hemingway u

53、sed several short sentences to present a vivid and accurate world to readers with static movement (crouching and casting a shadow) and movement (flying and passing), which formed a stark contrast with Harry ’s difficulti

54、es and the psychological state of fear and despair. This is the tragic consciousness that the modern expression of Hemingway's sentiment of "Life is all suffering, life is all struggle"(Ma Juling, 2007). Th

55、rough the pooling of such emotiona</p><p>　　Snow is used as a symbol that conceals the theme of death. Hemingway titled the novel as The Snows of Kilimanjaro, which showed his emphasis on the snow. There is

56、a note-type before the start of the scene description. At first sight, it will be quite puzzling, but after digesting the soaring climax of the story, the process of the soul of Harry, then back to taste the note-type, w

57、e step into a magical mood that Hemingway created:</p><p>　　“Kilimanjaro is a snow covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai

58、"Ngàje Ngài," the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.”</p><p>

59、;　　According to the Wu Wen, (2009), the snow is white, cold, empty and quiet. It can be seen as a symbol of specific things, cohesion ideas and extension. As a restriction of the limited environment and state of mind, th

60、ey can be as a symbol of death, life, purity, destruction, cold, and so on. In the note-type, the snow in The Snows of Kilimanjaro is a symbol of the noble mysterious perpetuity.</p><p>　　Leopard is Hemingwa

61、y's favorite and treated as a sacred animal. A dried and frozen body of leopard in the west peak of Kilimanjaro put questions to the people. What is a resemblance between Harry’s experiences and the leopard? He came

62、to this wild but vibrant African savannah to look for a recovery in the vitality and creativity to make his way to immortality. Now, the body is almost dead, and his spirit is unwilling to bow to the death. He will look

63、for his end-result toward the new high rise a</p><p><b>　　Plot</b></p><p>　　What is the special meaning of the height of Kilimanjaro? What does Hemingway want to express from the des

64、cription of the dried leopard? All of this is still a mystery. Because of the connection between the dried leopard and death, the novel is kicked off with a dark and heavy tone. As a beginning part of the novel, it const

65、itutes the essence in this whole when Harry got the illusion of flying to Mount Kilimanjaro in the end. Hemingway has the perfect skills of dealing with the words in this sho</p><p>　　“It was morning and had

66、 been morning for some time and he heard the plane. It showed very tiny and then made a wide circle and the boys ran out and lit the fires, using kerosene, and piled on grass so there were two big smudges at each end of

67、the level place and the morning breeze blew them toward the camp and the plane circled twice more, low this time, and then glided down and leveled off and landed smoothly and, coming walking toward him, was old Compton i

68、n slacks, a tweed jacket and a brown </p><p>　　And then instead of going on to Arusha they turned left, he evidently figured that they had the gas, and looking down he saw a pink sifting cloud, moving over t

69、he ground, and in the air, like the first snow in at ii blizzard, that comes from nowhere, and he knew the locusts were coming, up from the South. Then they began to climb and they were going to the East it seemed, and t

70、hen it darkened and they were in a storm, the rain so thick it seemed like flying through a waterfall, and then they wer</p><p>　　After Harry’s illusion we hear: "Just then the hyena stopped whimpering

71、in the night and started to make a strange, human, almost crying sound."</p><p>　　We understand that Harry was dead. But the suspicion in the first paragraph of the novel is unpredictably answered, and

72、the gloomy tone has turned into a light-hearted tone. So far, there is no difficulty to comprehend the significance of Mount Kilimanjaro: Serenity, Holiness and eternity. (Lan Xingwei, 2005) </p><p>　　There

73、is a contrast between the height of Kilimanjaro and the dirty earth; it is a symbol of immortality. The dead leopard is the symbol of the pursuit of Harry’s spirit. The meaning of death has been sublimated, and then it i

74、s no longer painful and frightening, helpless or sad. (Lu Haixia, 2009)</p><p>　　Death has its own kind of beauty and serenity, and it is a process. Hemingway tells his understanding of death calmly. The mat

75、ure process of understanding is reflected by Harry in the novel. Here, Hemingway gives death a deeper meaning, which is a living spirit with a dead body. It is the most significant meaning of death in The Snows of Kilima

76、njaro.</p><p>　　Hemingway and his stream of consciousness in the snow of Kilimanjaro</p><p>　　Literature is the art of language in a great sense. A language style is formed by both subjective an

77、d objective factors. On the one hand，It is determined by the objective factors of communication, i.e. the situations of description (time，place，content，and object) and the relevant social and cultural backgrounds. On the

78、 other hand，subjective factors，such as personality，worldview, philosophy of life，and literary knowledge of a writer, are all reflected in his language style.(Chen Hui, 1983)</p><p>　　Literary language is col

79、orful and often involves different styles. What’s more, the use of language also directly determines its artistic effects. Hemmingway was such a writer that made good use of language and formed his own narrative style. S

80、imultaneously，he also stressed the characterization in his works，paying attention to the characters’ inner conflicts and true feelings.</p><p>　　Hemingway and his stream of consciousness</p><p>

81、　　In1954，Ernest Hemingway(1899－1961) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for “ his powerful style一forming mastery of the art of narration” by the Swedish Academy of Science. As one of the greatest Writers in the wo

82、rld，Hemingway learnt a lot from world literature and was also greatly influenced by modernism, especially from European literature, which was shown by not only his viewpoints to the modern world but also his various expl

83、orations in writing skill and form. In fact, he became pioneer</p><p>　　To some degree, Hemingway’s interest in the stream of consciousness writing was totally relative with his personal experiences. After W

84、orld War 1, Hemingway arrived in Paris again as a war correspondent on December 22, 1921. With a letter of introduction from Sherwood Anderson, he met some famous writers and artists and made friends quickly with them du

85、ring his first few years. Those friends were Ezra Pound，F(xiàn). Scott Fitzgerald， Gertrude Stein，Sylvia Beach，James Joyce, Ford Maddox Ford，Lincoln St</p><p>　　They gave young Hemingway a helping hand, and assist

86、ed his writing style, such as the effectiveness of simple words and the simple declarative sentence. He soaked himself in modernism and accepted some modernistic ideas such as nihilism, existentialism and many others. Fo

87、r instance, he was influenced by Giorgio de Chirico who claimed to explore the metaphysical reality of inorganic objects. Hemmingway’s style of stream of consciousness is reflected from Chirico’s art as creative expressi

88、on of ni</p><p>　　The function of Hemingway’s stream of consciousness</p><p>　　Hemingway’s stream of consciousness makes the structure more vivid</p><p>　　The most essential princip

89、le of using stream of consciousness is that they concentrate on psychological description in order to reveal the outside world by describing the character’s inner world. Therefore, a typical form of the stream of conscio

90、usness novel is neither a traditional narrative work nor an entertaining reading material. Those works neglect the common and interesting structure in a traditional novel and lend importance to the characters’ complex ps

91、ychological activities. Cause of t</p><p>　　The stream of consciousness makes the description more detailed</p><p>　　There is a difference from those realistic writers who emphasize objective re

92、ality, because the objective reality is only an external phenomenon while subjective reality is the real essence from the thoughts of the stream of consciousness writers. They considered art as description and creation i

93、nstead of imitation, reflection or reproduction. Thinking that art should focus on that the real thing in the art, they pay attention on the language form and psychological description. (Li Weiping, 1993</p><p

94、>　　The stream of consciousness makes the theme more meaningful</p><p>　　WWI was a disaster to the psychological world of the westerners because of the loss of idealism, romanticism and other traditional v

95、alues. Under such terrible circumstances, the writers of stream of consciousness tried to express a sense of loss, despair, and anguish by their new literary. Western people suffered the sense of ultimate defeat and diss

96、imilation. With the thoughts of losing the modern world, they hoped to find sympathy, understanding, humanism from their works and real life. As man</p><p>　　The stream of consciousness is a piece of art<

97、/p><p>　　A specific structure should be connected with a specific content. In the literary world in a stream of consciousness narrative, the character’s consciousness, emotions, feelings and thoughts and psycho

98、logical activities often need an open environment as the premise so that an aesthetic concordance can be achieved. To a great extent Hemingway has unique aesthetic conceptions and pays special attention to the aesthetic