This article was originally published in the 1962 issue of Literary Review, authored by Dong Hengxun. This article provides a comprehensive analysis of Hemingway’s works and his ideological development, which is very meaningful for understanding Hemingway. Many book titles in the original text have been modified as they are quite different from today.
1
In the future, a correct perspective on American literary history might identify ten or eight more important 20th-century writers than Hemingway; however, at the same time, it will have to acknowledge that Hemingway is the most influential in terms of impact. Hemingway’s influence can be seen from two aspects. First, his influence is not limited to America or to countries where English is spoken, but extends across the Atlantic to various countries. Second, he not only has a large readership but also influences the creative practices of many European and American writers. Behind Hemingway, countless learners, imitators, and even followers are following.
Among contemporary American writers, none has elicited such divergent evaluations from the international literary community as Hemingway. The bourgeois critics are diverse and innovative, labeling Hemingway in various ways, which is not surprising. It is noteworthy that the international progressive literary circles, after repeated commentary, seem unable to reach a fixed consensus. Moreover, they sometimes even arrive at opposite conclusions: for example, those who deny him believe that Hemingway’s ideological tendencies favor the spiritual life of the American imperialist ruling class, while those who affirm him believe Hemingway has always stood with the working people.
Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899 in a doctor’s family in the suburbs of Chicago. In his youth, he did not receive much formal education and worked as a journalist. During World War I, he volunteered for the ambulance corps and was seriously injured in Italy in 1918. After the war, he went to Paris as a journalist and began his literary creation. During this period, his major works included the short story collections In Our Time (1924) and Men Without Women (1927), the novels The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms. In 1932, he published a monograph on Spanish bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon. His works in the 1930s also included the short story collection Winner Take Nothing (1933) and The Green Hills of Africa (1935), depicting his hunting experiences in Africa. In 1936, after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Hemingway, as a journalist, supported the Spanish Republic and reported on the war. He wrote the screenplay The Fifth Column (1938) in Madrid amid gunfire and published For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1940. During World War II, he served as a war correspondent and settled in Cuba afterward. His subsequent works include Across the River and into the Trees (1950) and The Old Man and the Sea (1952). In 1954, Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. After the Cuban Revolution victory, he returned to the United States and published a travelogue on Spain, A Dangerous Summer, in 1960. On July 2 of the following year, he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound (or possibly suicide).
2
In Hemingway’s works, war themes occupy a significant portion. Therefore, attitudes towards war should be an important basis for evaluating Hemingway.
Hemingway’s first successful work, The Sun Also Rises, depicts the post-war life of a group of young Americans and British in Paris. They all participated in the European war, some lost loved ones, others were seriously wounded. The protagonist, Jake Barnes, loses his ability to have sex due to injury, though he loves a British woman, Brett. Brett also loves him, but due to physiological defects, their love remains unfulfilled. Jake and his friends look back on the past with darkness and look forward to the future with gloom. This is a world without light, lacking noble ideals for the youth to strive for. The despairing youth drift, suffer, and struggle in that environment. They drink, fish, and seek bullfights to numb their will.
This pessimistic and hopeless mood reflects Hemingway’s ideological experience at that time. According to his relatives’ memories, after returning from Europe injured, Hemingway “was no longer the old friend I knew,” “he didn’t want to find a job, didn’t want to go to college, and didn’t want to do anything. He became a person without goals.” The protagonist of the short story Soldier’s Home also bears Hemingway’s shadow, embodying this sense of confusion, disappointment, and pessimism, making The Sun Also Rises a representative of the so-called “Lost Generation” in literary history.
Hemingway’s reputation as a “Lost Generation” poet has deeper reasons. He entered the literary world in the 1920s, a period marked by: on one hand, the capitalist world just ending the war and facing an unprecedented economic crisis; on the other hand, the first worker-led government in European history appeared in Eastern Europe, strengthening the decline of the bourgeoisie. The capitalist world was shrouded in pessimism, decline, and death. For many bourgeois intellectuals in Europe and America, this was an “arid wasteland” era. Hemingway’s works carry the unique pessimism of that period. Amid the bourgeois lamentations, he also played a mournful tune. His disgust for the First World War is more direct and clear in A Farewell to Arms. In The Sun Also Rises, war is just a backdrop in characters’ memories; in A Farewell to Arms, the war is depicted directly: an American youth, Henry, fights on the Italian front, falls in love with a British nurse, Catherine. When the Italians retreat, Henry barely escapes, only to face incompetent Italian officers who treat their own as enemies, almost costing him his life. He and Catherine flee to Switzerland, but she dies in childbirth. From then on, Henry’s only companion in the world is loneliness.
This work is more profound than The Sun Also Rises because it not only exposes how war inflicts physical damage on people but also criticizes the hypocrisy of imperialist propaganda and reveals the emptiness of the proletariat’s spiritual world. The novel does not spend much space depicting bloody war scenes but instead uses the protagonist’s experiences to tell us how war causes youth to despair and feel emptiness. Henry is an ordinary American youth who joins the war under the call of “patriotism” for Italy and “saving the world democracy” for America. What does he see on the battlefield? He witnesses widespread anti-war sentiment among Italian soldiers, who are sent to be cannon fodder, while Italian officers act lawlessly and enjoy the benefits. Hemingway’s truthful descriptions anger Italian militarists, and for a time, the novel was banned in Italy.
These descriptions also expose the war propaganda of American imperialism. When the war began, the U.S. ruling group adopted a wait-and-see attitude, while simultaneously supplying weapons to both sides. Seeing their interests threatened, American imperialists dropped the facade of peace and claimed they would “save world democracy,” using deceptive slogans like “sacred,” “glorious,” and “sacrifice” to send American youth to the European battlefield to die. Hemingway criticizes this: “I haven’t seen anything sacred, nothing glorious, and as for sacrifice, it’s like a Chicago slaughterhouse, only with the meat buried instead of slaughtered.”
War not only destroys people’s happiness but also makes the world seem devoid of happiness, which is a central theme. Hemingway did not, like many anti-war writers of his time, place hope in post-war peace; to him, people are like “ants on a fire”: “Some escape, burned and battered, not knowing where to run. But most run into the fire, then turn back and escape at the tail end, crowding at the cool top, only to be burned to death in the end.” (pages 284–285) In the face of this “apocalypse,” even the best qualities of people cannot avoid death: “The world kills the kindest, the most gentle, the bravest… If you’re not one of these, you’ll die sooner or later, but it’s not in a hurry to take you.” (page 219)
The emptiness and decay of bourgeois society cause Henry to lose any faith and also destroy his capacity for thought: “My mind is mine, but I can’t use it, can’t think; I can only recall, and I shouldn’t think too much either.” (page 204) Therefore, the only thing he can do in life is “eat, drink, and sleep with Catherine.” (page 205) From Hemingway’s pessimism, we see the spiritual emptiness of bourgeois life. The First World War fully exposed the contradictions of the capitalist system and clearly revealed the hypocrisy of the ideological superstructure defending that system. Hemingway’s anti-war sentiment runs counter to imperialist war propaganda: he not only refuses to glorify America’s role in the war but also exposes truths that the American ruling class does not want to hear or see. This is incompatible with their spiritual needs.
A Farewell to Arms also highlights Hemingway’s ideological shortcomings: his failure to correctly understand the nature and causes of war. Like many contemporary bourgeois writers, he cannot escape partial understanding; he takes the part of reality he sees as the whole, views imperialist wars as irresistible natural forces, and sees the demise of the bourgeoisie as the end of humanity. As a result, he only touches the edge of the problem and quickly withdraws, as if to say, “I’m tired, I’ve seen through it.” This is a common trait among many writers of the “Lost Generation.”
Hemingway’s inability to deeply explore the essence of war, and the similar traits of many “Lost Generation” writers, fundamentally stem from: only opposing war from personal perspectives and individual standpoints, falling into pessimism. As an intellectual with a bourgeois outlook, Hemingway only sees personal happiness and individual roles, rather than connecting the suffering caused by imperialist wars with the fate of the masses, thus exposing the core issues. The individual’s role is always very small; under the chaos of war, a person cannot help but “die like a cat.” From a personal perspective, survival is the highest happiness, death the greatest sorrow. But on the battlefield, life and death are beyond one’s control. Therefore, Hemingway, while despising and cursing war, often proclaims human helplessness. The novel’s pessimistic and fatalistic mood leads those with vague understanding to conclude pacifism and pessimism: war is extremely foolish and destroys humanity, and humans are powerless against it.
3
Hemingway’s attitude towards war changed during the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. The Spanish Civil War was a conflict incited by Hitler’s Germany to overthrow the young democratic government of Spain. The American bourgeoisie indirectly armed Franco’s reactionary army through Germany, paving the way for Hitler’s aggression. Conversely, American progressive forces organized volunteers to support the Spanish people’s anti-fascist struggle. Hemingway participated in this war as a journalist and wrote The Fifth Column and For Whom the Bell Tolls against this background.
In these works, Hemingway still depicted familiar protagonists—Americans helping “foreigners” fight, such as Philip in The Fifth Column and Robert Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls. Unlike the protagonists in his early works, they no longer feel lost and hopeless; they are also caught in love, but this love is no longer opposed to war as personal happiness; even with contradictions, they prefer to sacrifice love to fulfill higher duties. This reflects Hemingway’s understanding of the Spanish people’s anti-fascist struggle. Hemingway recognized that this war was different from the First World War, which was meaningless; this time, the justice and injustice of the sides should be distinguished. So he endowed the protagonists with new ideological insights: “I believe in the people, believe they have the right to govern themselves according to their wishes.” Before dying, his protagonists still think: “I have fought for what I believe in for a year. If we win here, we can win everywhere. The world is a good place, worth fighting for, and it pains me to leave this world.” (page 457); he also recognized the reactionary forces within the U.S.:
“Are there many fascists in your country?”
“Many don’t even realize they are fascists, but they will find out when the time comes.”
“Will you wait until they rebel to eliminate them?”
“No. We can’t eliminate them. But we can educate the people, make them fear fascism, so that when it appears, they can recognize and fight it.” (page 209)
All this was a new understanding Hemingway had not reached before. Although these insights were due to the heroic struggle of the Spanish people, this change was a significant progress for a writer with a fixed pessimistic outlook.
Hemingway took a step forward ideologically, but it was not a decisive one. He still did not abandon bourgeois individualism. For Whom the Bell Tolls depicts the Spanish people’s anti-fascist struggle. In Hemingway’s literary history, this was the first work to feature the masses; however, from the perspective of thematic importance, it still lacked a crucial element—the power of the masses.
Hemingway’s chosen masses are guerrillas in the mountains. They are divided internally, lack discipline, and have a backward, nomadic laziness. The protagonist, Robert Jordan, is ordered to blow up a bridge occupied by the fascists, and he joins the guerrillas. Most of the guerrillas support him, respect him, and the leader’s wife even introduces a Spanish girl as his mistress. His relationship with the guerrillas is one of helping and being helped, guiding and being guided, even in how they shoot, they cannot do without Jordan’s instructions. The author may be emphasizing Jordan’s self-sacrifice, but it is at the cost of the backwardness and ignorance of the masses. Jordan is not a hero from the masses but a superman-like hero. This reflects the bourgeois attitude towards the masses: they are passive, passive followers of history created by individuals; yet when they fight, they are seen as ignorant and irrational due to their ignorance. The chapter where the peasants kill the fascist gangsters oppressing the people is filled with lengthy, naturalistic descriptions that evoke disgust and horror. The problem is not whether such phenomena occurred, but that the author describes the masses’ anger with such disdain. This only shows the author’s ignorance of the oppressed people’s psychology, leading him to produce neither strong nor clear love and hate, but to portray the masses as mobs. This is a serious ideological flaw in the novel. Furthermore, Hemingway adopts a somewhat voyeuristic attitude. In a report titled Accusation, he describes a character named Strek’s inner conflict about whether to betray a Francoist spy: “I myself would never betray him,… I am a foreigner, and this is your war, your problem.” This inner conflict somewhat reflects Hemingway’s own ideological state—hating fascism but unable to connect his fate with the anti-fascist people. The novel focuses more on Jordan and Maria’s love, avoiding the future of the Spanish people’s struggle. He states, “Jordan has no political beliefs” (page 167), so whether there will be a “planned society” in the future is “someone else’s matter.” In reality, the fate of the Spanish people depends on these major issues. For a writer limited to personal inner struggles like Hemingway, this is an area he cannot or does not want to enter.
For Whom the Bell Tolls is not without some successful portrayals of individual Spaniards, such as the guide, the brave old man Anselmo, and the inspiring resistance of the guerrilla band led by Sordo. However, due to the above-mentioned ideological flaws, the work falls short of being a typical or authentic depiction of the Spanish people’s fight for freedom. After its publication, it caused dissatisfaction among some American progressive figures who had participated in the Spanish Civil War, probably expecting a higher standard. Of course, we cannot deny Hemingway’s ideological progress and the anti-fascist tendency of this novel; thus, For Whom the Bell Tolls like A Farewell to Arms should be classified as American 20th-century critical realism.
4
Hemingway’s novels also depict the lives of workers. These include early short stories, the later long novel The Old Man and the Sea, and the medium-length story The Snows of Kilimanjaro.
These works and characters more clearly reflect the author’s ideological development. Briefly, the workers in early short stories, like the characters in anti-war works, are filled with despair and hopelessness. Around the 1930s, these characters began to become brave and strong, embodying the so-called “tough guy” personality, reaching a peak in The Old Man and the Sea. By the 1950s, characters still retained the “tough guy” image, but the works tended to evade reality; The Old Man and the Sea exemplifies this tendency.
The novel The Old Man and the Sea depicts Cuban fisherman Santiago, who has not caught a fish for eighty-four days. He finally catches a fish but is eaten by sharks. This is the main plot of the novel. In this character, we see some traits of the laborer, such as his appearance: “Deep wrinkles gather on his neck, making him look thin and gaunt. Brownish lumps grow on both cheeks, caused by the reflection of the tropical sun on the sea.” Also, his profession is fishing, meaning he does not exploit others but relies on his own hands to support himself. Moreover, he is honest, simple, does not deceive or harm others. These are not signs of exploitation but virtues of the laborer. However, we must stop here. If we examine Santiago in the context of social relations, we find he also has the following three characteristics:
First, his relationship with other fishermen. Hemingway writes: only a boy named Manolin sympathizes with him and goes fishing with him. “But after forty days without catching a fish, his parents told the boy that the old man was now ‘cursed’ (a very bad word to describe bad luck). They told him to get on another boat and go fishing.” (page 6) How do others view this “bad luck” companion? Some sympathize and give him food, but “many fishermen mock the old man” (page 2). Later, Santiago returns failed, dragging fish bones, and the boy is heartbroken and cries, but “many fishermen stand around the boat, looking at what is tied to the side” (page 81). How do his peers see him? Hemingway almost does not describe this. In Santiago’s mind, others—except the boy—are almost nonexistent. Whether it’s sympathy or mockery, he doesn’t care.
In short, Santiago is a worker who has no interaction with his peers; he is a lonely laborer. This is his first characteristic.
The second characteristic is that this worker does not need material goods in daily life. The author mentions he “is very poor,” but this does not prevent him from doing hard labor because “eating has long been a boring thing for him; he has never carried food. He only has a bottle of water on the boat, which is all he needs for the day” (page 14). The author writes that he sometimes eats raw fish on the boat. But in eighty-four days, he only drinks raw fish, yet he can persist. It seems unbelievable. Even more strange:
“You should eat something,” the boy asks.
“A bowl of fish mixed with yellow rice. You should eat some too,”
“No. I’ll go home to eat. Do you want me to light a fire for you?”
“No. I will cook myself later. Otherwise, cold rice is fine too.”
“Can I go get the net?”
“Of course.”
In fact, there was no net; the boy remembers they sold it. But they always tell such lies every day. There is no bowl of yellow rice, but the boy knows this too. (page 6)
In China, there is a mocking phrase “drawing a cake to fill the stomach,” which now has become a fact in Hemingway’s writing. As for the hardships of fishermen’s lives, the author either intentionally ignores or inadvertently overlooks them.
Hemingway handles it this way to highlight the mental state of the protagonist under extremely difficult material conditions. However, this heroic and tragic spirit is unrelated to social struggle or personal life. Santiago’s mind is filled with things that do not seem to belong to the mortal world: big fish, battles, strength, baseball, and lions. Santiago is extraordinarily harmonious with these symbols of courage and power. Here are some things he says to the fish:
“Fish, I will be with you until I die.” (page 32)
“Big fish, I love you and respect you very much.” (page 34)
“Fish, I guess you’re feeling pain now, but honestly, I feel it too.” (page 35)
“Fish, if you’re not tired, that’s really strange.” (page 43)
Indeed, a “very poor” fisherman treats his objects of survival with such intimacy, and in the brutal struggle with nature, he still maintains such a leisurely mood, “which is really very strange.” The author also writes that people who do not engage in maritime labor do not deserve to eat fish, and sarcastically criticizes a tourist for lacking common sense, mistaking marlin for sandfish. But why do they not deserve to eat fish? Because of their “manner and demeanor, and the very respectable appearance they have, no one deserves to eat them” (page 49). This certainly includes Santiago as well. When he sees someone cut open a turtle, “its heart still beats for several hours.” So he thinks: “I also have such a heart, my feet and hands are just like theirs!” (page 21)
In this intertwined description of characters, Hemingway humanizes the fish and makes the human fish. Therefore, the third characteristic of this laborer is that he carries a somewhat forgetful, selfless leisure mood.
Based on these three characteristics, we can make the following assessment of this fisherman: Santiago, as a worker in a bourgeois society, lacks authenticity and typicity. If the author did not tell us his occupation and identity, we would immediately see that he is a figure of an intellectual escaping reality in a class society, a superman-like hero. The worker is only his outward appearance; his inner world is that of a petty bourgeoisie who does not understand the suffering of the working people and is proud. Regarding the theme of “The Old Man and the Sea,” we can criticize: the courage emphasized by the author is vague and abstract. If Santiago fishes just for fishing, then Hemingway is just for courage for its own sake. This abstract virtue applies to all space and time, and because of that, it is unsuitable everywhere and at all times. Over the past ten years, the American bourgeois propaganda agencies have not diminished their praise for “The Old Man and the Sea,” ranking it as the third among the ten greatest American literary classics of the past twenty years, which perhaps is related to the vague and abstract ideological tendency of the novel.
Our evaluation of “The Old Man and the Sea” does not intend to criticize Hemingway for lacking class perspective. For a bourgeois writer, it is neither necessary nor possible to demand proletarian class viewpoints. However, there is a view that Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” depicts capitalist fishermen struggling with nature out of necessity, showing the spirit of the oppressed lower classes who are not afraid of difficulties, and elevating the theme. This approach is not consistent with reality. Interpreting the novel in this way, one might conclude: in capitalist society, people need not concern themselves with other matters; as long as they bravely overcome difficulties in the labor process, they can achieve spiritual victory. The ideological content of “The Old Man and the Sea” is already vague enough, and this opinion adds another layer of fog. As for Santiago being exploited, that is a conjecture made by critics to overestimate the ideological significance of “The Old Man and the Sea.” In Hemingway’s image, there is not even a shadow of such an idea. We should not replace the analysis of specific images with the concept of labor.
V
The tendency of escapism in Hemingway’s late works existed in his early works as well. There is a discernible ideological trajectory.
In the 1920s, when Hemingway was dominated by pessimistic despair, he was not without seeking a way out. Government agencies, factions, schools, and families did not attract him. The ideas they propagated were most contemptible to him. He tried to find a way outside the ruling social ideology. What he found was the personal world, which he believed was the only comfort for a lonely person in life. Of course, in America, bourgeois ruling ideology has penetrated every corner of life, and how one conducts oneself in the personal world also infiltrates the core of that ruling ideology—the principle of individualism. This is something Hemingway cannot escape from. From his works of that period, three factors can be roughly identified.
The first is a strong will, expressed in the desire to survive. Although personal life and death in war are unpredictable, Hemingway’s characters always want to survive. No matter how difficult the environment, his protagonists show resilience and a stubborn will to live. The so-called “tough guy” mainly refers to this. Even in the pessimistic work “A Farewell to Arms,” it can be seen.
The second is “sensory experience.” Hemingway believed that all social ideas are deceptive; the only thing of value is what people directly perceive. Therefore, the aroma of alcohol, the smell of burnt flesh, the desire for sex, the joy of skiing, the elasticity of pine needles, the excitement of bullfighting… all flow into his creative world. This is especially evident in his short stories. There, we see no characters engaging in rational thinking or reasoning, but full of light and shadow, cold and heat, joy and sorrow, love and hate. The Spanish scenery in “The Sun Also Rises” and the Swiss scenery in “A Farewell to Arms” are also life contents perceived through the senses, affirmed by the writer.
Finally, there is a difficult-to-name factor, tentatively called “friendship.” Generally, friendship refers to mutual emotional exchange between friends. Hemingway’s friendship refers to the idea that the lonely protagonist finally has someone in the world who understands and admires him, who accompanies him through wind and rain. However, this is one-sided; that “friend” exists for the lonely protagonist. Therefore, in Hemingway’s works, the protagonist has a strong personality, but his “friend” has no character traits, at most gentle and considerate, because they have the task of serving the protagonist. Catherine in “A Farewell to Arms,” Maria in “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” and the boy in “The Old Man and the Sea” are all such loyal friends.
Whether these factors are only one or intertwined in the same work, we can see the author’s dislike for war and society. Due to his inherent weakness, they are more of passive escape than active resistance, and this escapism has been one of Hemingway’s ideological features from the beginning of his creation. It should be pointed out that this ideological feature influences character shaping. Hemingway’s characters never engage in abstract thinking; the so-called “anti-intellectual” refers to the fact that the characters he chooses always have particularly strong instinctive perception and rugged outdoor laborer traits: bullfighters, soldiers, hunters, fishermen, etc. These laborers share Hemingway’s rugged, free-spirited style; they are both unfortunate and self-centered; they never delve into why they are unfortunate but are lost in the sea and woods; they never say “I am suffering,” “I am disappointed,” but “Drink!” “Go fishing!”. This personality vividly reflects the intellectuals’ dissatisfaction with reality, their loneliness, and arrogance. This is Hemingway’s original character image and a very true self-portrait.
Such characters are loved by some because of their attitude towards life. Capitalist social systems are the root of misfortune for millions of people, and although the unfortunate have their specific reasons, when they cannot find a realistic way out, they often turn inward for relief. Hemingway, although not exploring the social roots of people’s misfortune, captures the inner contradictions of characters who want to forget worldly gains and losses but cannot, their solitary pride, and their attitude of sometimes resisting and sometimes accepting reality, which resonates with the psychology of capitalist society readers. This may be one reason Hemingway’s ideas evoke resonance.
Hemingway’s first long novel depicting workers is “The Old Man and the Sea.” This novel attempts to depict the resistance of the poor. “The Old Man” refers to the poor, the protagonist, Manolin, who makes a living by smuggling at sea; “the have” refers to those who employ Manolin, his opponents. This time, indeed, he is a worker: Manolin risks his life at sea “for a family, to eat, and to support them.” He also resists society: “I don’t know who makes the laws, but I know there are no laws that make people starve” (page 98). This clearly shows the author’s recognition that life conditions of the lower classes in America are harsh and unreasonable, and they should struggle for a better life. But this does not mean that the workers in Hemingway’s depiction already know how to fight. From his description, Manolin still has a strong bourgeoisie tendency, with Hemingway’s characteristic style. He is incompatible with other workers, only trusting his wife: “I believe in you, this is all I have” (page 125). This proletarian is indeed “proletarian”: only trust in his wife is his “only possession,” which also indicates his level of awareness: apart from personal feelings, he trusts nothing else. He harbors spontaneous hatred for those who use him, whether “bankers” or “Cuban revolutionaries” who “rob banks.” Therefore, from a correct social struggle perspective, Manolin’s personal resistance sometimes becomes blind rebellion. Hemingway somewhat criticizes this character. Before dying, he makes Manolin say: “A man can’t do it anymore,” (page 220) and then the author says, “It took him a long time to say this, and understanding this took his whole life.” The author’s comment is rare; he never needs to add other opinions beyond the protagonist’s words. His protagonist is always his own embodiment. Now, Hemingway has a certain ideological distance from the lonely protagonist. How big is this distance? “A man can’t do it anymore,” how can he succeed? Hemingway is just as confused as Manolin. Because of this confusion, the distance between him and Manolin is very close.
Hemingway’s path from pessimistic despair to protesting society is undeniable, but unfortunately, he did not move in the right direction. He just realized that “a man can’t do it anymore,” and soon reverted to his personal world: the elements of escapism increased. Here, we cannot ignore the influence of social conditions on him. When he wrote “The Old Man and the Sea” in the 1930s, it was a time of unprecedented rise of the American proletariat movement. At that time, American intellectuals generally turned left. In the literary field, themes of workers’ life and class struggle rapidly increased. However, from the 1940s onward, America embarked on a fascist path. The imperialist ruling class persecuted the Communist Party and suppressed the workers’ movement, and also carried out fascist ideological control over artists, teachers, lawyers, and other free professionals. These persecutions continue to this day. During this process, many people were terrified and flattered! Some writers who once showed leftist tendencies “began to desperately apologize to McCarthy for their so-called ‘emotional impulse’ during Roosevelt’s era.” Under this pressure, Hemingway neither flattered nor “apologized,” but maintained a “tomb-like neutrality” (Gould’s words, “Gould’s Poems and Essays,” p. 291). He withdrew from social struggles and secluded himself in the suburbs of Havana, Cuba. As a famous journalist and writer, his social status has always been relatively high. This once hindered his correct understanding of the struggles of the working people and their significance, and now this leisurely life is reflected in his works, gradually increasing the element of escapism, developing into a tendency. “The Old Man and the Sea” was produced during this period.
Two years before “The Old Man and the Sea” was published, Hemingway wrote “Across the River and into the Trees.” This novel is also devoid of worldly smoke. The protagonist, a veteran of the European war, recuperates in Italy due to illness. He does not mourn the past war, but hunts or falls in love with a woman who cares for him very much. All these are just ways to pass time; he awaits death.
Whether it is the pessimistic “Across the River and into the Trees” or the heroic “The Old Man and the Sea,” they both remind us of the three factors discussed above: will, sensory experience, and “friendship.” In early works, these factors were merely tools used by the author to criticize war or other realities: fishing on the river to escape war fears (short story “Across the River”); seeking stimulation in the bullring to forget life’s pain; wandering in Switzerland to escape “dirty war” and seek peace; caring only about cats because fascists had seized everything in life (short story “Old Man on the Bridge”)… In other words, they are struggles of social individuals seeking a way out, struggling in the real world. Therefore, those factors, as means of struggle for the unfortunate in bourgeois society, have social content. But now, people in society have become completely isolated, cut off from all social life. These factors have shifted from means to ends, from secondary to primary, while the social causes behind them have receded, disappeared, and vanished.
In the 1920s, Hemingway wrote a short story “The Men Who Could Not Be Defeated.” It depicts an old bullfighter, Manol, willing to risk his life fighting bulls. Santiago’s spirit is perfectly applicable to Manol: “A man is not born to be defeated; you can kill him, but you cannot defeat him” (page 68). Like Santiago, he ultimately fails, but the bullfighter fights for life to the death. Behind his fight with the bull, we faintly see the greedy, cunning face of the bullring manager, despising the bullfighter and cruelly exploiting him. From his failure, we also see the tragic fate of outdoor laborers in class society. But in “The Old Man and the Sea,” these reasons or causes disappear, leaving only the sea and the sandfish. Do these natural powers symbolizing misfortune also symbolize some social forces? The work does not reveal this aspect.
One explanation is that Hemingway wrote “Across the River and into the Trees” to recover his past honor after being criticized and ignored. Whatever the personal reasons, Hemingway in the 1950s indulged in his personal world of risk, casting a layer of nihilistic and decadent colors over “Across the River,” and making the heroism in “The Old Man and the Sea” appear blind and hollow. Although these two works have different tones, their common point is the emptiness and poverty of the characters’ spiritual worlds. From this perspective, Hemingway’s early melancholic and sorrowful works may have more authenticity than the faint optimism of “The Old Man and the Sea.”
As an artist, Hemingway’s performance in both ideology and art is unbalanced: his artistic talent surpasses his understanding of life.
Hemingway’s attitude towards publication is very serious. Over nearly forty years of creation, the works he published mainly include those mentioned above. He has exerted great effort in how he expresses himself. For example, he sometimes lists a hundred titles to finally settle on one; he rewrote the last page of “A Farewell to Arms” thirty-nine times until satisfied; during the writing of “The Old Man and the Sea,” he read it over two hundred times. These examples show his strict requirements for artistic form.
From the beginning of his publishing career, Hemingway was a writer with a distinctive artistic style. He was a lyricist who valued subtlety and imagery. His short stories do not rely on plot but focus on describing characters’ actions or reactions under certain emotional influences, creating a visual impression for the reader and allowing them to savor the hidden emotions and themes. Before “A Farewell to Arms” was published, Hemingway’s unique style had already formed and matured. This style includes his choice of special life materials, character images, and his distinctive attitude, as well as a very personal artistic form that unifies these elements: a first-person narrative of a lonely protagonist, his inner monologue, concise and vivid dialogue, action-rich imagery, occasional symbolism, natural and fresh narration, emotional undertones in imagery and narration, concise everyday language, and short phrases for inner monologue.
An important aspect of Hemingway’s style is perhaps its subtlety and the way it expresses emotional states. The author’s feelings are never directly expressed; he always condenses them into simple, rapid, repetitive actions, embedded in natural narration, or contained in concise dialogue. Under his pen, leaves, raindrops, roads, rivers… are all soaked with emotion. Often, these are seemingly forgetful images of worldly gains and losses, hiding the author’s hidden pain and sorrow without traces of craftsmanship. The opening description of autumn’s bleakness and the later Italian retreat in “A Farewell to Arms” belong to this type of writing, and they have become famous essays of contemporary English prose. In Hemingway, the more intense the emotion, the more subtle he becomes. In that novel, after Catherine’s death, Henry, despite the nurse’s protests, insists on going into the room to see her body. Henry, struck by war, finds only Catherine’s warmth; her death is the final and most deadly blow life has dealt him. An unskilled writer might have shed many tears and poured out heartbreaking words, but Hemingway ends the novel at this emotional climax, depicting the protagonist’s sorrowful, lonely, and numb expression so seamlessly.
I drove her away, closed the door, turned off the light, but it was no use. It was like saying goodbye to the same stone statue. After a while, I came out, left the hospital, and walked back to the hotel in the rain. (Rain is a symbol of misfortune in the small middle—author) (page 288)
Hemingway’s subtlety in artistic description is very deliberate. He compares writing to “an iceberg in the sea”: “Only one-eighth of it is visible above the water, the seven-eighths are hidden in the sea.” A writer should understand how to delete, as long as “the deleted parts are familiar to the author and not avoided out of ignorance,” then “readers will still perceive their existence,” “because editing only enhances the unseen part.” This metaphor reveals one aspect of the relationship between artistic image and emotional state, namely: how to integrate thoughts and emotions into artistic images. What is visible above the water is the image; what is hidden in the sea is the emotion. The more concentrated and vivid the image, the deeper and more powerful the emotion. They are the relationship of appearance and hidden, of reality and virtual. They must not be reversed, or the image will become blurred, and the emotion shallow. Hemingway said, “The quality of a work depends on how much you cut,” and also said that editing is “to find the most accurate words,” which is not only a matter of diction but also an adjustment of the relationship between image and emotion: using precise words to shape images and appropriately express one’s thoughts and feelings. Hemingway’s subtlety is not always appropriately applied. Sometimes it is overused, making the work nearly obscure; other times, due to lack of genuine emotion, the subtlety appears somewhat pretentious, even with a formal pursuit. But when he writes at his best, he indeed achieves what our ancients demanded of poetry: “To depict difficult scenes as if they are present, and to contain unexhausted ideas beyond words.”
The elegance and simplicity of his style is also an important aspect of Hemingway’s style. Hemingway created a unique style in contemporary English prose, opening a new chapter for American literary language. He inherited Mark Twain’s brisk and natural style. Because he emphasizes subtlety and his language is more refined and powerful, his works are rich in imagery. To match his focus on sensory experience, his language is limited to everyday speech. However, in his writing, these everyday words are not overused or dull; instead, they gain new life.
A critic praised his writing: “Every word Hemingway writes moves you, like a pebble just taken from a clear stream. They are just right, subtly luminous, as if all alive. Therefore, every one of his words gives you such an impression, as if you see the bottom of the stream through the flowing water.” This statement is roughly appropriate. It captures the strength of Hemingway’s style, but also its limitations. His style is like a clear, shallow brook, winding and fresh, but ultimately narrow and monotonous.
Narrow and monotonous. Yes, this style, admired and followed by many Western writers, has its limitations. A writer’s style should not be mutually exclusive with its diversity; rather, they should complement each other, so that style can be distinctive without seeming monotonous, rich without losing its individuality. There are many such examples in American literary history. Take Mark Twain, whom Hemingway admired: his unique style might be humor, but it is not limited to humor; he is imaginative in plot, exaggerated in character, detailed and vivid in psychological description, lyrical in scenery, and his descriptions often reveal his humor. His work varies according to his ideological depth, themes, era atmosphere, and personal temperament. Hemingway’s style is distinctive but not sufficiently rich, perhaps due to his ideological views. No matter the theme, his focus often remains on his inner world and small surrounding environment. While his descriptions are unique, he tends to avoid or be unable to depict the broader life beyond the personal world, leaving flaws. For example, his protagonist is central, and others exist only for him, often turning into props; his characters are highly characteristic, refined to the point of being called “telegraphic style,” but only show the author’s craftsmanship and not the full range of their personalities; his inner monologues appear repeatedly, making the reader feel dull. It’s no wonder that some writers who once followed Hemingway’s style, when their thoughts change and they want to depict broader life, find themselves constrained by this style and abandon it. Even Hemingway himself, when describing the struggles of the Spanish people, had to abandon his original style for clearer, more direct language to express new content. However, perhaps the change of form often lags behind the change of content; the old forms he was familiar with, such as inner monologue and repetitive love descriptions, often restrain him, binding his hands and feet. This makes the style of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” less unified and harmonious than “A Farewell to Arms,” sometimes making it difficult for the author to write naturally, and the most skillful parts are not deeply related to the theme. Returning to the personal world of “The Old Man and the Sea,” Hemingway seems at ease: poetic inner monologue, concise dialogue, detailed action description, beautiful and smooth narration…
Seven
Compared with the typical bourgeois writers of America, Hemingway has his unique aspects. He is not the kind of writer who kowtows to reactionary ruling classes or is blindly loyal to them. Many writers of his era have fallen into reactionary mud, but Hemingway remained “innocent” until death. He wrote about life in other countries, but did not beautify American imperialism. He is a writer with a sense of justice; within his understanding, he dares to speak his mind. He expressed dissatisfaction with certain aspects of American society, although he did not understand the essence of the problems, and he criticized some of these aspects. Therefore, his major works before the 1940s have certain value.
He is also not a commercial writer who writes for money. Many writers of his era initially produced excellent works but later only wrote bestsellers, ending their artistic careers. He is a serious and dedicated artist who once said: “If I go to Hollywood or write trash, I could make a lot of money. But I want to write, do my best to write well, and keep writing until I die.” Such a strict self-demanding and original artist is rare in a society that treats literature as a commodity.
Of course, these do not erase his commonality as a bourgeois writer. The entire set of ruling ideas of American bourgeois society shrouds every writer like a net. Hemingway abandoned some of these but could not break through the class outlook on life, especially its core—individualism. As a respected freelance, his social status and lifestyle tend to align with the upper class, which also reinforces the conservative aspects of his outlook on life. When he was dissatisfied with reactionary ruling classes but could not connect his fate with that of the laboring people, and when reactionary rulers pressured him to choose, his only path was the bourgeois intellectual habit—escapism.
Hemingway often said he did what an artist should do—“write with the simplest and best methods I see and perceive.” But here lies the tragedy. In his later years, he pursued his ideal of beauty and heroism with refined artistic skills, but the brilliance of this form was lost because of its vague content, thus losing the ideological power of art.
If we say that the protagonist of “The Old Man and the Sea” is not a tragic figure, Hemingway’s efforts are somewhat tragic in meaning.