海明威象征手法与作品的艺术性研究

ABSTRACT

 

Ernest Hemingway is one of the most famous writers of the twentieth century, and he played an important role in the development of modern fiction. His writing style has been studied by many scholars all over the world. In his short story The Snows of Kilimanjaro, the use of symbolism is one of the main writing devices. Hemingway uses the symbolism so skillfully that it greatly enhances the artistic effects of the work. 

This paper will mainly make a detailed analysis of symbolism used in the story. This paper will be divided into three parts: part one gives a brief introduction of Ernest Hemingway's writing style and the main plot of The Snows of Kilimanjaro; part two makes a detailed analysis of the symbolic meanings of the things and people in the story, thus to present how successfully Hemingway uses symbolism; part three discusses the theme interpretations with reference to these symbols. Through analysis, this paper will try to present Hemingway's excellent writing skills and how he has deepened the themes by using symbolism, thus to give the readers a better understanding of Hemingway's writing style and his work The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

 

KEY WORDS: symbolism, theme, The Snows of Kilimanjaro

 

OUTLINE

 

Introduction

Ernest Hemingway is a famous American writer. His writing style is special and has been studied by many scholars. His famous short story The Snows of Kilimanjaro is full of symbols of specific meanings. This paper will mainly make a detailed analysis of the symbols used in the story and how these symbols contribute to indicate the themes of the story.

Ⅰ. A brief introduction of Ernest Hemingway and The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Ⅱ.Analysis of the symbols used in the story

2.1 Symbols of death 

2.1.1 The vultures

2.1.2 The hyena

2.2 Symbols of destruction

2.2.1 The gangrene

2.2.2 Helen and her money

2.3 Symbols of purity and immortality

2.3.1 The leopard

2.3.2 The snow-covered mountain

Ⅲ. Theme interpretations with reference to symbols

3.1 The theme of death

3.2 The theme of man as a failed artist

3.3 The theme of aspiration 

Conclusion

Through discussions and analysis, the author has tried to present one aspect of Hemingway's writing style-symbolism, and how symbolism has contributed to indicate the themes of the story. And further, the readers of this paper will realize that Hemingway's short story The Snows of Kilimanjaro is a great work, a work of the world.

 

Introduction

As one of the best-known writers of the twentieth century, Ernest Hemingway played an important role in the development of modern fiction. In his short story The Snows of Kilimanjaro, he drew from his own experiences to create a fiction that was praised as direct, immediate, and powerful. The Snows of Kilimanjaro is a short story rich in symbolism. Hemingway uses the symbolism so skillfully that it greatly enhances the artistic effects of his work. This paper mainly discusses the symbolism in this short story from the following aspects: part one gives a brief introduction of Ernest Hemingway and The Snows of Kilimanjaro; part two gives a detailed analysis of the symbols used in the story; part three discusses the theme interpretations with reference to these symbols.

Through discussion, we try to show how symbolism contrives to present the central themes of the story: death; man as a failed artist; and aspiration.
 

Ⅰ. A brief introduction of Ernest Hemingway and The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Hemingway is famous all over the world. However, it is still necessary to give a brief introduction of him. His books are an expression of the society of his time and a reflection of most situations he has experienced in his life time. Hemingway used to say that he was mainly a reporter and as such he wrote his books. His books, written in the same direct and objective style of his reports, depict himself, his wives, his family and his friends and all the experiences they have lived.

The plot of the story is very simple:

Two people are waiting within sight of Kilimanjaro for the arrival of a plane to take them to civilization. The main character, Harry, a dissipated writer, has gangrene in his leg from a thorn scratch which he neglected. With him is Helen, his wife, whom he hates but whom he married for money. The price he paid for the money was the sacrifice of his talent as a writer.

Harry knows that he is dying and as he waits he recalls his war experiences where there had been a background of snow. Later he remembers Constantinople and the Bosporus, Paris as it was in his writing days, women of all types, war and death, his grandfather's house, the Black Forest. He had meant to write them all down but instead he had married Helen and her money.

As he grows weaker, he senses the approach of death, which seems to be symbolized by the passing of a hyena, more and bolder. Death comes closer until the dying man can feel its weight on his chest.

Then it seems to him that the plane arrives and he is taken aboard. The plane flies higher and higher until he realizes that it is taking him to the clean beauty of the snows of Kilimanjaro.

The hyena wakes Helen, who looks at her husband and sees that he is dead.

Though the plot is simple, this story has been studied by many scholars. In this paper,we'll mainly concern about the symbolism in the story.
 

Ⅱ. Analysis of the symbols used in the story

The Snows of Kilimanjaro is a short story rich in symbolism. Hemingway endows his ordinary people and things with symbolic meanings such as the vultures, the hyena, the gangrene, the wife and her money, the alcohol, the leopard, the snow-covered mountain, etc. In this part, we will discuss these symbols in details. These symbols can be divided into three catalogues, each having the similar symbolic meanings: the vultures and the hyena are the symbols of death; the gangrene, the wife and her money, the alcohol are the symbols of Harry's destruction; the leopard and the snow-covered mountain are the symbols of purity and immortality.

Having set its background, we shall start analyzing the symbols used in the story.

2.1 Symbols of death

Death is related to the central theme of the story: the death of a writer before his work is done, and the description of how it feels to die is probably the most original feature of The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

2.1.1 The vultures

The man mentions for the first time that the big birds-the vultures are birds of prey, which have ceased circling over Harry and Helen and now have begun to walk around on the ground. The vultures are animals which feed on carrion. It is natural that Harry, whose flesh is rotting (in fact, carrion already) should associate these creatures with the idea of dying. As he lies near death in the mimosa shade at the opening of the story, he watches the vultures obscenely squatting in the glare of the plain. They seemingly know that Harry is close to death. Hemingway uses the symbol of the vulture in its natural setting, Africa, to convey the horror of approaching death and the agony of waiting for death. Ironically, the reader also learns that in happier times, Harry spent time observing the vulture's behavior so that he could use them in his writing. 

Therefore, the vultures are the symbols of death.

2.1.2 The hyena 

As Helen and Harry are having drinks, a hyena appears in the early evening; just it has been doing for two weeks. Hemingway uses the hyena as the second important, prominent symbol of death. The hyena is another carrion eater that is probably the most despised of all African animals because of its filth and aggressive team efforts to destroy and to steal other animals wounded and suffering on the plain. 

As night falls and the voice of the hyena is heard in the land, the death image transfers itself from the vultures to this foul devourer of the dead. With the arrival of his first, strong premonition of death, which has no other form than "a sudden, evil- smelling emptiness", Harry finds that "the odd thing was that the hyena slipped lightly along the edge of it". #p#分页标题#e#

The hyena is also used to foreshadow Harry's death. Its presence is felt nearer and nearer. First "a hyena crossed the open on his way around the hill". When Harry felt his death for the first time "the hyena slipped lightly along the edge of it". Just before he felt death for the second and last time "he heard the hyena make a noise just outside the range of the fire". As a last sign that death is about to reach out for him. At last "death had come and rested its head on the foot of the cot and he could smell its breath". 

Seeing the hyena, knowing about the vultures, Harry suddenly knows for certain that he is actually going to die here on the plains of Africa.

2.2 Symbols of destruction

Harry, despite the fact that he knows the end is near, has no thoughts of God. He sees death as something he can almost touch, something that starts by "resting its head on the foot of the cot and he could smell its breath". Then it moved "up on him" and "came a little closer so its weight was all upon his chest". There are many symbols of Harry's destruction, among which the gangrene, Helen and her money, and the alcohol are more important than the others. We will analyze them one by one.

2.2.1 The gangrene

Hemingway does not tell us Harry's last name; we know only that he is a writer and that he and his wife, Helen, are on a safari in East Africa. Their truck has malfunctioned, and, while trying to fix it, Harry scratched himself and neglected applying iodine to the scratch. Now, gangrene has begun to eat away at the flesh on his right leg. The stench is overpowering. Harry is dying in the plains from gangrene, a stinking, putrid, and deadly infection, causing his body to rot and turn greenish black. The gangrene is now poisoning his body and gnawing away at the few days of life that he has left. Therefore, the gangrene symbolizes Harry's physical destruction.

2.2.2 Helen and her money

Like the gangrene, Harry's wife Helen is another symbol of Harry's destruction. Harry married her for her money. While Harry was dying, he came to realize all that he had not accomplished. He began to blame others for the death that was awaiting him and for all the things he never wrote. Harry shows his disappointment of not being able to write by stating he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Harry first blame for not being successful was his present wife, whom he married for her money. Harry emphasizes his quest for a better life and more money in the statement: "Your damned money was my amour. My Swift and my Amour".

Harry has a deep sense of his loss of artistic integrity. Having given up his talent in favor of a luxurious way of life by marrying a rich woman and then growing into complete dependence on it, he had died artistically long before his physical death. He knows that he has traded his former integrity for "security and comfort", destroying his talent. So he accuses himself that he is the only one responsible for the destruction of his talent by worshipping a false god: money and luxury.

To sum up, the gangrene, Helen and her money, all symbolize Harry's destruction. The gangrene is the symbol of his physical destruction, while Helen and her money symbolize his spiritual destruction, and alcohol is the symbol of his self-destruction.

2.3 Symbols of purity and immortality

In the summit of Kilimanjaro, there is a frozen carcass of a leopard. These two images stand for a kind of purity and immortality in contrast to Harry's destruction.

2.3.1 The leopard

During his otherworldly flight over Kilimanjaro, Harry sees the legendary leopard. The dead, preserved leopard can be seen as a symbol of immortality, a reward for taking the difficult road. Harry himself was a "leopard" at certain times in his life, as were some of his acquaintances in his own stories. Specifically, Harry can be seen as a leopard during his youth, when he lived in a poor neighborhood of Paris as a writer in the war, when he gave his last morphine pills for himself to the horribly suffering Williamson on his deathbed.

Some mystic impulse within Harry and within the leopard drove them to seek out God, or the god within themselves, or immortality that resided far from ugly, mundane reality. If the leopard was searching for some sort of immortality, then it found immortality at the summit of Kilimanjaro, where it lies frozen-preserved for all eternity. But Harry does not find his immortality. Harry had a romantic weakness for the world of wealth. Attracted by dreams of "high life", he went too far out of his element and eventually found himself trapped, his talent and creativity frozen, dried up.

When he dies, tragic irony exists. The leopard died in a high, clean, well-lighted place; Harry, in contrast, dies rotting and stinking on the plains, lamenting his wasted life and his failure to complete his desired projects. 

Therefore, the leopard stands for purity and immortality.

2.3.2 The snow-covered mountain

In most civilizations, God or God's promise of immortality resides on the highest mountain top: Mount Olympus for the Greeks.

Kilimanjaro is the mountain and its western summit is called the "House of God" by the Masai. The mountains are symbolic of purity, innocence and aspiration in contrast to the misery and corruption of the plains. So the clean death of the overreaching leopard and the dirty painless death through gangrene are used as powerful symbols. The clean carcass of the leopard on the summit of the mountain contrast with the man rotting on the dusty plain. The beast signifies the artist that dies nobly, seeking the summit, and the gangrene stands for the corruption and mortification of the talent misused, prostituted, permitted to atrophy.

We have analyzed the symbols used in the story, and all these symbols contribute to indicate the themes of the story. In the nest part, we will discuss it in details.
 

Ⅲ. Theme interpretations with reference to symbols 

The Snows of Kilimanjaro reveals the preoccupation with mortality common to much of Hemingway's fiction. As in his novel The Snows of Kilimanjaro, a significant distinction is drawn between spiritual and physical death. By compromising his literary talent, Harry has already embraced a kind of death-in-life. The corruption spreading from his gangrenous leg simply makes manifest his moral decay, an irony of which he is painfully aware. The Snows of Kilimanjaro presents a fascinating exception to this rule by making use of a group of recurrent symbols. The figures of the frozen leopard and scavenging hyena contrast two attitudes to death: while the leopard's preserved corpse suggests the possibility of immortality through fame, the hyena signifies the inevitability of death. 

3.1 The theme of death

Death is a dominant feature in The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Hemingway's stories deal largely with the unpleasant aspects of life. Many of them emphasize the reactions of the characters to a world which is not too kind. Some deal with the discovery by young men of the cruelty of human beings like those which depict war time. Many are pessimistic because of Hemingway's loss of faith in usually accepted ideas.

Not surprisingly, because death is at the core of this story, one of the central themes that occur again and again in Hemingway's stories and novels is man's direct encounter with death or with approaching death. In this case, as with other of Hemingway's heroes, we have a writer, Harry, who never writes what he has wanted to; now it is too late. Death is so near that it can be smelled, even in the presence of the stinking, smelly hyena.

By using the symbols of death, Hemingway presents a vivid image of an approaching death, thus contrive to present the theme of death.

3.2 The theme of man as a failed artist

The death of a writer before his work is done was one of Hemingway's themes of reflection. This is mainly because the time available is so short and the temptations not to work are so strong. He tries to rationalize away these painful thoughts about unfinished work by doubting whether he had ever had any real talent. 

Physical death is honorable and he doesn't fear it. But as he dies physically he loses forever any chance to retrieve his work, to start writing again. He doesn't care that he is about to die but he can't accept the fact that his work will be left unwritten. So it is spiritual death that haunts him and not physical death. 

Harry's impending death causes him to evaluate his life. The dying writer realizes that how often and how much he frittered away his life, avoiding writing the things that he wanted to. and his last thoughts are moving recollections of some of the many things that will now go unwritten. This consciousness that he is dying before his work is done represents Harry's psychological conflict which leads us to the central theme of the story: man as a failed artist.

Harry is a typical failed artist.

In the story, the gangrene, Helen and her money, are symbols of Harry's destruction. These symbols appear in the story again and again, and present the theme of man as a failed artist. 

3.3 The theme of aspiration

Before the story begins, there is a paragraph describing the mountain and the leopard: "Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the House of God. Close to the western summit there is a dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude." The second and the last appearance of the mountain and in the story is in Harry's last dream of escape "and there, ahead, all he could see, as wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievable white in the sun, was the square top of Kilimanjaro. And then he knew that there was where he was going".#p#分页标题#e#

Why Harry was going there? Because the mountain and the leopard there symbolize purity and immortality. Harry goes there to seek for this kind of purity and immortality, to finish his work left undone. This is a kind of spiritual aspiration. Hemingway uses these symbols to indicate that people should have aspiration, and they should pursue purity and immortality of their spirit.

 

Conclusion

Ernest Hemingway's reputation as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century seems secure. Now just over several decades of his death, his novels are frequently revived. He continues to provoke critical inquiry. The Snows of Kilimanjaro is one of the greatest works of Hemingway. In the story, the background, the plot, the characterization, and the literary devices all contribute to the development of the themes of the story. However, the most important way Hemingway develops the themes is by using symbolism. His use of symbolism is a contribution to the characters and the overall readability of the story.

In this paper, the author has tried to show how symbolism contributes to make Hemingway's short story The Snows of Kilimanjaro a great work. Hemingway uses the symbolism so skillfully that it greatly enhances the artistic effects and the readability of his work.

Through discussion, the author has tried to present one aspect of Hemingway's writing style-symbolism, and how symbolism has contributed to indicate the themes of the story. And further, the author hopes the readers of this paper may have realized that Hemingway's short story The Snows of Kilimanjaro is a great work, a work of the world.

 

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