Hemingway is possibly one of American most famous writers. He wasborn in Oak Park Illinois, he started his career as a writerin a newspaper office at the age of 17. He has his unique artistic style,particular type of hero in his novels. With his first novel collection In Our Time published, Hemingway has attractedmore and more attention from the American literary field. What’s more,Hemingway is considered to be the spokesman for “the Lost Generation”.

Gradually, Hemingway creates many works and succeeds in forming hisown style. During all his life, he wrote theSun also Rises, Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, the Old Man and the Sea andso on.

The Old Man and the Sea is a short novel and this book I have read is published on July2005 in Beijing Fengtai. This is a story about an old Cuba fisherman, Santiago. After 84 days without catchinganything, he goes out many miles away from shore and hooks a giant fish. Aftertwo days and two nights exhausting struggling, the giant fish was killed andtied beside the boat. Almost at once, dangerous large fish begin to take hisprize away with their sharp teeth. [1] The sharks eat the whole fish only lefta skeleton of fish bone. However, Santiagostill takes it home.

The Old Man and the Sea is the most understanding short novel among Santiago’s later works. The story of an oldfisherman’s journey has long and lonely struggle with a fish and the sea, andvictory in defeat. For the sake of this book, Hemingway wins Nobel Prize in 1954.

What’s more, one of his writing features is that he uses a lot ofshort sentences. The departure from the norm is in the direction of sentences,simplicity rather than complexity in TheOld Man and the Sea. [2] This is the phenomenon of internal deviation,which explains the phenomenon, not uncommon in prose function, of an ordinary,even banal piece of language. [3]

Besides, in this novel, Hemingway employs an “impersonal” style of narration,which is in the third person. According to the third person narration, the narratordescribes the character and events objectively. In this novel, Hemingwaydescribes that“ “I will killhim though”, he said in all his greatness and his glory, ”showing Santiago’s the pride ofkilling the fish, write in a rather objective voice.   

The last and the most important writing style of Hemingway is thesymbolism. Hemingway presents the fisher man as the ideal man. He created ahero who personifies honor, courage, endurance, and faith. Santiago fights at the cost of his limitedlife, his strength. Hemingway also makes clearly the theme by what the old man says,“Man is not made for defeat” and “a man can be destroyed but not defeated”. Whenfacing with the difficulties, Santiagouses his wisdom, experience, and indestructible spirit to over come it.

From the foregoing, we can conclude thatHemingway gives us a fantastic insight into different aspect of stylistics, andall of these are appeal to enhance the story’s charm and display the theme ofthe novel: a man can be destroyed but not defeated.