海明威《在异乡》中的反战主题---毕业论文.doc

【标题】海明威在异乡中的反战主题 【作者】谢 昭 鲲 【关键词】海明威；战争；残酷；孤独；反战 【指导老师】程琼 张婕 【专业】英语 【正文】I.IntroductionErnest Miller Hemingway(July 21, 1899 July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. He was a member of the 1920s expatriate community in Paris, and one of the veterans of World War I later known as“the Lost Generation”. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Hemingways distinctive writing style is characterized by conciseness and understatement, and had a significant influence on the development of twentieth-century fiction. Many of his works are now considered classics of American literature.War, due to its extreme cruelty, non-humanism and truculence to human society, has always been thought as an enemy of all mankind. There are many writers who write a lot of war-themed fictions to oppose wars, and call for peace. Among those western writers who are famous for the war-themed works, Hemingway was such a great American antiwar writer. As a youth of 18, Ernest Hemingway was eager to fight in the Great War. Poor vision kept him out of the army, so he joined the ambulance corps instead and was sent to France. Then he was transferred to Italy where he became the first American wounded in that country during World War I. He participated in two world wars, and won the reputation as a battlefield hero. He was a battle-scarred person with no fear of sacrifice. Although badly wounded, he never gave up his morale and still fought against the war. However, Hemingway was not a person just like what the public think of him as. Behind the shiny medals lay a strong antiwar sentiment and unparalleled fear of war. Even though the war had long been dispersed, its shadow was still a nightmare repeatedly engulfing his heart. He couldnt help thinking about that and had to express his real thoughts through writing. Having witnessed the baptism of blood and fire of the WWI, Hemingway saw clearly the nature of war and deeply felt the wars bloodiness and cruelty. Throughout his war- themed fictions, from his plain and simple expression, readers are invariably feeling a kind of repressive pessimism and astonishing antiwar sentiment. Among his works, the best example of the above characteristics should be his short story In Another Country, in which his antiwar thoughts flush in between the lines and aspects.II.Significance of Study on the Theme of Antiwar In Another CountryA. The Social Echos Of the Antiwar ThemeThis topic will do some reasearch on Hemingways In Another Country to reflect that: War, due to its extreme cruelty, non-humanism and truculence to human society, has always been thought as an enemy of all mankind.War is the source of the evil of human society.What we need is a peaceful world.Nowadays,there are also many wars,including oil war and area war,and so on.The beginners of war dont think about their people,they view benefit as the most important thing.We must spare no effort to make them realise the important of peace.Without peace,there is no development or benefit.I want to provide the Antiwar theme in Hemingways In Another Country and its influence at that time.To make people,especially the beginners of war to cherish peace and beautiful life now,abondon the war, estabilish a new way to resolve problems and build a peaceful home.B.The Environmental Depictions in In Another CountryHemingways antiwar thought and war-weariness are outpoured firstly from the environmental depictions. Environmental description is a kind of traditional realistic writing skill. It can convey everything to the readers, including feel, vision, emotion, place, and sentiment. And it can help authors to build a kind of atmosphere to reveal the characters inner world. In the first paragraph, the author uses the environmental depiction to show readers a bleak, desolate, and heavy scene. Lets look at a period of depiction in the first paragraph in In Another Country:“In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came on, and it was pleasant along the streets looking in the windows. There was much game hanging outside the shops, and the snow powdered in the fur of the foxes and the wind blew their tails. The deer hung stiff and heavy and empty, and small birds blew in the wind and the wind turned their feathers. It was a cold fall and the wind came down from the mountains.” 1In this environmental depiction, Hemingway repeatedly uses”fall”“cold”“snow”“wind” and some other words(in this short paragraph, the“fall” appears three time,“cold” appears twice, and“wind” appears four times) to show a bleak and desolate dark background in a foreign country. And at the same time the author creates a bleak atmosphere in the first paragraph, from which readers can understand clearly the characters inner helplessness and loneliness. In addition, in the sentence of“The deer hung stiff and heavy and empty”, the use of the three words“stiff”“heavy” and“empty” does not give a comfortable feeling. Simply, readers would think that symbolizes the soldiers dead bodies. And people can easily feel that it is the chill and frightening war which bring hundreds of soldiers far away from their warm and comfortable home. They stay in the cold bleak place, facing death and distress, and surrounded by the ghastly battle smoke. This depressing environmental depiction sets a heavy and gray tone for the whole story, not only indicating the American soldiers unbearable loneliness during the war time, but also revealing that the feeling of cold was due to the nature and the brutal war. It should be a sad thing that soldiers can not go to the front. However, in the novel they feel lucky for their hurts. At night, looking at the shop window, which is extremely a common scene, can make them feel“comfortable”. It is because this kind of looking can temporarily send away the terrible shadow of war in order to obtain a short- term peace. Nevertheless, the cold autumn night as well as the hanging dead prey may inevitably make them have the feeling of extremely suspicion. The image generated by the environment gives rise to strong resonance at the heart of these soldiers. And these hanging preys symbolize their own destinies. On the battlefield, soldiers are slaughtered in a large number who are just like these dead animal bodies.“The only difference is that these meet were not send to process, but to bury.”2 At this moment, their inner worlds are much colder than the outside coldl. It is no wonder that they would choose the bridge where a woman is selling roasted chestnuts, because“It was warm, standing in front of her charcoal fire, and the chestnuts were warm afterward in your pocket”. Everyday, they have to go to the cold hospital for treatment with their cold hearts. Through the soldiers eyes, Hemingway shows his disgusted feeling to the war by the environmental depictions.”III. The Theme of Antiwar Reflected in In Another CountryAThe Depictions of Casualties as a Powerful Accusation of War1. Physical Hurts Caused by The WarIn this short novel, Hemingway does not directly use such words as“cruel, heinous” and other subjective words to assess and express his resentful feeling to the war, but he speaks the bloody truth from the soldiers point of view, which reveals the wars brutality and ruthless. There is an ordinary sentence in the second paragraph of the novel which says:“There were usually funerals starting from the courtyard.”5 Hemingway uses these seemingly mediocre words to suggest that the war is a machine for killing people and the battlefield is like a slaughterhouse, where death is inevitable, rather common, and not surprising. There are several soldiers in the novel who are badly hurt by the war. They are sacrifices of the war. And their dreams have been shattered due to the war. In the following paragraphs, the author then describes in detail the soldiers appalling hit in the war:“My knee did not bend and the leg dropped straight from the knee to the ankle without a calf, and the machine was to bend the knee and make it move as in riding a tricycle. But it did not bend yet, and instead the machine lurched when it came to the bending part”“In the next machine was a major who had a little hand like a babysflapped the stiff fingers”，“Another boy who walked with his face because he had no nose then and his face was to be rebuilt. He had gone out to the front from the military academy and been wounded within an hour after he had gone into the front line for the first time”6To see such a horrible picture, how can we remain indifferent to it？These young lives are once parents beloved sons, the wives affectionate husbands and lovers, the childrens respectable and amiable fathers. But now they either lie forever on the battlefield or severely disabled by the war. They could never go back and engage in their favorable careers and activities“I” like to play football, and the major had been a very great fencer and the greatest fencer in Italy before the war. One of them was to be a lawyer, and one was to be a painter, and one had intended to be a soldier. Their dreams and hopes are shattered by the war completely.2. Changes in Mentality Caused by Physical HurtsThousands of people became disabled after the war and many of them lost their lives. Even if they survived, they could hardly go back to the normal lives again, just like the soldiers in the novel. The disabilities have brought not only inconveniences to their lives, but also mentality changes.“The tall boy with a very pale face who was to be a lawyer had lived a very long time with death and was a little detached”7. Others are a little detached, and there is nothing that holds them together except that they meet every afternoon at the hospital. They do not care about anything, even the medals which were obtained by their blood. Like Henry in A Farewell to Arms, in his eyes, the so-called glory was just a joke. In the hospital, when asked how to get the medal, Henry has no interest in it. He just repeatedly states that he has no contributions, and he is injured at dinner. As Henry he himself says:“Now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it”. 8Changes in mentality are also reflected in their attitude to lives. Besides going to the hospital for treatment, they usually go the Cova( a wine shop). It is rich and warm and not too brightly lighted, and noisy and smoky at certain hours, and there always girls at the tables and the illustrated papers on a rack on the wall. They could only seek such things as sensual stimulation to make themselves happy in the extremely hopeless world.In The Sun Also Rises, there are a group of young people who live in Paris. They lived the same life as the soldiers in In Another Country. They are far away from home to live in Paris due to the war. They suffer a lot of chaos from the war, and become hopeless to life. Some of them become wild oats, some addicts to alcohol, and some even indulges in fishing and bull fighting. This kind of abnormal psychology embodies the most prominently the Italy major. He becomes angry just because the American soldier wants to get married. He speaks very angrily and bitterly:“He cannot marry. He cannot marry”“If he is to lose everything, he should not place himself in a position to lose that. He should not place himself in a position to lose. He should find things he cannot lose.”9 We can clearly see that the war has destroyed peoples mentality heavily. Even getting married may become abnormal in the soldiers eyes. Having witnessed the wars heinous destruction f the human lives, who can not feel the Hemingways antiwar anger between the lines then?B. The Evil of War Further Revealed by Post-war Disillusionments of Soldiers1. Soldiers Suffering Loneliness and Psychological and Spiritual PainHemingway firstly describes the soldiers external pain, and then deeply seeks for the inner world of the soldiers. And he depicts specifically the soldiers psychological and emotional disillusionment in the story. These soldiers are not only physically devastated by the war, but also suffer intolerable loneliness and immense psychological and spiritual pain. They are suffered in another country, staying in the bleak and cold hospital, facing only death, pain, and those disgusting machines. The Italian people do not welcome them, which makes them feel even more disconsolate. Although they all get medals in the war, they feel neither proud nor glorious at all. They can only feel the distress and dread after the war. We can understand this point from the following sentence:“I knew that I would never have done such things, and I was very much afraid to die, and often lay in bed at night by myself, afraid to die and wondering how I would be when I went back to the front again.”10 Through the soldiers inner monologue, Hemingway reveals the devastating effects of the hideous war and the lingering shadow caused by the war. Major marries his wife after his totally disabled during the war, while his wife soon dies of pneumonia. All of this makes him suffer a heavy blow, and he plunges into the abyss of despair; he seems to have seen clearly everything in the world, and then he becomes cynical, and has no interest in anything. We can pry into his inner world through Hemingways depictions of him. He does not believe bravery and machines. He says that it is all nonsense, just an idiotic idea. The war shatters his dream and love for life so that he becomes detached to everything. He has always“looked straight ahead at the wall” or his head is up“looking at nothing”. when he talks, he always shouts that one cannot marry or he would lose it. These words sound like flapdoodles by a man who has lost his sense. Major and some other soldiers have become numb due to the war. They can not see hopes of life, and have lost confidence and belief of life. They become totally disappointed, despaired, and lost. All this is caused by the war. Spiritual hurt is much more difficult to cure than the physical trauma. Hemingways depictions of the soldiers spirit and psychological status expose the wars severe devastation to the characters. And at the same time, he expresses his dislike of war. It can be said that he is the spokesman of“the Lost Generation”, and a peace-loving man.In In Another Country, Hemingway tries to convey that the brutal war has not only destroyed the soldiers bodies and spirits, but also has broken the normal relations between people. Detachment replaces passion, and hatred replaces friendship. They are completely detached from the social groups to stay in a wasteland. The title itself contains this meaning. The other injured are all Italian, except“I” in the novel. However, they all feel as if they were in another country. They are unaccompanied, and unable to communicate with people around. People there do not understand them and even hate them. So they usually have to walk together. In the novel, the author depicts:“We walked the short way through the communist quarter because we were four together. The people hated us because we were officers, and from a wine-shop some one called out,“A basso gli ufficiali!” as we passed” 11.These injured soldiers who experienced the bitter war and obtained glories do not get what they should have after the war. They couldnt be commiserated by the people, but be hated, which makes them feel even much colder.2.Abnormal Psychological Sentiment Caused by The WarSoldiers unnable to maintain normal comrade relations“The boys at first were very polite about my medals and asked me what I had done to get them. I showed them the papers, which were written in a very beautiful language and full of fratellanza and abnegazione, but which really said, with the adjectives removed, that I had been given the medals because I was an American. After that their manner changed a little toward me, although I was their friend against outsiders. I was a friend, but I was never really one of them after they had read the citations, because it had been different with them and they had done very different things to get their medals” 12As injured soldiers, they should have been friends. They have the same enemy, and their destinies are the same. Indeed, before others know the truth, they are friends. However, when they get the answer, they begin to feel that he is not a man like them, because they had done very different things to get their medals. This kind of attitude seems ridiculous, but it really happened.“I” am never really one of them after that. Hemingway raises the abnormal psychological sentiment caused by the war to a new degree in thoughts, so that the readers can directly feel that the author is venting his antiwar emotion. All this is inseparable from the WWI. If there were no war at all, there should be no direct destruction caused by the war to the whole human society. Therefore, there should not have had such absurd and sad activities. The wars cruelties and fraudulence dare isplayed nakedly through Hemingways description.The soldiers happiness for not going to the frontIf they change in the mentality just because they want to choose a different life style, we may get a little comfort from it. But agony caused by the inner world trauma can not be eliminated. In the novel, the narrator is suffering the pain in a long time. Although he wont go to the front, the war is always there.“Walking home at night through the empty streets with the cold wind and all the shops closed, trying to k