Paper No : 10 The American literature

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Name: Mehta Kavita Dineshbhai

Course: M.A English

Semester: 3

Batch: 2016 – 2018

Roll No: 11

Enrollment No:2069108420170020

Submitted to: S M T S.B Gardi

                        Department Of English

                         MK Bhav University.

Email id: kavitamehta164@gmail.com

Paper No: 10: The American Literature

Topic: The Old Man and the Sea – Tragedy

 

My Assignment’s

The Old Man and the Sea – Tragedy:

About the author and novel introduction

               Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak park ,Illinois, in 1899 .He was the second son of Clarence Hemingway , a doctor , and Grace Hall Hemingway , who had been an aspiring opera singer. While his father encouraged his son’s athletic and outdoor skills, his mother fostered her son’s artistic talents. In school, Hemingway was an active, if not outstanding, athlete. He wrote poems and articles for the school newspaper, and he also tried his hand at stories. After graduation Hemingway became a are porter on the Kansas city star, where he learned the newspaper’s preferred style of simple declarative sentences that was to permanently influence his own style of writing.

              The old man and the sea won the Pulitzer Prize in 1952.Two year later Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize For literature. But as he approached his sixties, Hemingway’s health began deteriorating. The once robust adventurer now suffered from hypertension, mild diabetes, depression, and paranoia. Despite treatment for mental health issues, Hemingway committed suicide on July 2, 1961. He is remembered as one of the great stylistic innovators of modern American Literature. Hemingway greatness is in his short story, which rival any other master of the form be it Joys or Chekhov or Isaac Babel.

His works are:

·       For Whom the Bell Tolls

·       In Our Time

·       The old man and the sea

·       A Farewell to Arms

·       The Sun Also Rise

             “The Old man and the Sea” is remarkable for its stress on what men can do on the world as an arena where heroic deeds are possible. The universe inhabited. The universe inhabited by Santiago. The old Cuban fisherman, is not free of tragedy and pain but these are transcended, and the affirming, is not free of  tragedy and pain but these are transcended, and the affirming tone is in sharp contrast with the pessimism permeating such books as The Sun Also Rises and a Farewell to Arms. Santiago the principle figure, is a primitive Cuban, at once religious and superstious. Yet neither his religion nor his superstitious beliefs are relevant to his tragic experience with the great marlin, they do not create it or in any way control its meaning. The fisherman himself, knowing what it is all about, relies on his own resources and not on God.

             

The Old Man and the Sea – Tragedy:

           

                                                                        

             The Old man and the Sea by Hemingway is a true classic in its essence. It is a complete tragedy in itself no less than “Hamlet”.

Tragedy:

            A tragedy is a tale of exception suffering leading generally but not always to the death of the chief protagonist of the hero. The hero is generally possessed of certain admirable qualities but he is not perfect: in fact he suffers from a flaw or a fault which precipitates his downfall although this downfall is brought about by some certain other causes too the villainy of human beings, chance accident, or the working of an arbitrary fate. The Admirable qualities or the hero must include an exceptional capacity to suffer or the power of endurance much above that of ordinary people. The tragic hero may perish but his spirit is not broken or crushed. The suffering and the fate of the hero generally arouse strong feeling of pity and fear, while the manner of enduring his suffering and his facts arouse our admiration and respect for him. Finally a tragedy should give rise to a moral order in the universe and not of chaos or moral lawlessness or a dominance of the forces of disorder and darkness.

            “The Old Man and the Sea” Fulfils most of these criteria of a tragedy. Throughout the novel we see that Santiago is showing heroic deeds. The boy Manolin calls him the best fisherman, adding, “There are many good fishermen and some great ones.”But there is only you. Santiago calls himself. A strange old man”, with strength enough for a truly big fish, knowing many tricks and having ‘resolution’, and he actually gives evidence of all these qualities afterwards. He is not an ordinary fisherman, but a superb craftsman who knows his business thoroughly and always practices it with great skill. He keeps his fishing lines straight were others allow them to drift with the current. Luck is welcome nut he believes in exactness.

          On the eighty fifth day Santiago rows far beyond the customary fishing area and he hooks a huge marlin. The account of Santiago’s struggle with the marlin has a tragic quality because of the suffering that Santiago undergoes, because, of the suffering of the marlin, and because of the endurance of both the fish and the fish and the fisherman. Our admiration and our pity are aroused both for Santiago and marlin. From the very first Santiago shows determination. “Fish”, he says, “I will stay with you until I am dead.” Next he says, “Fish, I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this ends.” His left hand becomes cramped, and the marlin proves to be bigger than he had thought it to be. He wishes to show to the marlin what sort of a man he is. “But I will show him what a man can do and what a man endures.” The fish, on the other hand, in spite of the agony it is undergoing, has proved obstinate and tough.

                When at last Santiago kills the big marlin there come the shark to eat it. Santiago has hardly enjoyed the feeling of victory when this another series of problems befell him. But proving a true tragic hero, he does not lose heart. He fights heroically. There he speaks those memorable and historic words: “But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” He knows he has performed another heroic act. So we see that Santiago’s heroic quality does not forsake him till the end.

           I like most tragic heroes, Santiago experiences what is called an inner conflict. Having killed the marlin, he asks himself whether he has committed a sin. Yes it was a sin even though he killed the marlin to keep himself alive and feed many people. But everything is a sin. “Do not think about sin”, He tells himself, and yet keeps thinking about sin.

             We find out that Santiago is perfectly conscious of the transgression, which has brought a disaster for him. He realized that he went too far out, that he went “beyond all people in the world.” Hemingway seems to be saying that man, in his individualism, his pride, and his need, inevitably goes beyond his true place in the world and thereby brings violence and destruction on himself and others. “I am sorry that I went too far out, I ruined us both,” says Santiago to the mutilated marlin.“You violated you luck when went too far outside”, he says to himself. Finally, when he asks himself: “What beat you?” the answer is:”Nothing .I went out too far.”

               Going ‘too far’ for fishing was his mis-calculation. What led him too far was his ‘pride’. He aspired to catch big fish. His pride in his strength, aspiration to catch big fish and going ‘too far’ proved to be his ‘hubris’ – the tragic flaw. He has shown several qualities of tragic heroes. Like Hamlet, he thinks ‘ a lot and tried to keep his mind ‘clear’ ,like Macbeth, he has ambition ,like King Lear, his calculations goes wrong ,like Brutus, he stabs his ‘friend’ and ‘brother’,.The old man is the perfect embodiment of tragic hero.

               It has unties of time, place and action also. So “The Old Man and the Sea” is a remarkable tale of courage, endurance, pride, humanity, and death. It is classical not only technically, in its narrow confines, the purity of its design, that like a unities of time, place and action, and even in the fatal flaw of exceeding one’s limits and going too far  out. It is also classical in spirit, in its nature acceptance of things as they are. It is much in the spirit of the Greek tragedies in which men fight against great odds and win moral victories. It is especially like Greek tragedy in that, as the hero fails and falls, we get an unforgettable glimpse of what stature a man achieve.

              Thus, Old Man and the sea is a moving parable about the apotheosis of human soul, about humanity’s struggle to survive in a hostile world, its passion to show grace under pressure.

Conclusion:

                  Through perfectly realized symbolism and irony, then, Hemingway has beautifully and movingly spun out of an old fisherman’s great trial just such a pragmatic ethic and its basis in an essentially tragic of old man, and in this reaffirmation of man’s most cherished values and their reaffirmation in the terms of our time rests the deepest and the enduring significance of “The Old Man and the Sea”.

Work cited:

http://www.bookrags.com/essay-2006/7/17/6120/36794/#gsc.tab=0

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