A Stylistic Analysis of “A Clean, Welllighted Place” .doc

《A Stylistic Analysis of “A Clean, Welllighted Place” .doc》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《A Stylistic Analysis of “A Clean, Welllighted Place” .doc（17页珍藏版）》请在三一办公上搜索。

1、对一个干净明亮的地方的文体学分析A Stylistic Analysis of “A Clean, Well-lighted Place”Contents Abstract . 1 Key Words. .1 Brief Introduction of Ernest Hemingway. 2 Stylistic Analysis of “A Clean Well Lighted Place”.3(1) Brief Introduction to “A Clean, Well-lighted Place”3（2）Stylistic Analysis focus on the relationsh

2、ip between “form” and “content”.51 Dialogue Analysis.52 Sentence and Diction Analysis.6(3)The Ambiguity of A Clean Well-lighted Place.8(4)Nada and the Clean Well-Lighted Place.10(5) Survival through Irony10(6) Character, Irony and Resolution.16. Conclusion. 22Reference.22A Stylistic Analysis of “A C

3、lean, Well-lighted Place”摘 要：美国“迷惘一代”代表作家海明威的作品，影响了战后美国一代青年人的思想观念。对了解和研究美国文学及美国历史有重要意义。文学文体学在中国的研究已有很长的历史，但与国外的研究水平还有一定差距，用文体学对文本进行分析研究，有利于对作者话语的把握，从而更进一步把握和理解文章的思想内容。本文通过从文体学角度分析海明威的短篇小说一个干净明亮的地方，试图揭示此篇短篇小说的语言风格和特色；从对其话语的分析，进一步发掘内容和形式在海明威作品中的完美结合，从而反映其作品的经典性。关键词： 内容 形式 文体学视角Abstract: Ernest Hemingw

4、ay is the representative of the “Lost Generation” in American literature. His works influenced a whole generations mind and view after the two world wars. To study his works has an important literary significance of knowing and studying of American Literature and History. Stylistics has quite a long

5、 history in China while it still has a long way to go compared with the Western countries. Using stylistic analysis to the text is easier to catch the real meaning of the textual words in order to understand the underlined meaning that the author wants to express. This thesis tries to analyze the sh

6、ort story “A Clean, Well-lighted Place” of Hemingway in a stylistic perspective in order to show the language style of Hemingway. And through the analysis of words and dictions, we can better understand why Hemingways works are classical through his perfect combination of form and content.Key Words:

7、 content form stylistic perspectiveA Stylistic Analysis of “A Clean, Well-lighted Place” A Brief Introduction to Ernest HemingwayAuthor Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in the village of Oak Park, Illinois, close to the prairies and woods west of Chicago. Both here and in Michigan, he wou

8、ld explore camp, fish and hunt with his physician father, Dr. Clarence Ed Hemingway. In Chicago he would attend concerts and operas and visit art museums with his mother, a musician and artist. Both parents and their nearby families fostered the Victorian priorities of the time: religion, family, wo

9、rk and discipline. They followed the Victorians elaborate sentimental style in living and writing. At Oak Park and River Forest High School, Ernest reported and wrote articles, poems and stories for the schools publications largely based on his direct experiences. The year Ernest graduated he began

10、reporting for the Kansas City Star. Here he learned to get to the heart of a story with direct, simple sentences. After entering World War I the following year, he was wounded near the Italian/Austrian front. Hospitalized, he fell in love with his nurse, who later called off their relationship. Thes

11、e dramatic personal events against the backdrop of a brutal war became the basis of Hemingways first widely successful novel, A Farewell to Arms, published in the following decade. In Europe in the 1920s, Ernest learned from avant-garde writers like Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound their literary spars

12、eness and compression. Hemingway used these methods in short stories and novels that captured the attention of both critics and the public. After growing success with his groundbreaking style, Hemingway wrote out of his own direct experience about bullfighting, big game hunting and deep sea fishing

13、on three continents. In the 1930s, he turned to writing for causes, including democracy as he knew it in the Spanish Civil War and World War II. In each conflict he sought support for the side he favored. But he insisted on impartially telling what it was in both wars, which he knew firsthand from b

14、egin there. In the years following World War II, many critics said Hemingways best writing was past. But he surprised them all by publishing the novella, The Old Man and the Sea, about a poor Cuban fishermans struggle to land a great fish. This work led to his Pulitzer Prize in 1952. Two years later

15、 he received the Nobel Prize for his powerful, style- making mastery of the art of modern narration. Hemingways years following these awards saw few works as successful as his novella or earlier writing. The effects of Ernests lifelong depressions, illnesses and accidents were catching up with him.

16、It was especially devastating now that he could no longer write as he once did. In July, 1961, he ended his life in Ketchum, Idaho. But as he had hoped, his writing lives on. His works continue to sell very well, translated in an amazing variety of languages around the worldStylistic Analysis of Ern

17、est Hemingways “A Clean, Well-lighted Place”(1) Brief Introduction to “A Clean, Well-lighted Place”: What stands out about A Clean, Well-Lighted Place is its minimalism. Known for simple sentences and simple diction, Hemingway positively outdoes himself in this famous short story. In the most pared

18、down English imaginable, three nameless and unexceptional characters rehearse a brief, nocturnal scene. Thus, this story ostentatiously extols the virtues of the simple. This minimalism is so very dramatic, in fact, one feels that complexity or sophistication is not simply precluded, but actually wr

19、itten against. In writing such stripped-down prose and narrative, Hemingway counters the era which precedes him. Nineteenth-century prose and narrative is, by contrast, the epitome of ornateness and complexity. The extreme minimalism of an A Clean, Well-Lighted Place connotes a turning away from the

20、 past, from history and progress, war and technology. A Clean, Well-Lighted Place rests on the dramatic information of the old mans attempted suicide, and the difference between the two waiters. An old man sits alone, far too late into the night, drinking steadily. This is a scene of pathos. This is

21、 pathos, however, in which much is made of pathos contained, or reigned in. The man is known to be very drunk, but he is clean, neither belligerent nor messy. By not calling attention to himself or his suffering he avoids making of it or himself an event. This story about quietly endured pain connot

22、es the idea that suffering is indeed so common, so mundane, no commemoration of it is necessary. In the rather tragic universe of the cafe, there are two waiters. One of them sees a single customer sitting alone, someone who has been the last customer and has been sitting there alone for a long time

23、. He decides he wants the person to leave so that he can close up and go home. This prosaic situation and wish is set against the older waiters argument that they should not close up in case the man is finding solace in this clean, well-lighted place. His having tried to kill himself, and his being

24、in the cafe drinking at all, seems to suggest this. The older waiters argument is a plea based on the simple question of Wouldnt you want to be here if you were him? The younger waiter must grudgingly agree, finally, that it means something to drink in a clean, well-lighted place, instead of at home

25、 alone. Nevertheless, he defends his actions and so essentially revels in the unthinking and selfish power of youth that cannot see ahead to the weakness of its own old age. Against this waiter, the second waiter exemplifies solidarity with the old and with all those who suffer on this earth. This p

26、rimal expression of solidarity and suffering characterizes the mood of Hemingways modernism. As for his modernism itself, the substance of it can be approached through an examination of the storys transformation of the Catholic prayers Our Father and Hail Mary. By the time the older waiter thinks hi

27、s crazily modified versions of the prayers, the younger waiter has expelled the old man from the cafe, the waiters have closed up, and the reader has learned that the older waiter is an insomniac. He is, like the old man, with all those who need a light for the night. In fact, the older waiter inten

28、ds to find himself a clean, well-lighted place of his own in order to consummate, as it were, his solidarity and pact with the old man. The older waiter has sunk into his own thoughts and at some point in his physical transition from the cafe to the late-night bar to which he goes, he asks himself:

29、What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it was nada y pues nada y pues nada. the mo

30、dified Our Father and Hail Mary prayers now begin: Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail not

31、hing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. He smiled and stood before a bar with a shining steam pressure coffee machine.If the reader feels this short story pulls off this litany of nadas, the reader smiles with the old waiter. Indeed, if the story had not been called what it is, Nada or Nothing w

32、ould have been a good second choice as it is the single-most important word in the story. Its importance is established, indeed, at the storys start, as when the older waiter is asked by the younger why the old man tried to kill himself. It is not surprising that the old man inserts a series of nada

33、s into a prayer; a prayer, after all, is a significant event. To pray is to indicate a belief in a religion, in a system and an order for life, to indicate, in short, that one has a map to lifes profundities. But the reader knows from the storys opening that this is precisely what the older waiter d

34、oes not have. Profundities are precisely that for which he has no name. Thus, it comes as no surprise that what he does in his praying is utilize a form (a prayer) but then deny its contents (Catholicism). He borrows the structure of the Our Father and the Hail Mary, but inserts nada into any place

35、that matters. In these prayers, the values upon which the religious faith of the west is based are not so much denied, as no thing is put in their place. Thus, this story by Hemingway could be said to desire belief or faith, in its gesturing toward the forms of faith and belief, but as to what those

36、 beliefs or values might or could be, the story is overwhelmingly silent (nada). What Hemingways minimalism is ultimately designed to achieve is precisely this refusal or forestalling of values or valuation. If western civilization has gone wrong, this modernism seems to convey, then it is best to h

37、old off believing for a time in order to discover new and better beliefs and values. The twentieth-century had dawned fully industrialized and fully armed for the bloodiest of wars. Like many of his lost generation (so named by the writer Gertrude Stein), Hemingway in this story exemplifies a disaff

38、ection with, and avoidance of, tradition and history. Hemingways A Clean, Well-Lighted Place is a preeminent, representative example of modernist minimalist narrative. In utilizing only the bare minimum for narrative, in terms of language, character, scene, and action, Hemingway tries his best to sk

39、irt the traps and habits of the past. Modernists, thus, are as attached to notions of progress as their nineteenth-century predecessors; it is simply that they decide that the best way to get ahead is to start from scratch.1(2) Stylistic Analysis focus on the relationship between “form” and “content

40、”:The short story “A Clean, Well-lighted Place” reflects Ernest Hemingways philosophy of life and shows the generation gap that always exists even now days. Through the description of the old man in this short story and the dialogue between the old waiter and the younger waiter, the author expressed

41、 a kind of nihilistic and a kind of value that facing life with dignity is important.1. Dialogue Analysis:Last week he tried to commit suicide, one waiter said.Why? He was in despair. What about? Nothing. How do you know it was nothing?“He has plenty of money.”Once it is learned that the older waite

42、r sympathizes with the old man, this nothing takes on major significance. How can he sympathize with someone so completely if he feels that the man killed himself for no reason? What, then, does this nothing really mean? We are given a clear and obvious clue. Nothing is what is left over after money

43、 is taken is care of: how do you know it was nothing?/He has plenty of money. What that means is that all the mans physical wants must be guaranteed, so all that could be plaguing him are intangible yearnings. Or, to put this way, what is plaguing the old man are not wishes for things he needs like

44、food and shelter, but rather thoughts about profundities. Nothing is the old waiters way of referring to the most important things in life after ones bodily wants have been satisfied. Y.W. The guard will pick him up, one waiter said.O.W. What does it matter if he gets what hes after?Y.W. He had bett

45、er get off the street now. The guard will get him. They went by five minutes ago.The younger waiter emphasizes the military guards because to him they represent guardians of a culture in which one may be confident of success. He is not concerned about the soldier. Individual needs, whether they are

46、the need of a girl or the need of a drink for a lonely old man, must be sacrificed to the punctualities of the job, the ignorant securities of rule and routine. The younger waiter wants everyone off the street, as he wants the old man out of the cafe. He wants to be off the streets himself, and is,

47、in fact, also a kind of guard. No more tonight. Close now, he says to the old man and begins pulling down the metal shutters. But the older waiter does understand that agonizing lack in an individual: what does it matter if he gets what hes after? Company punishment will be minor compared to the ang

48、uish of being alone. Everything is a temporary stay against despair: a light for the night, another drink and relations with a girl. You cant tell, even the old man might be better with a wife. Its not the same. No, it is not, agreed the waiter with a wife.He did not wish to be unjust. He was only in a