A Tragic Victory: An Ecocritical Analysis Of Hemingway's Works

Nature is a central motif in Hemingway's life and writing. He is a lover of outdoor sports and his characters live in natural environments and have a strong affection for nature. What is nature in Hemingway's mind? What does he tell us about nature through his writing? Focusing on human-nature relationship, this thesis attempts to explore Hemingway's ecological view by analyzing his works from an ecocritical perspective.Ecocriticism is the criticism from an ecological perspective on literary or artistic expression of human experience in the world, focusing on the relationship between humans and the environment. Ecocriticism provides us a new way to look at the relationship between literature (art) and the environment. The key argument made by ecocriticism is that nature and culture constructs each other, and it is nature that precedes culture, thus ecocritics remember the earth by rendering an account of the indebtedness of culture to nature.This thesis begins with a brief introduction to different schools of ecological views, which affect American writers'thoughts on human-nature relationship and therefore construct American literary tradition. After the introduction, this thesis goes on to examine the literary presentation of man and nature in American literature and Hemingway's works. Nature plays an important role in American literature. There is a primitive respect for nature in American culture, blending with European pastoral imagination about nature. At the same time, the fighting with nature is a familiar motif in American literature due to American's longtime struggle with nature."Tough guy"is a favorite type of character for American writers, with different connotation at different time.Hemingway's writings, featuring a close connection between man and nature, are a natural offspring of this literary tradition. But Hemingway is not merely a follower of this tradition. He also surpasses it in terms of the delicacy and intricacy of his ecological views. He tends to put his code heroes in natural environments, with nature as the biggest challenge for them forever. Regarding nature as their friend and enemy at the same time, they realize their value of life in their struggle with nature, and form a set of rules in the struggle: fight gracefully, and then you'll never be beaten. In Hemingway's opinion, nature has a paradoxical significance to man: it's a symbol of both sacredness and sacrifice, it should be respected and protected but man has the right to intrude on it. Compared with other American writers, Hemingway envisions man's role in a different way. He turns inactive man into energetic, strong-minded"tough guy", a man who maintains his balance with nature through heroic acts against the earth. In this sense, for Hemingway, fishing and hunting is not only a recreation, but a way of self-proving. A graceful defeat means not shame but honor, while nature is worth respecting just because it goes through all the disasters and conflicts without being defeated, and man and nature achieve a balance between them by warring and conflicting against each other. But this endeavor for balance often leads to tragedy, and the"tough guy"characters are always tragic heroes, because the impulse for fighting and struggling inside man decides that they are doomed to destroy the same nature that they love most.The last part of this thesis further explores Hemingway's characters'tragic victory over nature by analyzing some of Hemingway's major works. Hemingway's writing career is divided into three periods. The early period is the beginning of a dilemma. A major work about nature in this period is Big Two Hearted River, which writes Nick's hiking trip on his way home from the war. The atmosphere in this story is largely quiet and easy, but under the quiet surface, conflicts exist all along. Nick's aim in this trip is to prove his competence and regain his mental balance, which is achieved by camping and fishing. The natural environment described in the story is gentle and comforting, but danger always exists, and the conflicts between man and nature would never end. Nick temporarily avoids the swamp, but at some time in the future, he would come to face it. The middle period sees the looming of a tragedy caused by the dilemma. Two non-fictional works of this period mark the formation of Hemingway's esthetics of tragedy on nature. In Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway discovers the tragedy of bullfight: the matador kills a bull, from which he draws his energy and strength, and by killing it, he gains power and the sense of control. He is both the winner and the loser at the same time, but he cannot stop doing it, his fate is tragic. And in Green Hills of Africa, a nature-lover blends with a destroyer of nature in the same person, and a pastoral lyric on the beauty of nature coincides with the killing of precious animals. The protagonist is unable to cling to his initial pastoral reverence for nature, and turns into a remorseful killer when he is overwhelmed by the tragic destroying impulse. Written in the later period, The Old Man and the Sea is a great leap from Big Two Hearted River and Green Hills of Africa. Here the protagonist finally gets the courage to face his tragic fate, Santiago is the first character completely caught up in the conflicts between man and nature in Hemingway's works, he knows both his heroic pride and his moral defects at the same time, and he is at once a defender and a criticizer of his own killing impulse. The hesitation on whether he has the right to kill is stronger in him than any other characters in Hemingway's works, and he kills the fish at last, putting his self-interests before the harmony of man and nature, although he knows the result would be tragic.Hemingway truthfully depicts man's dilemma when facing nature on which his life depends. His ecological view is essentially anthropocentrical. He can't resist the temptation of mastery, although he is an earnest lover of nature. But he does realize the tragic fate of man, and he reveals the intricate inner world of human beings. The significance of Hemingway's works lies in the fact that they provide a truthful and authentic way to see how the pride and desire of man would interact with the wonderful but vulnerable nature.