The Perfect Reflection Of"Hemingway’s Styl"in His Short Stories

Ernest Hemingway was one of the most celebrated modern novelists in American literature history of the20th century, who occupied the honorable position as a great master of literature in the world literary circles and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in1954. Hemingway’s unique style won him a large audience and received considerable publicity among literary critics so that a variety of academic papers and books concerning Hemingway’s style and his works sprang up in great numbers. Thus "Hemingway’s style" is widely accepted as a specific literary term. However, these available research literatures share two major drawbacks. One is that most of them mainly focus on Hemingway’s novels and novelettes rather than his short stories, in which his unique style is much better and perfectly reflected. The other is that those academic literatures fail to offer an explanation of the exact connotation of "Hemingway’s style", for their analyses are neither systematic nor thorough.The thesis makes a thorough exploration of "Hemingway’s style" and its reflection in his short stories, providing a detailed analysis of the relationship between Hemingway’s life experience and the formation of his unique style, and striking features in theme, characterization,"iceberg principle" and the specific writing techniques that achieve "iceberg principle". Hemingway’s representative short stories including A Clean, Well-lighted Place, Hills Like White Elephants, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, The Killers and A Day’s Wait, are taken as typical examples of text analysis to illustrate the perfect reflection of "Hemingway’s style" in his short stories.This thesis is divided into five chapters.Chapter one is the introduction part, which introduces the purpose and significance of this study, points out two major deficiencies shared by the available research documents concerning Hemingway and his literary works, and presents a perfect explanation of the exact connotation of "Hemingway’s style".Chapter two deals with the study of Hemingway’s life experience including his boyhood, days at the Kansas City Star as a cub reporter, war experiences and overseas life in Paris with a group of great expatriate writers such as Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. An analysis is provided to show the remarkable influence of Hemingway’s abundant life experience on the formation of his unique style.Chapter three centers on the research of the striking features of "Hemingway’s style" in theme selection and character creation, including the constant theme of death and recurrent characters of "code hero". An overall analysis is conducted for the reflection of the two characteristics in Hemingway’s representative short stories.Chapter four focuses on the most striking characteristic of "Hemingway’s style", i.e. the well-known omission theory----"iceberg principle" as well as the five specific writing techniques employed to achieve the "iceberg principle", including simple words and telegraphic dialogues, external focalization mode, symbolism, zero ending and repetition. Some Hemingway’s representative short stories are taken as typical examples of detailed text analysis to reveal how Hemingway skillfully employs those superb writing strategies to perfectly achieve the "iceberg principle" in his short stories.Chapter five is the concluding part, which summarizes the connotation, causes and artistic characteristics of "Hemingway’s style" and its reflection in Hemingway’s short stories.