Wine:A Symbolic Mirror In Ernest Hemingway’s Works

Ernest Hemingway is one of the most prominent American writers and most of his works are quite well known.His distinct writing style and techniques helped him to win Nobel Prize in literature,which initiated an era of Ernest Hemingway by making him quite popular and celebrated.He is adept in using different writing techniques like symbolism,metaphor and juxtaposition.He also advanced iceberg theory,which gives his readers great room for imagination and makes the text itself more enriched and diverse as well.Wine,the alcoholic beverage frequently used object in Hemingway’s works,is indispensable to both Hemingway and his characters.The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms are both popular works of Hemingway.On one hand,in the well-known novel The Sun Also Rises,wine is so significant that nearly all the characters in the novels are drinking it all the time.On the other hand,Frederic Henry,the hero of A Farewell to Arms,is such an alcoholic that wine is obviously an indispensable part in his life.With the help of the image of wine,Hemingway unfolds the culture and values of that period as well as his own attitude towards life before the readers’ eyes to make the whole story more real and vivid.Wine is just like a symbolic mirror in these novels;it reflects not only the characters and their relationships,but also the social,historical and cultural background and some other subjects of the novels.The author of the present thesis takes The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms as examples,and analyzes the descriptions and applications of the image of wine in Hemingway’s works.With the guidance of Jacques Lacan’s mirror stage theory,the author tries to explore how wine,as a symbolic mirror in Hemingway’s works,functions in the self-construction of the heroes,in the illustration of their relationships,and in the description of the background of various kinds,and thus to finally find out the symbolic meanings of wine.