Project 4: The Research Of Background Information

It is really easy to understand that the good literary work always comes from the real life. The more the writers experience, the profounder the work will be. Therefore, just like what I mentioned in the last blog post, The Old Man and The Sea must me strongly related to Hemingway’s personal experience. However, what happened to Hemingway’s life? What made Hemingway write this famous story? These are the main questions I was working on during the class today.

First of all, by the information I searched today, i found that Hemingway wrote this story when he was 52 years old. At that time, he was living in the coast of Cuba, and he loved sea and fishing. He knew the life of fishermen very well, and I guess that is one of the reasons the story gets so vivid. However, I think, if Hemingway only wanted to describe a regular 3-days life of a fisherman, he certainly did not have to write down such a moving and tragic story, and absolutely he would not get the Nobel Prize in Literature at 1954. Thus, I think, the Hemingway’s location and his hobbies just provided him with the knowledge of this story. However, the real essence and idea in the story is from his own experience in the past 52 years. Therefore I consider that is the most important factor to make this story famous and let him be the owner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In the following time, I did the research on his biography. Hemingway was born July,1899, the several years before the World War 1 happened. After graduated from the high school, Hemingway refused to continue to study in the college. Instead, he chose to work for the war in Europe. On May, 1918, he succeeded to be a worker in the American Red Cross Team, and Italy was the country he worked in. On July, the same year, he got really bad injury since he tried to save a Italian solider. For that injury, he did 13 operations, and lied in the hospital for more than 3 months. Some people might think Hemingway would give up serving for the war as his situation was so bad. But actually he did not stop, he even went to more countries to do the volunteer work.

Also, during the research, I found that Hemingway published this novel 12 years after the last one (For Whom the Bell Tolls). During this 12-years period, Hemingway did not publish any work. Some critics even affirmed that Hemingway could not create any more and was not be able to write anything new. In think, this experience is really similar to the old man in the novel. Santiago have not capture any fish for 84 days, and other fishermen just mock and make fun of him. So, Santiago goes to the sea on the 85th day, just like the author published this novel to prove him self.

I think that is what I did in the class and study hall. By the way, actually, Hemingway’s thought was keeping changing during this writing career, and the best way to reflect the changes , I think, is to find out the ideas of his work in different time period. For this reason, I am going to do some research on his previous work tomorrow.