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Text 1 The old Man
and the Sea
About the author
Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899-1960) was
born in Oak Park, Illinois. His father was a successful physician
with a relish for hunting and fishing. His mother was musical
and sternly religious. He spent his boyhood shuttling with
his family between a comfortable Chicago suburb and a remnant
of the earlier frontier in the back-woods of Michigan. After
high school, he eagerly sought to enlist in the army. Failing
that, he got a job as a reporter, but was soon off to World
War I as an ambulance driver and infantryman with the Italian
army. After the war, he settled in Paris, where he served
as a foreign correspondent for some time, and where he also
began his serious writing career. He took an active part in
the anti-Fascist struggle in the Spanish Civil War and in
World War II； he served as war correspondent in both. During
the McCarthy period in the early 1950's, he stood firm in
his defiance of the persecution of the Left. Emotional breakdowns
that proceeded from his frustrations about writing well in
addition to physical ailments resulting from war wounds and
heavy drinking finally led to his suicide in 1961.
More about the story
The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer
Prize (1953) and Hemingway received the Nobel Prize for literature
(1954).
A great craftsman, Hemingway forged a style
and a set of techniques all his own. His citation by the Nobel
Prize Committee mentions "his powerful style-forming
mastery of the art" of creating modern fiction. He helped
to purify American writing of sentimentality, literary decoration,
surface artfulness, and wordiness.
Dialogue is a distinguishing feature of his
style. Upon dialogue falls much of the burden of setting,
plot, character, and theme portrayed by other writers through
description, narration and exposition. The conversation is
not a simple record of the way people talk. Instead, it reduces
speech to an essential pattern of mannerisms characteristic
of the speaker. It gives an effect of reality that reality
itself would not give.
Hemingway's description of the stream of consciousness
and the interior monologue of his characters gives his readers
access the depths of their hearts and minds.
Culture notes
Gulf Stream: Ocean
current named for the Gulf of Mexico, flows past Florida and
up the East coast of the USA until deflected near Newfoundland
Northeast across the Atlantic Ocean (the North Atlantic Drift);
its warm water moderates the climate of Northwest Europe.
guano:
An accumulation of animal droppings, typical
of birds but also of mammals such as bats. Guano deposits
build up beneath breeding colonies, and are a rich source
of phosphates and nitrates. They re often used as fertilizer.
DiMaggio,
Joseph Paul ('Joe ') (1914--),American baseball player, star of the New York Yankees
team from 1936 to 1951, renowned for his outstanding batting
ability and for his outfield play. His second wife, to whom
he was married for nine months in 1954, was the film actress
Marilyn Monroe.
Canary
Islands:
(also Canaries) A group of islands, in Spanish possession
since the 15th century, situated off the Northwest coast of
Africa.
Language notes
1)
The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked
like the flag of permanent defeat.
（那面帆用面粉袋打了一些补丁，收起来的时候，看上去就象一面标志着永远失败的旗帜。）
Permanent means lasting for a long
time or forever.
e.g. Is this your permanent address, or are
you only staying there for a short time?
2)
Then if you hook something truly big we can come to your aid.
（你要是捕到一条真正的大鱼，我们就可以来帮你了。）
Come to your aid here means help you.
e.g. We went to the aid of the injured man.
3)
But then I think of Dick Sisler and those great drives in
the old parks.
（但是接着我又想到狄克·西斯勒和他在垒球场打出的那几个漂亮球。）
Drive here is used as a noun meaning
an act of hitting a ball, or the force with which it is hit.
e.g. to hit a long high drive to the right
4)
He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great
occurrence.
（他不再梦见风暴，不再梦见女人，不再梦见惊人的遭遇。）
Occurrence means an event or happening.
e.g. This sort of incidence is an everyday
occurrence.
Text 2 The
Old Man and the Sea
(II)
Language notes
1)
Sometimes they attached themselves to him.
（有时候它们恋恋不舍地跟着他。）
Attach to means to cause to belong
to (a group).
e.g. During the war I was attached to the
naval college as a gunnery instructor.
2)
But again the fish righted himself and swam slowly away.
（但是鱼又摆正了身子慢慢地游开去。）
Right oneself means to put oneself
right or upright again.
e.g. The boat capsized but we soon righted
it.
3)
The old man looked carefully in the glimpse of vision that
he had.
（老头用定睛仔细地望了一眼。）
Glimpse here means a quick look
or incomplete view.
e.g. I only caught a glimpse of the thief,
so I can't really describe him.
4)
He did not like to look at the fish anymore since he had been
mutilated.
（他不忍心再多看那死去的鱼一眼，因为它已被咬得残缺不全了。）
Mutilate means seriously damage
by removing a part.
e.g. The kidnapper threatened to mutilate
the child if his price was not paid soon.
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