摘 要

这篇论文主要对比了杰克·伦敦与欧内斯特·海明威的写作风格，以《野性的呼唤》和《老人与海》为例。本文分为五章对杰克·伦敦与海明威的写作风格进行对比，第一章为总的概括，介绍写作背景和写作布局；第二章介绍了前人对杰克·伦敦与欧内斯特·海明威的研究成果；第三章对比写作风格，写作风格对比主要是指写作技巧、象征主义和主题对比。在写作技巧的对比中，本文提到了词的选择和句子使用。除了写作技巧的对比外，本文还对比了两部小说中的象征主义以及小说的主题；第四章介绍杰克·伦敦与欧内斯特·海明威的写作风格所产生的影响。本文先是分别介绍了两位作家的写作风格，然后对他们进行对比。两位作家在写作风格上既有相同点，也有不同点，本文选取了合适的例子进行阐述说明。在写作风格上，欧内斯特·海明威一定程度上受到杰克·伦敦思想的影响，例如环境决定论，回归自然以及反叛精神等思想。欧内斯特·海明威在文学方面取得了较大的成就，同时对世界文学产生了一定的影响。与杰克·伦敦不同的是，欧内斯特·海明威偏向短句的使用，同时提出了“冰山理论”，对世界文学影响深远。

关键词：杰克·伦敦；欧内斯特·海明威；写作风格

Abstract

This paper mainly compares the writing styles of Jack London with that of Ernest Hemingway, taking The Call of the Wild and The Old Man and the Sea as An Example. This paper is divided into five parts to compare the writing styles of them. The first chapter is introduction, including the background and the layout. The second chapter is the literature review, including previous studies on Jack London and Ernest Hemingway. The third chapter is the comparative analyses of the two novels. Writing style includes the comparison of writing techniques, the comparison of symbolism and the comparison of themes. In the comparison of writing techniques, the choice of words and the use of short sentences are mentioned. Beyond the comparison of writing techniques, this paper also makes a comparison of symbolism and themes. The forth chapter introduces the effects of their writing styles. This paper introduces their writing styles respectively first, and then makes a comparison between them. Their writing styles are similar in some ways, while there are some differences between them, too. When introducing the writing styles, this paper chooses the proper examples to illustrate. In writing styles, Ernest Hemingway was influenced by some of Jack London’s ideas, such as the theme of environmental determinism, the theme of “back to nature” and the spirit of rebellion. Ernest Hemingway made great achievements in literature and had an great effect on world literature. Different from Jack London, Ernest Hemingway preferred the use of short sentences and he put forward the iceberg theory, which was influential to world literature.

Key Words: Jack London; Ernest Hemingway; writing styles

Contents

摘要 I

Abstract II

1 Introduction 1

2 Literature Review 3

2.1 Previous studies on Jack London 3

2.1.1 Jack London and his works 3

2.1.2 Previous Studies on The Call of the Wild 4

2.2 Previous studies on Ernest Hemingway 5

2.2.1 Ernest Hemingway and his works 5

2.2.2 Previous Studies on The Old Man and the Sea 6

3 Comparative Analyses of the Two Novels 8

3.1 Comparison of writing techniques 8

3.1.1 Comparison in lexical level 8

3.1.2 Comparison in syntactical level 9

3.2 Comparison of symbolism 10

3.3 Comparison of themes 11

3.3.1 Heroism 11

3.3.2 Environmental Determinism 12

4 Effects of the Writing Style 14

4.1 Jack London’s influence to Ernest Hemingway 14

4.2 Ernest Hemingway’s influence to the world 15

5 Conclusion 16

References 17

Acknowledgments 18

Comparative Study on the Writing Styles of Jack London and Ernest Hemingway

——Taking The Call of the Wild and The Old Man and the Sea as An Example

1 Introduction

Jack London was a pioneer in the world of magazine and fiction. The Call of the Wild began at a ranch in Santa Clara Valley, California, at which time Buck was stolen from his home and sold as a sled dog in Alaska. The writing background of The Call of the Wild was the gold fever. Jack London led a poor life since he was a kid and he has joined the gold rushing. His poor experience and the pursuit of gold provided him a lot of resource for writing. The Call of the Wild was a novel produced in the era of gold fever. Buck was sold to Alaska as a sled dog, which conformed to the writing background.

Ernest Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, for his mastery of the art of narrative, mostly demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, which told the story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggled with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Florida. When Ernest Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea, he had attended the two World Wars and the Spanish war. Being influenced by his father in his childhood, he was obsessed with adventure and has a strong heart. All of these constituted the basis of his writing style and offered abundant materials for his writing (Wu Libo. 2015). In The Old Man and the Sea, the strong heart of Ernest Hemingway was depicted by the character of Santiago. After experiencing the war, Ernest Hemingway wrote this novel and expressed his idea towards hardship in this novel.

The two writers are both famous and prolific in American literature, and lots of analyses have been made on either of them. However, there is nearly no comparative study between them. This paper aims to make a comparative study on the writing style of Jack London and Ernest Hemingway, taking The Call of the Wild and The Old Man and the Sea as an example. By reading others’ papers about both of them and their novels, some similarities and differences can be concluded, and by reading the two short stories, some knowledge can be acquired. The Call of the Wild was published in 1903 and The Old Man and the Sea was published in 1952. So it is guessed that the writing style of Hemingway was influenced by that of Jack London through the comparison between the two novels. This paper contains five chapters, which are introduction, literature review, comparative analyses of the two novels, effects of the writing style and conclusion.

2 Literature Review

This part is intended to introduce the two writers and their works. It begins with previous studies of the two writers and their major works. Then, previous studies of the two novels are discussed. In the last part of the literature review, an analysis of previous outcomes of the studies on the two writers will be given.

2.1 Previous studies on Jack London

2.1.1 Jack London and his works

Jack London, whose real name was John Griffith London, was born on January 12, 1876 in San Francisco and died on November 22, 1916. He was an American novelist, social activist, and journalist. And he was a great pioneer in the then-blooming world of commercial magazine novel and one of the first writers obtaining worldwide reputation and a large fortune by his fictions alone, science fiction included. London grew up in a family with no fixed residence and no steady income. He started writing when he was 24 years old and died at the age of 40. From the year of 1900, he kept delivering and publishing a lot of fictions with nearly no break. Most of his fictions were about the life stories of the American depressed class, revealing the evilness of the capitalist society. Most of his works were attached with heavy socialism and individualism. His works were popular all over the world, especially among Chinese readers.

In the whole life of Jack London, he has created pretty much works, including nineteen full-length novels, and more than one hundred and fifty short stories, and a large number of literature reports, and three scripts and quite a few essays and papers. In 1990, he published his first Novel collection, The Son of the Wolf, which instantly earned him high reputation. Till 1916, he has already published fifty-one works. Among all of his works, the most famous ones included Martin Eden, The Call of the Wild, White Fang, Lost Face, Burning Daylight, The Abysmal Brute, and Love of Life. In all of his fictions, marine novels included South Sea Tales, The Sea Wolf, and Jerry of the Islands. Urban fictions included The Iron Heel, The People of the Abyss, Before Adam, Martin Eden, and John Barleycorn. His writing style was unique, full of the breath of life and manliness, which was welcomed by all of the readers, no matter men or women, boys or girls.

2.1.2 Previous Studies on The Call of the Wild

Jack London was a famous American critical realistic writer in the late nineteenth century. Born in a poor family in San Francisco, his living environment was crude, rough and raw. Hard and bitter life embodied him with strong will and indomitable spirit. In his novels, the hardship and bitter life was vividly described. In The Call of the Wild, Buck was once a happy dog living in a big and rich family. But one day, a sudden disaster befell. He was secretly sold for profit and heavily beaten by the dealer. Jack London knew exactly the depicting technique by focusing on one certain point and giving it vivid portrayal of the actions, features, psychology and words of the characters so as to embody his characters with blood and flesh.(Liu Ruiqi amp; Jia Hai’e, 2013)

Jack London put his aspiration for better life in his works and he depicted the poor life in novels just as his living environment. What he presented to the audience was the fresh embodiment of his life and his era. The Call of the Wild was written in the era of gold rushing and it truly demonstrated the basic living rules in the nature. In this novel, Buck was given the specialties of wisdom and dignity in an artistic way. It presented the readers with a process of Buck’s changes, and finally Buck’s turning into a wolf represented people’s longing for freedom.(Feng Xiaoli, 2013)