摘 要

《海的沉默》是让·布鲁勒（笔名维克多）的一部二战时期的法国小说，作者揭露了侵略者妄图在精神上和物质上彻底摧毁法国国家与人民的阴谋，出版后给法国人民的反抗运动带来了巨大精神力量。这是一部短小精悍且寓意深刻的经典短篇小说，但是国内外的研究大多都集中在它所体现的政治意义，而忽略了这篇小说的写作研究意义。值得一提的是，这部短篇小说在写作风格方面具有鲜明的冰山风格。本文通过叙事结构，小说语言，人物刻画和象征主义等方面来分析《海的沉默》这部小说中体现的冰山理论，结合将冰山理论融入文学之中的海明威的作品进行详细阐释，以进一步展现冰山理论在《海的沉默》这部小说中的起到的作用和意义。希望用全新的角度，让更多的人了解冰山理论和欣赏《海的沉默》这部经典。

关键词:海的沉默，冰山理论，写作风格

Abstract

The Silence of the Sea(Le silence de la Mer) is a French novel by Jean Bruller(writing under the pseudonym of Vercors) published during the World War II , which reveals the attempt of the invaders to destroy France both on the spiritual and material state. After the publication, it brought great spiritual strength to the resistance movement of the French people. This is a short and piquant classic short story with profound meaning, but research both at home and abroad mostly focused on its political significance, while ignoring the research significance of writing. It is worth mentioning that this short story in terms of writing style reflects distinctive iceberg style. Based on the structure pattern, language of fiction, the depiction of characters and symbolism to analyze the Silence of the Sea in the novel reflects the iceberg theory, combining the examples in Hemingway's works to elaborate, so as to further demonstrate the role and significance of the iceberg theory in the novel the Silence of the Sea. It is hoped that more people can know about iceberg theory and appreciate the classic work The Silence of the Sea (Le Silence de la Mer) from a new perspective.

Key words: The Silence of the Sea (Le Silence de la Mer); Iceberg Theory; writing style

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1Brief Biography of the Author - Jean Bruller 1

1.2 Overview of a Tale of The Silence of the Sea 1

1.3 Background of the Novel 2

2 Literature review 3

3 Iceberg Theory 5

3.1 Brief introduction of The origin of the Iceberg Theory 5

3.2 The Iceberg Theory in literature 5

4 Iceberg Theory in The Silence of the Sea 7

4.1 Structure pattern 6

4.2 Language of fiction 8

4.3 The depiction of characters 10

4.4 Symbolism 11

5.Conclusion 13

6.References 14

7.Acknowledgement 15

The Sound of Silence—Brief Analysis of the Iceberg Theory in Le Silence de la Mer

1 Introduction

1.1Brief Biography of the Author - Jean Bruller

Vercors (1902-1991), whose real name was Jean Bruller, was a famous French author, illustrator and publisher. Vercors was born to Hungarian parents in Paris. After high school, he started his career as a comic and illustrator and published his own book. He was a pacifist until 1938; Encouraged by his friend Pierre de Lescu, he joined the resistance and wrote and published under the pseudonym of Vercors. In 1941, with the help of Lescu, he founded the underground publishing house, Minuit, which published The Silence of the Sea the following February. There was only one printer at Minuit, and it took two months to produce the first 350 copies.

For the only time in the history of the prize, the Prix Femina awarded the 1944 prize to midnight and its publishers for publishing 25 works by resistance writers during the occupation of Paris, bypassing the censorship and propaganda of the Vichy government. In 1948, Vercors transferred Minuit Press to Jerome Landon. In 1960, together with Sartre, he signed the 121 declaration against the Algerian war, and in protest at the French torture in Algeria, refused a medal of honor from the French government.

1.2 Overview of The Silence of the Sea

The Silence of the Sea by Jean Bruller, a French novel written in 1942 during the Nazi rule, tells of the silent love between a German officer and a French girl through the first-person narration of the girl’s uncle, and tries to euphemistically express the unyielding humanity and the will of resistance. Since its clandestine publication in German-occupied Paris, the novel The Silence of the Sea by the then little-known satirist Jean Bruller (writing under the pseudonym of Vercors) impressed contemporaries around the world with the nobility of its message and sensitive of its langue.

In the Nazi-occupied French town, the Nazis commandeered the houses of the old men and the girl for their officers, against their will. As a symbolic and literal silent protest against the Nazis and the officers, the two Frenchmen refused to communicate with him in any form. However, the gentle German officer took the initiative to them friendly, and expressed respect for the patriotic people. The love between the girl and the officer germinated in the contradiction, without any conversation, all the expressions were suppressed in the silence, suppressed by the identity, suppressed by the war. The officer, on the other hand, gave the girl the space of dignity and a deep-going and exquisite understanding that he loved not only the girl, but the girl's country.

Now, more commonly known, is the French film adaptation of this short story, released on 25 October 2004, directed by Pierre Boutron. This work, guided by the white space of the original, delicately fleshes out the details of the characters and adds some reasonable plot development, which is one of the director's imagination of the novel.

1.3 Background of the Novel

The Silence of the Sea, published underground in February 1942, led not only to the Minuit Press, but also to the birth of a writer. It is a short story with a cumulative circulation of 3.29 million in France and has been translated into 72 languages and published worldwide. Vercors had never published literature before, but was an illustrator named Jean Bruller. Vercors became a wartime legend when the Minuit Press published 26 works by French writers during the occupation, and was called "the best kept secret of the war".

The Silence of the Sea is dedicated to the surrealist poet Saint-Pol Roux , who died in grief after his daughter was raped by the Germans. The old man in the novel is in a similar position to him, when his own home is occupied by a German Nazi officer, the old man and his niece fight in silence. With the title of "despair is death" as the preface of the book, the author's idea of underground resistance in the dark is profoundly elucidated.

2 Literature review

As a war themed novel, the author does not describe the collision between life and weapons in the war, but describes the daily life in the ordinary people's homes in a plain style. The editors of Life magazine, where a slightly abridged translation appeared in 1943, described it as “not only a distinguished piece of fiction, but also a brilliant piece of reporting on French resistance to the German occupation. ”(Brown,7) The novel was a hot topic at the time, and most of the foreign literature of the 20th century was ambivalent about it, because the hero -- the German officer belonging to the aggressor, was portrayed as a relatively righteous figure. Thus, influenced by the mood of war, most of the foreign studies on the novel in the 20th century focused on political and moral requirements. As Brett Bowls argues in French Politics, Culture amp; Society: “ During the war, however, The Silence of the Sea was considered an ideologically polysemic and problematic text because of a fundamental paradox” “ The implicit suggestion that personal and affective motivation could outweigh political and moral imperatives in determining the conduct of French civilians toward their occupiers was controversial and sparked heated debate from 1942 to 1944.” (Bowls，68)After the 20th century, the number of relevant foreign documents of the novel decreased, and some documents began to mention the narrative structure of the novel and its use of metaphor, but some final conclusions of them were still to serve politics. “Vercors' resistance to the national humiliation reveals the danger of the Nazi's strategy of politeness, which was aimed at coercing the French people into collaboration.”(Jacqueline Machabeis, 75) Until the novel was adapted into a movie, The Silence of the Sea has entered the public eyes with a new art form. Film reviews and book reviews home and abroad have increased, mostly from the point of view of emotional conflict and character setting. Therefore, the analysis and research on the writing skills of this novel is insufficient.

As for the iceberg theory, it was first proposed by Freud in the field of psychology. As a master who initiated a generation of writing style, Hemingway eliminated all the unnecessary details and used the least amount of words to express rich and colorful contents. Many overseas and domestic scholars have studied iceberg theory. In the field of literature, they mainly study the iceberg theory embodied in Hemingway's works, or more specifically, analysis of Hemingway's symbolism. It can be seen from the research of scholars that most of the scholars' research is centered on Hemingway's own works. Hemingway is indeed a master of the iceberg theory, but the application of the iceberg theory in literature should not be limited to one person's works.