earticle

영어

There is no doubt that Hemingway’s gender portrayals in his novels are controversial, and his equivocal stance on gender leaves the readers confused. Contrary to mainstream interpretations, I postulate that the sea’s gender in The Old Man and the Sea and Islands in the Stream cannot be fixed because both protagonists, Santiago and Thomas Hudson in the novels, refer to the sea as both male and female to which I named it a ‘dual-gendered’ sea. According to the textual evidence, gender of a sea shifts from male to female and vice versa depending on the experiences the protagonists have. I suggest that the protagonists’ gender shift of the sea is a corollary of variation of a level of Santiago and Thomas’ fear: losing their masculine power. Although Santiago and Thomas are portrayed as stoic manly heroes like other Hemingway’s protagonists, I suppose that whenever they face a harsh adversary such as a marlin, shark or submarine, the protagonists’ level of fear of losing masculinity increases, which results in altering the sea’s gender. To conclude, Hemingway’s sea in The Old Man and the Sea and Islands in the Stream is dual-gendered according which the protagonists, Santiago and Thomas Hudson, alter the gender of a sea.