earticle

영어

This study aims to investigate how Ernest Hemingway’s central ideas develop in his moral values’ perspective. The general logical discussion here is based on the evidence that Hemingway’s views of morality evolve from an individualistic one through a humanistic one to an ecological one by three stages. Hemingway has a moral belief that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after. His morality can be interpreted as a code of conduct capable of establishing human dignity which makes one feel good after. In the early stage of his writing career, his protagonists such as Nick, Jake Barnes and Frederic Henry tend to follow their individualistic morality in their own ways of solving their disillusionments and anxieties in their struggles to come to terms with a world they cannot possibly understand. In the middle stage, Hemingway’s literary concern is marked by a conspicuous change from individualism to social commitment and humanism deeply influenced by the Great Depression and the Spanish Civil War. To Have and Have Not and For Whom the Bell Tolls dramatically demonstrate the writer’s spirit of social commitment and universal brotherhood. In The Old Man and the Sea of the final stage, the protagonist embodies his mature universal love of all creatures by achieving his ecological enlightenment. Santiago here reaches a loftiest realization in his struggles of life, which differentiates him from the earlier protagonists.