Symbolism in Ernest Hemingway’s novels

Earnest Hemingway is remembered as a writer and as a legend. It has been read and is still widely read. It is no wonder that he has written such great works of fiction as The Sun Also Rises, Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea.

Despite his austere and sparse style, his novels contain submerged meanings and his images function as symbols of an inner world. Mark Spilka says that “attitudes are sand so that a clear account of superficial action reproduces these attitudes in the reader.” with Hemingway, the outdoors is primarily a state of mind, a projection of the moral and the emotional.

Some of the most important symbols of Hemingway are the symbol of the rain, the dust, the fallen and falling leaves, the river, the log of wood, full of ants, above the fire and some of the main images. they are the image of the game of chess and bridge, the image of a dog in heat, the image of the arrival after a long journey, the image of the cemetery and the worn carpet, the image of empty cans and saucers, the image of the Inquisition and the image of a statue__ contribute substantially to the symbolic composition of Farewell to Arms.

Farewell to Arms is in fact a very symbolic novel and we have to consider it as such. Indeed, his deft combination of realism and symbolism that explains the success of this novel as a work of art in his comments on For Whom the Bell Tolls, Carlos Baker identifies the ‘elements of epic matter that Hemingway adapts to his needs in this novel . Furthermore, Baker also refers to “The Intentionally Intensified Language” that Hemingway adopts in the present novel.

Having and not having has very little imagery and symbolism. Although part 1 of this novel offers us some beautiful descriptions of fish and fishing and part 3 some beautiful descriptions of nature, the only symbol we find in it is that of the sun. In chapter III of part 1 To have and not to have, Hemingway presents an image of the setting sun:

It was a beautiful sunset and there was a nice light breeze, and when the sun got pretty good, I started the engine and steered it slowly towards land.

Hemingway draws the first set of symbols in Across the River and into the Trees from Nature, and it stands to reason that at the beginning of this novel he presents a beautiful description of an icy lagoon:

Everything was ice, freshly frozen during the windless chill of the night. It was rubbery and buckled against the push of the boatman’s oar.

Canals with bridges over them, gondolas gliding over their surface, and the wind blowing over the water – all this, in addition to adding beauty to the landscape, symbolizes Cantwell’s journey to death. In Hemingway’s novels, wind and water function as symbols of a peculiar kind of transformation. In the present novel, in addition to representing Cantwell’s purge through confession. The wind is also associated with darkness, with cold and high tides and symbolizes the final cleansing, that is, death. Likewise, the water of the different channels that Cantwell crosses, reinforces the case of the wind as a symbol and the gondola that moves on the surface of the water of the channel highlights the idea of ​​Cantwell’s passage to death.

Whatever symbols are in Islands in the Stream, everything they do or are intended to highlight the unpredictability of the sea, the real life-giving movement of the Gulf Stream, and the principles of life and death, creation and destruction, the good and evil that govern the course of what is known as the manifest universe.

We note a clear preponderance of symbols and images in the next two of Hemingway’s major novels, titled For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea. It seems that, with great patience, Hemingway cultivated the art of introducing symbols and images into his novels. Many of these symbols and images can be traced back to nature; some of them have been borrowed from one religion, while the rest owe their origin to other fields of human activity. We cannot do without recalling the fact that while Hemingway is a realist on the one hand, he is a symbolist on the other, and that both realism and symbolism coexist and reinforce each other in his novels. In any case, the symbolism adds a very refreshing and rich dimension to his novels that makes his novels very interesting.