Investigation of style: the old man and the sea

In the book of The Old Man and The Sea, Ernest Hemingway’s style of writing, is short and uses factual sentences. The brevity in Hemingway's sentence structure is one of the most well-known characteristics attributed to his writing style. He uses short words, straightforward sentence structures, vivid descriptions, and factual details for his engaging and realistic stories. Hemingway wrote sentences that were straightforward and clear so that readers could understand the points he made even if they were skimming quickly through his story. For example he tells us the thoughts of the old fisherman: “Then he was sorry for the great fish that had nothing to eat and his determination to kill him never relaxed in his sorrow for him. How many people will he feed? he thought.” The first sentence contains two conflicting thoughts: the old man’s sorrow for the fish and, in contrast with this, his continued determination to kill it. The next sentence suggests the old man’s motivation for fishing, namely to get food. The change in sentence length lends a musical quality to the writing and adds pleasing variety.

His use of language is immediately identifiable by most readers. Hemingway’s language has complex emotions and greater meanings. It shows the writer's skill in his use of sophisticated techniques like repeated images, allusions, and themes; and repeated sounds, rhythms, words, and sentence structures. In The Old Man and the Sea, nearly every word and phrase points to Hemingway's Santiago. He puts effort to break down language and convey as much as possible in as few words as possible.

I personally liked Hemingway’s style of writing because he uses short and factual sentences. His vivid descriptions and factual details help me to imagine what is happening in the story making it easier to understand stories like The Old Man and The Sea. Sometimes it is hard for me, English as my third language, to understand writers like Edgar Allan Poe or Ralph Waldo Emerson because of the complex style of writing both have.