CC BY
11
УДК 82
Kontsevaya V.N.
Associate Professor of Humanitarian & History of Arts Department
Krasnoyarsk State Institute of Arts Krasnoyarsk, Russia COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE NOVELS "A FAREWELL TO ARMS" BY E. HEMINGWAY AND "TENDER IS THE NIGHT"
BY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD IN FOUR ASPECTS Annotation: The article deals with the analysis of the peculiarities of the novels by the contemporary American authors of the XX century - "A Farewell to Arms" by E. Hemingway and "Tender is the Night" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Comparison is carried out in four aspects: plot structure, symbolism, implication and peculiarities of characterization. The author comes to the conclusion that both novels are original but dissimilar in all considered aspects.
Key words: subject matter, plot structure, literary device, symbolism, implication, special features of characterization.
Концевая В.Н. доцент
кафедра социально-гуманитарных наук и истории искусств Красноярский государственный институт искусств
Россия, г. Красноярск СРАВНИТЕЛЬНЫЙ АНАЛИЗ РОМАНОВ Э. ХЕМИНГУЭЯ «ПРОЩАЙ, ОРУЖИЕ» И Ф. СКОТТА ФИЦДЖЕРАЛЬДА «НОЧЬ НЕЖНА» ПО ЧЕТЫРЕМ АСПЕКТАМ Аннотация: Данная статья посвящена сравнительному анализу художественно-стилистических особенностей романов двух американских писателей ХХ века Э. Хемингуэя «Прощай, оружие» и Ф. Скотта Фицджеральда «Ночь нежна». Сравнение проводится по четырем аспектам: сюжетопостроение, символизм, подтекст и особенности характеризации персонажей. Автор приходит к выводу об оригинальности и несхожести этих произведений по всем рассматриваемым аспектам.
Ключевые слова: сюжет, сюжетопостроение, стилистический анализ, литературный прием, символизм, ирония, подтекст.
In this article, we will look at Hemingway's novel "A Farewell to Arms" and Fitzgerald's novel "Tender is the Night" comparing them in four aspects - plot structure, symbolism, implication and features of characterization of personages. The purpose of the comparison is to identify the originality of styles and features of the figurative structure of the works under consideration.
The plot is a way of artistic comprehension, organization of events manifested in fiction literature. The distinction between the event basis and its artistic reproduction comes from Aristotle, but the conceptual distinction of terms was undertaken only in the twentieth century. The most common way of storyline
transformation is destruction of the inviolability of the time series, rearrangement of events and parallel development of actions. A more complex technique is the use of non-linear connections between episodes. Such are rhyming, associative roll of situations, characters, sequences of episodes. The text can be built on the collision of different points of view, comparison of mutually exclusive options for the development of narration. The central theme can develop simultaneously in several planes: social, domestic, religious, artistic. The subject matter is viewed as a chain of depicted movements, gestures, spiritual impulses, spoken or imaginable words. It draws up relationships and contradictions of the characters between themselves and the circumstances, i.e. the conflict of the work. [1]
The novel "A Farewell to Arms" deals with the following subject: the condition of man in a society upset by the violence of war. The plot structure here more closely resembles a drama than the majority of American works of fiction. The development of the events is logic and mounting. The novel is composed of five separate books, each composed of a series of scenes and each scene is broken into sections which might be likened to stage direction and dialogue.
Thus, in Book I we have the introduction of all major characters, the general war setting and a presentation of the problems involved;
in Book II - the development of the romance between Fred and Catherine; in Book III - the retreat to Caporetto and Fred's decision to escape the chaos of war; in Book IV - the supposed escape and in Book V - the hope of sanctuary, which happened to be a deceived expectation.The narration stops at a crucial and finally tragic point: at the scene of Catherine's death.
From a technical point of view, the novel "Tender is the Night" is not as perfect as the novel "A Farewell to Arms": the reader should get past a certain barrier to appreciate the book. The publication of the novel took place in 1934, only 9 years after "The Great Gatsby" The novel was received with unfriendly criticism. Fitzgerald considered the plot structure to be the cause of failure and spent a few years rewriting the novel. Controversy arose over the merits of the two published versions and over the "nine lost years" in Fitzgerald's life between his two great novels, years of rewriting before publication of "Tender is the Night" The author's drafts and notes were carefully examined and analyzed by a preeminent expert on Fitzgerald - Mathew Bruccoli.[4]
The beginning seems to portend an interesting story. During the summer vacation on the Riviera young aspiring film-actress Rosemary Hoyt meets with the young spouses Richard and Nicole Diver. On about eighty pages, we are constantly waiting for the action to begin around Rosemary, when she will take the main place in the novel, but then we suddenly realize that this naive, but budding girl acts in the novel as a mere catalyst. When Dick Diver falls in love with her, his marriage to Nicole starts to fall apart. But Rosemary, having untwisted a chain of events, disappears from the novel completely, leaving the reader in bewilderment. We cannot say that Fitzgerald quite organically managed to implant this layer into the narration - the subject line accurately carried out in the beginning, disappears for a long time, briefly reappears, but once again stops
abruptly. But we must understand the inner logic of the appearance of such a character, even at the cost of violation of the architectural harmony of the novel. Rosemary was not meant by Fitzgerald to carry a special meaning, she was projected into a situation that needed to be pushed to start developing, moving to a foreseen disaster. And the novel is about the Divers, their life together and apart.
Thus, we may say that the plot structures of both novels are not quite in the tradition of the modern American novel, but while Hemingway uses the archaic form of a drama, Fitzgerald experiments with the plot structure making it very much like a film-script.
Now it is necessary to say a few words about symbolism in the novels. Of course, it is more characteristic of Hemingway. Malcolm Cowley was the first to suggest that Hemingway belonged with Poe, Hawthorne and Melville: the haunted and nocturnal writers, the men who dealt in images that were symbols of an inner world. [5]
In "A Farewell to Arms" the image of the wall - the symbol of an "absolutely perfect obstacle" recurring in Hemingway's novels - stands for the death in childbirth that separates Frederic from Catherine. In his early days Hemingway was trying to state everything behavioristically and it was not until later that he began a deliberate use of symbolism, together with other literary devices that he had avoided in the beginning when he was teaching himself to write commencing with the simplest things.
The rain becomes a conscious symbol of disaster. "Things went very badly", the hero tells us in the first chapter. "at the start of the winter came the permanent rain and with the rain came the cholera". Cat is afraid of the rain because she says "sometimes I see myself dead in it". Rain falls all the time during the retreat from Caporetto, it falls while Cat is giving birth to her baby, and it is still falling when she dies and Fred "leaves the hospital and walks back to the hotel in the rain".[2]
Ordinarily we think of Hemingway's type of writing as of that in which the events in the foreground tend to become misty because the author has his eyes fixed on something else. But Hemingway never loses the sense of the real world. Hemingway's symbols give us a sense of other shadowy meanings that contribute to the force and complexity of his writing, i.e. they are inseparably linked with implication.
Hemingway may be said to be symbolic in his narrative method. To understand Hemingway implication we should understand his symbolism and irony, as they are the essence of it.
There is a curious disproportion between Fred Henry's lot in the army and his frame of mind. All the war panorama, all the war activities that are brutal and meaningless in human life give the novel its predominantly ironic texture. Catherine's death spoils and at the same time violently reinforces the total effect of irony. It is as if the author says that the cruelty and disruption are not confined to war, they are the conditions of life itself. It is thus only at the end that the full ironic ambiguity of the title springs into view.
Hemingway uses implicit rather than explicit mode and both symbolism and irony serve this artistic purpose.
For Hemingway all perceptions were finally reducible to perceptions of likeness and perceptions of difference. He understood that it was only the object in relationship to other objects and to the observer that really counted; significance is, in short, a matter of likeness and difference.
Symbolism depends essentially on likeness and irony, and as artistic tools both are means of interpreting imaginatively, and with the flexibility of implication we have a complex reality.
Fitzgerald is not so down-to-earth a writer, his style is flowing. His method cannot be called symbolist and terse. His book is his confession and he uses an explicit mode.
The theme of his novel is very significant and wide: the reasons of the decay and dissolution of bourgeois society. Fitzgerald analyzes the state of the whole society in terms of two human beings who automatically assume symbolic character. Dick Diver, stands for all Americans, for "all the smart men who played too close to the line". The other characters are grouped around him in their subordinate roles: Rosemary sets in operation the forces waiting to destroy him, Abe North announces his fate and Tommy Barban is his stronger and less talented successor.
Fitzgerald uses the situation with Nicole, this extreme example of decadence to symbolize the rottenness of the society of which she is a part. Dick plays a contrastive role of the most charming and talented man.
Through all the novel Fitzgerald shows Dick Diver's superiority over everybody else. What is more, he shows the hero in the social isolation, in the sense that no one is big enough to give him any help and he has no genuinely reciprocal social relationships. He is a tragic lonely figure who symbolizes reviving social forces. Of course, no individual can stand adequately for any social issue. Nevertheless, Fitzgerald has done as well as possible. Dick is in much the same relationship to Nicole as the reformer to the sick society. It is inevitable that the reformer should fail and in the process be corrupted.
Unlike Hemingway, who has made symbolism his main literary device, Fitzgerald does not use it on purpose, his heroes assume symbolic character thanks to his literary talent, his ability to comprehend the complex social reality.
"Tender is the Night" is considered to be Fitzgerald's failure on several grounds. Hemingway expressed one of them: to his mind, Fitzgerald's characters are melodramatic, unreal and it is a serious accusation as the creation of true-to-life characters is the task of any mature writer. [6] But we should try to disapprove Hemingway's statement. Fitzgerald's characters: Dick Diver - an intellectual who cracks having failed to adjust himself to millions; Abe North - a talented musician ruining himself by drinking, Tommy Barban - an aggressive defender of the capitalist system; Rosemary - a fledgling Hollywood star; Nicole and Baby Warren - millionaires, owners of the world; - they all are socially motivated and at the same time psychologically true. All those people are taken by Fitzgerald from
real life.
As a realist, Fitzgerald shows their inner world, moods, sufferings and joys using such ways of psychological analysis as inner monologue, diary, letters, which characterize personages from the inside; and the author's characteristics, mutual characteristics, dialogues, which depict them indirectly.
Fitzgerald has reached a good effect by using mutual characteristics when rendering the mechanism of Dick Diver's collapse. Quite different people express almost the same thoughts and it gradually forces a tragic atmosphere over the hero. But the author deeply sympathizes with him. He cannot help expressing his sorrow explicitly unlike Hemingway who never reveals his thoughts, his personal attitude. Hemingway's text consists mostly of dialogic parts and narration. In the dialogue the story-teller addresses the interlocutor and in the narrative part - the reader. There are no inner monologues as it is an implicit mode. The reader is supposed to take an active part in the creative process of formulating his own idea of the characters.
Summing it up, we should say that both Hemingway and Fitzgerald are writers of standing reputation, who have their own readers, investigators and critics and though they have used different literary devices, different artistic tools, they have managed to create interesting volumetric macro images. Even a single novel by these contemporary authors gives an idea of the originality, innovation and artistic and stylistic peculiarities of their works.
Bibliography:
1. Краткий словарь по эстетике. Под ред. М. Ф. Овсянникова. - М.: Просвещение, 1983. - 223 с.
2. Хемингуэй, Эрнест. Прощай, оружие. Книга для чтения на английском языке. Л.: Изд. Просвещение, 1971. - 263 с.
3. Bruccoli, Matthew J., Scott and Ernest: The Authority of Failure and the Authority of Success, Southern Illinois University , 1980. - 170 р.
4. Bruccoli, Matthew J., The Composition of "Tender Is the Night": A Study of the Manuscripts, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963. - 280 р.
5. Cowley, Malcolm. Many-Windowed House: Collected Essays on American Writers and American Writing. Southern Illinois Univ Pr, 1970, 280 р.
6. Donaldson, Scott. Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Works and Days. Columbia University Press, 2009, 520 p.
7. Fitzgerald, Scott F. Tender Is the Night. Книга для чтения на английском языке. СПб.: Каро, 2016. - 526 с.
