Discuss the salient features
of the narrative technique in Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.
Percy Lubock in his Craft of Fiction comments-“The whole
intricate question of method in the ‘Craft of Fiction’ is the question of the
relation in which the narrator stands in the story.” A novel enacts a story and in order to enact
the story narration is necessary. Narrative method is the way of the author’s
arranging and presenting his or her sequences of events .It is, however, more
complicated than what actually happens.
In The Old Man and The Sea (1952) Hemingway uses the third
person narrative method to tell his story. The author himself is the narrator
here. Apart from knowing all the external details he also understands the inner
workings of the mind and character. It is the form of narrative where he can
portray the action and the characters from the outside and he can move into
very recesses of the parts of these characters and explore the very process of
thought.
The problem of this technique is that plausibility is hampered.
How can a man see the characters from the inside as well as from the outside?
But there are some advantages. As he is an omniscient narrator it is easy for
him to bring the action in life. The speaking voice, in this form of novel
should be objected, depersonalized and almost absent.
