Question

英语作文，我最喜欢的一本书的书评

Answer 1

The Old Man and the Sea  I had read this novel when I was in middle school. I came across it in a library and after opening the book I continued reading till the last page. It’s amazing that there should be such a wonderful story. Later, I learned some parts of the story from our Chinese book and the teacher told us to try to feel something that the author was expressing. Then, I became confused for all I noticed was the story itself.  Now I read the novel again, but in English. I have been familiar with the plot and many details in the story, and I could still recognize them while reading them in English. The story goes like this: there’s an old man in Cuba named Santiago who was a fisherman. He had been fishing hard in the Gulf Stream for 84 days but got nothing. In the previous days a boy named Manolin was fallowing him as a company, but the kind boy was force to leave the old man by his parents who thought that the old man was unlucky. However, Santiago continued to go fishing alone in the eighty-fifth day. The boy cared about him and prepared things for him.  The old man left the land early in the morning and in this very day his luck finally came—a large marlin bit his bait and couldn’t escape. But the fish was so big and heavy that it pulled the skiff or a little ship as far as it could do. The old man was very excited and determined to defeat it. So they started a battle which lasted for days and nights. First the fish was in charge, it swam fast with great strength and the old man could only pull the rope with great efforts. When the old man was tired he ate bonito or dolphin to keep strong and he started to talk to himself so that he would not feel weak in the mind. The marlin grew tired gradually and it began to circle. The old man knew that he was to have the fish. He burnt all his energy to pull the rope while the fish was circling under the water. The fish came nearer and nearer to his skiff, and then the old man hit the fish with a harpoon and finally got it. The fish was huge and it was longer than his skiff. He tight it alongside the skiff with ropes and lay down in the stern to have a rest. However, on the way back the blood from the scar of the fish speared in the sea water and then the sharks came. The old man was not afraid and used every weapon to fight with them. There were five or six times of attacking from those sharks and each time they ate lots of fine meat from the marlin. The old man fought again and again to protect his fish and used harpoon, oar, knife, rudder and so on to beat the sharks. They fought all the way back home and in the end the old man gave it up because the fish was almost eaten up and he was exhausted.  The old man finally came back after sailing out for so far and so long a time. It was deep in the night; he left the skiff and the fish and went to bed. In his dream, he saw lions playing on the beach in the coast of Africa. The story ended. It is said that the author, Ernest Hemingway who is a great American writer wrote the novel in only eight weeks, basing on one of his friend’s true experience. He created the figure of the old man which was later called by people “tough man” and showed his life attitude and spiritual world. The most well-known sentence of this novel and also the topic of it is that: “man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” These words become belief of many readers. In my opinion, the whole story is about a battle between an old man and the sea, both of which are considered to have symbolic meanings according to critics. The old man once was so energetic and strong but couldn’t get harvest from the sea. He used his old body and strong mind to fight against nature and challenge his fate. He did win a bit—he got the large fish, but he lost totally because he carried back only the skeleton of the fish with his hands bleeding. On the other hand, he had done all he could to fight against all unlucky things and didn’t lose his face. He behaved like a real man, a tough man. That’s what’s most important in a battle. Hemingway is famous for his special writing style and skills. His words are short but tough, and people describe this as “telegraph style”. And from this typical work of his I can easily find out something worth noticing. I like the first paragraph very much because it reads so natural and attracting and it will lead you into the situation as soon as possible.  It writes: “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish, the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week.” Some features can be seen that verbs and nouns are used mostly, but not adjectives. This will make the novel clean and hard like bones and easy to understand. The novel is not long and not difficult to read in English, and I think we can learn to be tough like Santiago when facing with hard times in our life, which is the best solution we should choose in a bad situation.