Abstract

     The Old Man and the Sea tells a story about an old Cuba fisherman who fought with a great marlin in the gulf stream. It is one of the most prominent novel of the American writer Hemingway. And after the publication of this novel, it earned Hemingway the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Nobel Prize in literature. When later Hemingway talked about the reasons for the novel’s success, he valued the little boy and the old man equally. However, in recent years, researches have been done on topics such as the old man’s “grace under pressure”, the symbolism and the heroism in the novel and so on. And the little boy’s role in this novel has been neglected. 

     This paper focuses on the discussion of the little boy’s indispensable role from two main aspects: first, as far as the theme of the novel is concerned, the little boy helps to increase the old man’s pressure and highlights the old man’s grace under pressure and makes the old man’s image of “tough guy” and his characters more distinguishable. Secondly, from the perspective of readers, the boy helps to present the image of the old man to readers and helps them know more about the old man’s attitudes and personalities. Therefore, the boy plays an important role in moving and inspiring readers by his emotion towards the old man.

Key words：the boy  old man  role