Mastering Figurative Language with Hemingway: Techniques and Context Cues for Writers
Easier comprehension for the reader; more engagement for the writer
“…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.” — Earnest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea.
Text and image are this writer’s tools to tell stories, bestow opinions, and offer photography tips. I employ both throughout my writing, as it is a niche that meets many readers’ communicative needs.
Writing is a craft of reading. Text and image combine literary and pictorial elements used for centuries to transmit information and engage humans in the two forms of communication that make them unique from most other animals. Two communication factors can make or break the writer's and readers’ comprehension success:
1. Interpretation of figurative language such as personification, allegory, metaphor/simile, and idioms.
2. Determining the meaning of unknown words through context.
Many writers need guidance to produce imagery in the text. For readers, these literal images are apparent immediately if one is engaged in delusory or leisurely reading. Hemingway’s sensory descriptions in his novels brought you into scenes as if you were in the middle of the sea, a war, and a trip abroad. I aim to do the same, with more scaffolding for the reader to break up the text. I added photography, which I’ve shot like a Hemingway with a camera.
The Art of Hemingway’s Figurative Language
The Old Man and the Sea is a quick read. This one-nighter is special…placing me into a tranquil state of literate bliss during the twentieth century and then examining the speculation surrounding the characters and locations in the twenty-first.
Text and imagery come to mind when reading Earnest Hemingway. The writer, a clever craftsman, brought them together, albeit the imagery was juxtaposed in words. Words/phrases/paragraphs are artful objects of design and organization. They create reflections of speech that are life landscapes, literally and figuratively.
The characters and locations in the story have outwardly literal meanings, from an old man fishing in a skiff in the turbulent waters of the Florida Straits between the Florida Keys and Havana, Cuba, to much speculation from the allegorical meanings of that language.
Hemingway implements writing methods in this fisherman’s tale of persistence and survival. Hidden meanings step you into the story from the title that could be rewritten as “Human battles nature.”
Literary language abounds with the symbolism of a sea, nature’s endless unknown, comparing a marlin to a crusade, personification of sharks as fright, and the allegory of a boat mast as humankind carried on the shoulder of one man, and the Christ-like protagonist, Santiago, the elderly man of symbolic sacrifice.
While I don’t buy it all (Hemingway has indicated no such connection to Christianity, as he wasn’t religious), it has been a good education for me. Literary publications only speculate these “illusions.”
Hemingway’s Clearly Defined Context
Hemingway lived just outside Havana, Cuba, and appreciated Spanish and the colloquialisms he heard, often implementing new words from them in his writings. As a writer, he felt like using previously undefined words from cultures into which he immersed himself in English text.
Context in reading and writing is worthy in more ways than one. Providing it in writing and receiving it in reading is a must. After all, English is an array of multiple meanings that can change from words that sound the same to words that sound the same but have different meanings to words with the same or similar spelling but different pronunciations and meanings.
Then, there are words in literature that are not in English. The use of foreign words provides an added cultural element to many stories, such as those used in Hemingway and those used in stories that others and I pen.
The literary reward of The Old Man and the Sea for me is researching why Hemingway used a few words that are not simply defined. Tracing the meaning of the word salao used in the novella required some research because it comes from the Spanish word saltado, meaning salty.
Hemingway did not use the word to mean salty like a monolithic Spanish-speaking Cuban would.
The word had been a colloquialism, I suspect, that he picked up from hanging out with locals just outside Havana, where he had lived for decades.
In the book, the old man, Santiago, is a jinxed fisherman who spends weeks at sea without a catch, making him salvo, which in some Cuban circles can be translated as jinxed in English.
Oh, how I love wordplay.
Hemingway clarifies that he wants the reader to know the meanings of the words he uses to write, as he uses a creative phrase to define salao, writing, as “the worst form of unlucky.”
Hemingway’s found words were embedded deep in Cuban subculture, esoteric meanings that he picked up from locals in the hills outside Havana.
Hemingway-Inspired Application
My writing and many other writers motivated me to continue; I could read it as if it were another writer’s words. To be sure, first drafts are like scratching those old green chalkboards, yet the revisions always happen, sometimes twice, sometimes way more than that.
The Old Man and the Sea has educated me to search for illusions that can be formed from my text. I have not been conscious of their use in my writing. The process happens subliminally. It’s like kid’s play. To be sure, I’m no Hemingway, yet my decades of experiences have guided me as that author was guided by his own. In the story above, Castro is linked to Robin Hood, a well-known metaphor.
Hemingway wrote from his surroundings, examining the people and locations surrounding him. The words he selected for use in the story The Old Man and the Sea can be learning tools for writers. The author of the short novella was an introspective man whose language is examined for its extrinsic and intrinsic meaning.
The primary tool for reading and writing literature — context cues — is front and center in Hemingway’s work. It can be for any writer who pays close attention to his or her words to clarify each for the reader's understanding.
Hemingway, for me, is the perfect example, as my South Florida background was influenced heavily by Cuban Culture and the metaphorical oddities of the mystics and their admirers in my life (my mother was an astrologer and palmist).
Just as Hemingway reached far into relationships to seek unique language, the dialects and idioms of Cuban locals where Hemingway lived are a reader’s secret gift. Research has shown me that these esoteric language choices have unlikely origins embedded deeply in Cuban culture.
As readers and writers, our past is the primary element for our pens. Digging into it through comprehensive probing provides narratives no one else can tell, from words to imagery.
While no one knows how Hemingway thought while writing in a cafe or at home, especially on the relationships between the content of his text and his prior experiences, interactions, and challenges, we all realize that these reflections were powerful anecdotes.
We, as writers and readers, can construct our own. My method surprises me to no end. When I contemplate the past, my brain leaps into video play mode, where my past becomes alive in moving imagery of wild experiences. I’m not sure if that’s a learned or inherited skill. Genetically acquired or not, it just doesn’t matter, as it just happens automatically, and I’m sure many writers can relate.
My play with nostalgia through implicit literary elements is a blast of the past symbolically embedded throughout my fiction and nonfiction writing. As a habitual child TV viewer in the 1960s and 70s, I have a fond adoration for all that was quirky in the era’s sitcoms and commercials, playing on these themes throughout my writing. In my writing, my characters range from playing the roles of annoying mosquitos to Florida locations that were once Shangri-La.
What’s yours?
Context and Perspective My Way
I assemble my writing using the same literary devices as Hemingway with words that overflow with implicit ideas in a similar way but with a different twist.
I grew up not in a religious home but a mystic one. My mother was an astrologer, so I’m not going to write allegories about crucifixion; instead, I will write about the occult.
Some astrologers use an ephemeris to locate the planets in the future and predict a person’s upcoming life events. In my writing, I create an allegory of mystic manipulation, where an astrologer uses the craft to manipulate people and the ephemeris to find the planets’ movement concerning a zodiac sign as their creepy bible.
Why do writers do these things?
Because they can. As word masters and creators of powerful language, writers use words that originated outside American culture. There are a few ways that authors reveal meanings to words he or she may think are not known to the layperson.
Hemingway was engaged with his writing because he used his cultural experiences as part of the process. I love his work because it aligns with my Floridian-Cuban cultural background.
Look, the guy savored writing. …And many people have deeply engaged with his storytelling and use of context to forge meaningful text.
Context Unpacked for Easier Reading and Writing
Providing meaningful context to enhance reading comprehension must be one of the objectives of writers who pen desultory content.
Authors like to assist readers of all levels. They give hints as to what a complex word is or help the reader determine its meaning.
Using context cues while writing assists your audience in understanding the language you use, especially if it’s complex.
Look at the Ship Shape car wash in Wisconsin as an example that provides context to the meaning of programmatic architecture. The image is of a business that uses programmatic architecture to draw attention to it. The caption above contains a definition of a context cue, one of four types I’ve defined below.
Four Context Cues for Reading and Writing Comprehension
Readers and writers benefit from knowing how authors add hints to reveal the meanings of words.
An author will choose to help in one or more of the following ways:
· Definition: An author sometimes defines his or her own words that correspond to one of the meanings of the words.
For instance, Donald Trump’s doleful tactics for getting attention are ignored by many people because his rhetoric is sometimes ridiculous and makes some people sad about the state of American politics.
· Inference — The author gives the reader reasoning about the word after it’s mentioned.
For instance, a Wifi signal has become pervasive in so many coffee shops that customers are surprised when they don’t have it.
· Compare/Contrast — The author will create a comparison or contrast of a word that he/she thinks might help you to determine the word:
For instance, threatening cumulonimbus clouds towering in the sky, unlike the wispy cirrus that are our fair weather friends.
· Logic: The writer uses logical information about what is already known about a word so the reader can guess the meaning.
For instance, Predators such as large birds like eagles and hawks have large claws to grab prey to eat.
Takeaway for More Engaging Reading and Writing
Engagement and comprehension are two halves of a whole, inseparable and equally vital for effective communication.
Reader engagement requires close attention to figurative language, so writers are better off avoiding obscure figurative devices without assisting them in determining meaning.
Text, imagery, figurative language, and context create the whole. Images and media can be an added plus.
Context cues help readers, from children to seniors, unpack the complex. When they understand how they’re written the writer is actively involving them in a story or essay, it’s much easier for them to determine the entire picture.
Ernest Hemingway’s tools for reader understanding and engagement are priceless. They have motivated my writing to be sparkling clean and uncluttered, like a home where people feel better sitting in.