【正文】 rnational literary celebrity in the world. His father is a prominent doctor, and also a dab at fishing and hunting. The influence of his father made him full of love with fishing and hunting. As a mouthpiece of “the lost generation”, Hemingway suffered cold shoulder and attack almost ten years in the mentary field. In order to save the desperate situation, Hemingway wrote a work that he firmly believes to be the best works in his life, which was called The Old Man and the Sea, which is the inheritance and development of Hemingway’s unyielding character.3 The Symbolism in the Works The Definition of Symbolism Symbolism is an artistic movement in the late 19th century that tried to express abstract or mystical ideas through the symbolic use of images. In literature, it is a writing style of using something to stand for something else by reasoning of relationship, association, accident resemblance, or a visible sign of something invisible. As a master in literature, Hemingway uses very simple words and sentences to write some magnum opus, which is his iceberg technique that he uses in his work. He believed as a good writer, he didn’t need to reveal the action or characters clearly, obscurity can give us the aesthetic sense. So the words and sentences in his work are symbolic and suggestive. That is to say, one needs keep a close eye to read his works and read between the lines deliberately.3. 2 Major Symbols in The Old Man and the Sea There are many symbols in this story, such as the old man, the boy, the sea, the shark, the marlin and etc. This paper only focuses on the important symbols and analyzes the deep meanings of them. The Old Man— the Best Expression to “the unyielding character” The Old Man and the Sea is a short simple novel that has been hailed as a classic. The story The Old Man and the Sea is about an old fisherman named Santiago who overes the great forces of nature. Not catching a single fish for eightyfour days, the old fisherman still keeps on trying without being despaired. He goes far out into the sea and catches a huge marlin after three day’s patient struggle. On his way home sharks e and attack, Santiago tries his best to fight but fails to prevent the marlin from being eaten. In the end he returns with nothing but the skeleton of the marlin. Many people believe that the novel is about the life of Hemingway himself. Because some parts of the story do relate to what Hemingway has experienced in his life. The old man Santiago is the last tragic hero that Hemingway portrays. Being poor and unlucky, his fate is sad, but he is not a man being easily defeated. Hemingway’s unyielding character is attached to the old man like a demon, which is the symbol of Hemingway’s unyielding character, which is regarded as an embodiment of Hemingway’s iceberg principle. Hemingway does not tell the story simply, but reveal his living experience, emotion and thought symbolically. We can see that the old man shows some traditional moral, we can’t deny that the old man is the best reflecting of the unyielding spirit