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Ernest Hemingway's Iceberg Theory

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Ernest Hemingway is indeed one of the ultimate writers in international literature. He was born in the city of lights, which many book authors thought it had a great impact on becoming a source of inspiration for him. Through his life, Hemingway was adopting the iceberg theory. Such a theory depends on hiding many details away from readers in order to force them to grasp the whole idea by themselves and discover the hidden concepts. Even at the beginning of his writing career as a reporter for a newspaper, he resorted to such theory through unrevealing the important themes to encourage anyone who reads his articles and stories to figure out the truth relying only on their efforts. Therefore, it is clear that the whole writings of Hemingway …show more content…

In “The Indian Camp," Hemingway’s tendency in literature appears as he shows modernism through relying on the iceberg theory. According to what was stated by him in one of the famous magazines The Paris Review: “I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows” (Plimpton, 2017). As a matter of fact, his theory supports the idea of saying few things in order to achieve the target of suggesting more and more ideas in the minds of readers. Because of his theory, the reader has another effort to do which is exploring the underlying concepts and points of view by resorting to his or her imagination and explanation. When reading the story of “The Indian Camp” for the first time, it is very hard to figure out what is lying beyond the written lines, therefore, one needs to read these lines more than one time so that he or she could be able to comprehend and analyze the …show more content…

For example, the word “lake” along with the existence of rowboats shows that the place in which the characters are standing is wooden. In addition, saying the word “another” refers to the idea that there are two rowboats or more than one. Moreover, the word “waiting” is used in order to mean that there is someone else who will follow the two Indian men. The readers may believe that the sentences of Hemingway miss points of strength, or they might view it as such as a shortage of depth. On the other hand, Hemingway depends on minimalism in dialogues and conversations between characters as well making it very difficult for readers to determine the teller of each sentence. For instance, instead of mentioning a lot of “he said” and “they said,” Hemingway prefers not to state them which leads to the confusion of many readers who do not have the ability to keep track of speakers. An example of this technique in “The Indian Camp” is the dialogue between Nick and his father Dr. Adams at the end of the

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