The Iceberg Theory and Hemingway’s Style
Many first-time readers read “Hills Like White Elephants” as
nothing more than a casual conversation between two people waiting for a train
and therefore miss the unstated dramatic tension lurking between each line. As
a result, many people don’t realize that the two are actually talking about
having an abortion and going their separate ways, let alone why the story was
so revolutionary for its time. In accordance with his so-called Iceberg Theory,
Hemingway stripped everything but the bare essentials from his stories and
novels, leaving readers to sift through the remaining dialogue and bits of
narrative on their own. Just as the visible tip of an iceberg hides a far greater
mass of ice underneath the ocean surface, so does Hemingway’s dialogue belie
the unstated tension between his characters. In fact, Hemingway firmly believed
that perfect stories conveyed far more through subtext than through the actual
words written on the page. The more a writer strips away, the more powerful the
“iceberg,” or story, becomes.
Hemingway stripped so much from his stories that many of his
contemporary critics complained that his fiction was little more than snippets
of dialogue strung together. Others have called his writing overly
masculine—there are no beautiful phrases or breathtaking passages, just the
sheer basics. In “Hills Like White Elephants,” for example, both the American
man and the girl speak in short sentences and rarely utter more than a few
words at a time. Hemingway also avoids using dialogue tags, such as “he said”
or “she said,” and skips any internal monologues. These elements leave the
characters’ thoughts and feelings completely up to the reader’s own
interpretations. Hemingway’s fans, however, have lauded his style for its
simplicity, believing that fewer misleading words paint a truer picture of what
lies beneath.
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