Iceberg Theory: Omission, Inference, and Self-Reflection
The Iceberg Theory, also known as the “theory of omission”, was created by American writer Ernest Hemingway. In his theory, Hemingway states that a good way to attract the reader is to depict in a single representative scene the entire story through subtext from which the reader then deduces the drama (Wood 1). His use of the Iceberg Theory was presented clearly in the short story, “Hills Like White Elephants” in which Hemingway depicted a vague conversation between a man and a woman named Jig. By only portraying the surroundings such as the hills and the station, as well as providing the short conversation, Hemingway has given the reader a chance to be the narrator to self-interpret the couple’s feelings and thoughts as well as to infer the drama the couple was facing of whether or not Jig would get an abortion.
Hemingway used three main symbols which were the hills, the white elephant and the railroad station to develop the theme of the whole story. The theme here is about how the woman saw the possibility of keeping her child and having a happy life while the man fails to see the possibilities and tried to persuade her to go through with the abortion.
In this story, the hills symbolized the obstacle that the couple was facing which was having or not having the baby. Although hills are a big hindrance which everyone must climb, from the point view of the woman, the hill was beautiful and she looked at it as a spectacular view instead of an obstacle; “They’re lovely hills” (Hemingway 2). “..Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees” (Hemingway 4). In this paragraph, Hemingway used lots of nature’s images such as grain, trees,