从《老人与海》中谈海明威的冰山理论(英文)

“You’re my alarm clock”, the boy said.
“Age is my alarm clock”, the old man said. “Why does old man wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?”
“I don’t know’, the boy said. ‘All I know is that young boys sleep late and hard”.
“I can remember it”, the old man said. “I’ll waken you in time.” [9]

The simple sentences and the repeated rhythms hit at the profundities that the surface of the language tries to ignore. Its simplicity is highly suggestive and connotative, and often reflects the strong undercurrent of emotion. Indeed, the more closely the reader watches, the less rough and simple the characters appear. In Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway uses an effective metaphor to describe his writing style:
If a writer of the prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. [10]

    To sum up, simplicity is a noted writing characteristic in The Old Man and the Sea. And this writing style has never occur lonely, because it interact with symbolism here and there. For example, the old man , the sea , the marlin, the lions, the boy and the lion is just one-eight of the iceberg which are all expressed by simple words and sentence, and the other seven-eights which are under the sea are of symbolic meaning to a large degree. In fact, this book like a complex building which composing with unaccountable symbols that basically on the base of simplicity. One can get many kinds of meanings in accordance with a variety of points of views. And one also attains different kinds of symbols from different angle. In addition, by using symbolism Hemingway succeeded in reaching his goal of conveying the main theme of the story, which is courage leads to success. In other words, a man can be destroyed but not to be defeated. The interaction of simplicity and symbolism plays a fatal part in making iceberg theory being perfectly in The Old Man and the Sea. Just as Hemingway once spoke The Old Man and the Sea is the only best work during his lifelong literary creation.    
2. 2 Symbolism
The symbolism is another important element of Iceberg Theory, in which, generally, the author uses one simple thing to stand for another complicated thing. In other word, it is the implication of meaning. The complicated things include ideology and other abstract things. In this part, the author will give the introduction of symbolism and discuss the embodiment of symbolism in The Old Man and the Sea.
To begin with, the title of the book itself is symbolic. The old man represents the human race and the sea symbolizes nature. The whole story could be regard as the metaphor of the struggle that takes place between human beings and the nature. But the story also indicates that nature is so strong that the humankind is not able to win this fighting. Here is a statement made by the old man “it is good that we do not have to kill the sun and the moon or the start. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brother.” [4]  Santiago knows that mankind is always less strong, and he admits he is happy that he does not have to try and kill the moon or the stars because he knows they are much stronger and that he would always be defeated in a fight against them. The old man, Santiago to some degree symbolizes Christ in many ways. His name is derive from San Diego (Saint James), suggesting the old man’s ties to the Christian religion. And he embodies much of that religion. For instance, his strong right hand is his salvation and his left hand is the traitor to his body, he carries his mast up the hill to his home and falls beneath it like Christ bearing cross. And finally in one unmistakable symbolism line, he carries out as a man would “felling the nail goes through his hand and into the wood” [10] Yet Santiago in fact is not a very religious man even as he offers God a promise to say numerous prayers if God will allow him to catch his fish. As a matter of the fact there is also a pagan element running through Santiago characters (as there is though much of actual Cuban nature) in many ways the sea is the deity predating Christianity. In addition, Santiago also serves as a metaphor for the creative artist.