SOURCE: "Hemingway's Old Man and the Iceberg," in Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. VII, No. 4, Winter, 1961-62, pp. 295-304.

In the following essay, Stephens argues that The Old Man and the Sea is the most perfect expression and "crest of the iceberg" in Hemingway's tragic vision — which pervades all of his work — of man as animal attempting to transcend his animal nature.

When Ernest Hemingway told George Plimpton of The Paris Review about his iceberg theory of writing, he pointed to The Old Man and the Sea as a prime example of such writing. According to the theory, "I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it under water for every part that shows."¹ The sea novel in respect to style fits the theory, Hemingway pointed out, in that he knew many fishing stories never explicitly incorporated in the tale; knowing them...