Abstract The Old Man and the Sea is a masterpiece of Ernest Miller Hemingway. He is generally considered as one of the 20th century’s most famous writers and the representative of “Lost generation” in the United States. Experts usually explore the Tough Guy image in this article while past researches are mostly tended to focus on the connotation of main characters and other images. However, in this thesis, the iceberg theory in The Old Man and the Sea will be discussed from the perspective of language style, writing techniques as well as structural arrangement, to find out how the writer express the iceberg’s seven-eighths part beneath the water through describing the one-eighth part on the water. The objectivity of depiction, the manipulation of symbolism and the concentration of time formed a unique phenomenon of iceberg principle in Hemingway's novel, filling out plots of the story and highlighting the characters’ personalities. 61654

 Key words: iceberg theory; objectivity; symbolism; time

摘要《老人与海》是欧内斯特·米勒尔·海明威的一部杰出之作。海明威被广泛认为是20世纪最著名的作家之一，他也是美国“迷惘的一代”中的代表人物。专家们通常深入探索《老人与海》中的“硬汉形象”，过往的研究也往往聚焦于作品中人物和其他意象的内涵分析。本文则从文章的语言风格、写作手法以及结构安排的角度探索《老人与海》中的冰山原则，研究作者如何通过描写“冰山浮于水面上的八分之一”表现“藏在水面下的八分之七”。语言的客观性、手法的象征性、时间的集中性形成了海明威小说中独特的冰山现象，丰满故事情节，突出人物性格。

毕业论文关键词：冰山理论；客观性；象征手法；时间 

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

3. The Language Style 3

3.1 The Objectivity of Statements 3

3.2 The Parable Color of the Plots 5

4. The Manipulation of Symbolism 6

4.1 The Symbolic Meaning of the Big Marlin 6

4.2 The Symbolic Meaning of the Lions 7

4.3 The Symbolic Meaning of the Sharks and the Boy 9

5. The Concentration of Time 10

5.1 The Period of Time 10

5.2 The Point of Time 11

6. Conclusion 12

Works Cited 13

1. Introduction

Ernest Miller Hemingway’s work The Old Man and the Sea is a typical work of the “iceberg theory”. It was first published in 1936. The Old Man and the Sea is based on a true story of a Cuba fisher, it tells a story of an old fisher, Santiago, who failed to catch fish continuously in 84 days, and finally hooked up a huge marlin by himself. He killed the fish and bound it on one side of the boat. Unfortunately sharks attacked him on his way home, he returned with only the fish head and the tail and the spine. This article fully embodies the “iceberg theory” in the aspect of writing practice. In 1932, the iceberg principle was proposed by Ernest Hemingway in his documentary work Death in the Afternoon (Smith, 1983: 268). He was not the founder of this theory, but succeeded in this field. His “iceberg” metaphor, that authors should only describe the parts “out of water”, while the underwater part tipped via text is quite famous and widely used in many works.