Though Hemingway is a realist who has a predilection for physical action, he is essentially a philosophical writer. His works should be read and interpreted in the light of his famous Iceberg theory. In accordance with this 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.

As Hemingway writes in his non-fiction book Death in the Afternoon, "The dignity of the movement of an iceberg is due to only one eighth of it being above the water." (171). 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. This statement throws light on the symbolic implications of his art. He makes use of physical action to provide a symbolic interpretation of the nature of man's existence.

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 both "Cat in the Rain" and "Hills Like White Elephants," for example, both protagonists (be it George and his wife or the American and note which character is given a proper name in each) 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 in the hands and minds of the reader, Hemingway has been lauded as much as he has been criticized for his style for its simplicity, believing that fewer misleading words paint a truer picture of what lies beneath.


Compare and contrast the use of dialogue, iceberg narration, and indirect charac terisation in "Cat in the Rain" and "Hills Like White Elephants". How does Hem ingway build up and maintain tension throughout both stories?