The Iceberg Theory is a term used to describe the writing style of American writer Ernest Hemingway. The theory is this: The meaning of a piece is not immediately evident, because the crux of the story lies below the surface, just as most of the mass of a real iceberg similarly lies beneath the surface. For example, The Old Man and the Sea is a meditation upon youth and age, even though the protagonist spends little or no time thinking on those terms.

“冰山理論”是一個用來形容美國作家歐內斯特·海明威的寫作風格的術語。具體是指：一篇作品的的意義不是顯而易見的，因為故事的要義往往隱藏在表面之下。比如，《老人與海》是是關于對年齡的思考，但作品中的主要人物并沒有在這個問題上花費什么時間。

In Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway wrote: a writer of prose knows enough of 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. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.

在《午后之死》中，海明威寫道：如果一個作家真正知道自己在寫什么的話，即使他省略掉這些東西，讀者還是能夠理解他想要表達的內容。冰山運動之雄偉壯觀，是因為他只有八分之一在水面上。