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.

“冰山理论”是一个用来形容美国作家欧内斯特·海明威的写作风格的术语。具体是指：一篇作品的的意义不是显而易见的，因为故事的要义往往隐藏在表面之下。比如，《老人与海》是是关于对年龄的思考，但作品中的主要人物并没有在这个问题上花费什么时间。

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，海明威写道：如果一个作家真正知道自己在写什么的话，即使他省略掉这些东西，读者还是能够理解他想要表达的内容。冰山运动之雄伟壮观，是因为他只有八分之一在水面上。