Hemingway: Existential & Iceberg
Existentialism or Iceberg Theory
Review the document posted on Google Classroom. Comment on one aspect of the book as either an example of Existentialism or representative of the Iceberg Theory. Explain. You should reference specific details, but since you turned in your book, you do not need to cite pages.
For added Enrichment, watch the video about Existentialism. It is less than 9 minutes long.
While many aspects of existentialism are found in the novel, the one that stood out to me the most, as I stated in class, is the indifference of nature. The rain, a motif throughout, foreshadowed the deaths that were to come; however, to me it was also representative of life. I originally focused on the the rain simply as nature's indifference. The rain continued to fall. It didn't stop because they were already miserable. It didn't pay attention to their lives or the lives of anyone else. It went on, just as life does. The world stops for no one. Life doesn't stop because you are struggling. This is what the rain said to me. But, upon further consideration, it says much more. I still see indifference in the rain, one of the main existential theories, but I also see others such as: individuality, choices, and, of course, death. While the rain continued to fall, unmoved by the struggles of man, each individual person also continued to live, also indifferent toward other's actions. It is important for people to live on through their struggles, even when nature's disregard for them makes it hard. That is where I see the existential idea of individualism. People spend their time trying to live purposeful, meaningful lives despite what goes on around them. Additionally, the topic of choices also plays into it as people make choices that factor into their individuality.
ReplyDeleteSince my response to the book and its relationship with existentialism is on the previous blog post, I will briefly go into how the story is representative of the Iceberg Theory. This theory revolves around the idea that people only see few details from the surface/outside. Its name comes from that of a literal iceberg, which may seem small from the surface but reaches great depths beneath. The primary example of this in the novel is the relationship between Frederic and Catherine. They avoid discussing the war, hence only discussing "the tip of the iceberg" of what is going on in their lives and around them.
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