Iceberg Theory - Legacy

Legacy

In October 1954 Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He jokingly told the press he believed Carl Sandburg and Isak Dinesen deserved the prize more than he, but that the prize money would be welcome. The prize was awarded to Hemingway "for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style." A few days after the announcement, Hemingway spoke with a Time magazine correspondent, while on his boat fishing off the coast of Cuba. When asked about the use of symbolism in his work, and particularly in the most recently published Old Man and the Sea, he explained: "No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in...That kind of symbol sticks out like raisins in raisin bread. Raisin bread is all right, but plain bread is better....I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea, a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things. The hardest thing is to make something really true and sometimes truer than true."