The Gaze and the Iceberg

War Tourism in Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” (1929)

Abstract

The essay investigates the theme of tourism in Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, focusing on the one hand on its connection with the novel’s representation of war, on the other on its connection with Hemingway’s “Iceberg Theory.” On the basis of a comparison between the latter and Dean MacCannell’s notion of “tourist authenticity,” the analysis suggests that the tourist-like activities featured in the novel resemble moving pictures rather than static photographs. Refusing to reveal the “inner” significance of places and experiences, Hemingway’s representation of tourism first appears as a mere evocation or fantasy on the protagonist’s part, then assumes a more realistic dimension in the Milan section, to be eventually recast as a sort of full-blown vacation ironically taken amidst the tragedy of the conflict. The novel’s final chapters reinforce the idea that, for Hemingway, tourism could be yet another moral and especially aesthetic equivalent of the war he otherwise seems to utterly reject.