19 pages • 38 minutes read
Elizabeth BishopThe Imaginary Iceberg
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1946A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Ship
The ship is foremost a symbol of motion and travel. Without a ship, the speaker is unable to navigate the ocean’s “shifting stage” (Line 23) and view the imaginary iceberg. The poem presents the ship as primarily a vehicle—in every sense of the word. The ship is intrinsically tied to travel and the practical concerns it entails. The poem opens by establishing this connection. The speaker states that taking the iceberg over the ship “meant the end of travel” (Line 2).
The ship inverts the old trope that the journey is more valuable than the destination. Compared to the iceberg, the ship and its concerns are “artlessly rhetorical” (Line 17), or a simple means to a practical end. That does not mean that the ship is worthless. It is a necessary part of the experience of the iceberg, and takes the speaker to “where waves give in to one another’s waves” (Line 30). On the journey’s return, the ship is a conduit for the communication and shared experience that allows every passenger a common voice in the poem’s speaker.
The Imaginary Iceberg
The poem’s imaginary iceberg is symbolically rich and provides a variety of literal and figurative meanings for the reader. The iceberg’s most obvious role is as a symbol to the stability and scale of the imagination—even in an otherwise unstable environment like the ocean (See: Poem Analysis). The poem speaks to this ability when it states that “Its weight the iceberg dares / upon a shifting stage and stands and stares” (Lines 22-23).
As an object with most of its mass obscured beneath the vast surface of the ocean and is “self-made from elements least visible” (Line 33), the iceberg also resonates with ideas of the subconscious mind popularized by Freudian psychoanalysis. This interpretation further enhances the connections between the iceberg and the imagination. The imagination—or the visible aspects of the iceberg—can be understood as the product of subconscious concerns and drives that no one can physically see but that are, nonetheless, very much real.
The Ocean
The ocean on which the ship sails represents mutability and potential. The poem’s speaker compares the ocean to a “shifting stage” (Line 23)—constantly changing and unpredictable. Like “marble” (Line 4) that can be molded and shaped into any subject by a talented sculptor, the water around the iceberg also holds infinite potential.
This potential has positive and negative qualities. The end of the poem celebrates the mystery of other people’s consciousnesses and imaginations by allowing “waves [to] give in to one another’s waves” (Line 30). The fertile snow (See: Poem Analysis) that has collected atop the iceberg, however, is in constant danger of being assimilated into this unpredictable substance. Only the stable iceberg, which separates the snow from the turbulent ocean, prevents the “breathing plain of snow” (Line 6) from drowning and becoming water.
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By Elizabeth Bishop
