Iceberg Theory
below the surface of a story.[2] He learned about corrup-
Ernest Hemingway as photographed for 1940 edition of For
Whom the Bell Tolls
The Iceberg Theory (sometimes known as the "theory
of omission") is a style of writing (turned colloquial-
ism) coined by American writer Ernest Hemingway. As
a young journalist, Hemingway had to focus his news-
paper reports on immediate events, with very little con-
text or interpretation. When he became a writer of short
stories, he retained this minimalistic style, focusing on
surface elements without explicitly discussing underlying
themes. Hemingway believed the deeper meaning of a
story should not be evident on the surface, but should
shine through implicitly. Critics such as Jackson Benson
claim that the iceberg theory, along with Hemingways
distinctive clarity of style, functioned to distance himself
from the characters he created.
1 Background
Like other American writers such as Mark Twain,
Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis and
Willa Cather, Hemingway worked as a journalist before
becoming a novelist. After graduating from high school
he went to work as a cub reporter for The Kansas City
Star,[1] where he quickly learned that truth often lurks
1
tion in city politics, and that in hospital emergency rooms
and police stations a mask of cynicism was worn like ar-
mour to shield whatever vulnerabilities remained.[2] In
his pieces he wrote about relevant events, excluding the
background. As foreign correspondent for the Toronto
Star, while living in Paris in the early 1920s, he covered
the Greco-Turkish War in more than a dozen articles. As
his biographer Jerey Meyers explains, he objectively
reported only the immediate events in order to achieve a
concentration and intensity of focusa spotlight rather
than a stage.[3] From the Greco-Turkish War he gained
valuable writing experience that he translated to the writ-
ing of ction. He believed ction could be based on re-
ality, but that if an experience were to be distilled, as he
explained, then what he made up was truer than what he
remembered.[3]
2 Denition
In 1923, Hemingway conceived of the idea of a new the-
ory of writing after nishing his short story Out of Sea-
son. In A Moveable Feast, his posthumously published
memoirs about his years as a young writer in Paris, he
explains: I omitted the real end [of Out of Season"]
which was that the old man hanged himself. This was
omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything
... and the omitted part would strengthen the story.[5] In
chapter sixteen of Death in the Afternoon he compares
his theory about writing to an iceberg.[5]
Hemingways biographer Carlos Baker believed that as a
writer of short stories Hemingway learned how to get
the most from the least, how to prune language and avoid
waste motion, how to multiply intensities, and how to tell
nothing but the truth in a way that allowed for telling more
than the truth.[6] Baker also notes that the writing style of
the iceberg theory suggests that a storys narrative and
nuanced complexities, complete with symbolism, operate
under the surface of the story itself.[6]
For example, Hemingway believed a writer could de-
scribe an action, such as Nick Adams shing in "Big
Two-Hearted River, while conveying a dierent mes-
sage about the action itselfNick Adams concentrating
on shing to the extent that he does not have to think
about the unpleasantness of his war experience.[7] In his
essay, The Art of the Short Story, Hemingway is clear
about his method: A few things I have found to be true.
If you leave out important things or events that you know
2 4 NOVELS
about, the story is strengthened. If you leave or skip man against the background of his world and universe
something because you do not know it, the story will be to examine the human situation from various points of
worthless. The test of any story is how very good the stu view.[13]
that you, not your editors, omit.[8] A writer explained
how it brings a story gravitas:
Hemingway said that only the tip of the
iceberg showed in ctionyour reader will
see only what is above the waterbut the
knowledge that you have about your character
that never makes it into the story acts as the
bulk of the iceberg. And that is what gives
your story weight and gravitas.
Jenna Blum in The Author at Work, 2013[9]
From reading Rudyard Kipling Hemingway absorbed the
practice of shortening prose as much as it could take.
Of the concept of omission, Hemingway wrote in The
Art of the Short Story": You could omit anything if
you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would
strengthen the story and make people feel something
more than they understood.[10] By making invisible the
structure of the story, he believed the author strength-
ened the piece of ction and that the quality of a piece
could be judged by the quality of the material the au-
thor eliminated.[10] His style added to the aesthetic: us-
ing declarative sentences and direct representations of
the visible world with simple and plain language, Hem-
ingway became the most inuential prose stylist in the
twentieth century according to biographer Meyers.[10]
In her paper Hemingways Camera Eye, Zoe Trodd ex-
plains that Hemingway uses repetition in prose to build
a collage of snapshots to create an entire picture. Of his
iceberg theory, she claims, it is also a glacier waterfall,
infused with movement by his multi-focal aesthetic.[11]
Furthermore, she believes that Hemingways iceberg the-
ory demanded that the reader feel the whole story and
that the reader is meant to ll the gaps left by his omis-
sions with their feelings.[11]
Hemingway scholar Jackson Benson believes Hemingway
used autobiographical details to work as framing devices
to write about life in generalnot only about his life. For
example, Benson postulates that Hemingway used his ex-
periences and drew them out further with what if sce-
narios: what if I were wounded in such a way that I
could not sleep at night? What if I were wounded and
made crazy, what would happen if I were sent back to
the front?" By separating himself from the characters he
created, Hemingway strengthens the drama. The means
of achieving a strong drama is to minimize, or omit, the
feelings that produced the ction he wrote.[12]
Hemingways iceberg theory highlights the symbolic im-
plications of art. He makes use of physical action to pro-
vide an interpretation of the nature of mans existence. It
can be convincingly proved that, while representing hu-
man life through ctional forms, he has consistently set
3 Early ction and short stories
Gwendolyn Tetlow believes that Hemingways early c-
tion such as "Indian Camp" shows his lack of concern for
character development by simply placing the character
in his or her surroundings. However, in Indian Camp
the use of descriptive detail such as a screaming woman,
men smoking tobacco, and an infected wound build a
sense of veracity.[14] In other words, a story can commu-
nicate by subtext; for instance, Hemingways "Hills Like
White Elephants" does not mention the word abortion,
although in the story the male character seems to be at-
tempting to convince his girlfriend to have an abortion.[15]
Big Two-Hearted River Hemingway explains is about
a boy... coming home from the war... So the war, all men-
tion of the war, anything about the war, is omitted.[8]
Hemingway intentionally left out something in Indian
Camp and Big Two-Hearted River two stories he
considered to be good.[16]
Baker explains that Hemingways stories about sports are
often about the athletes themselves and that the sport is
incidental to the story. Moreover, the story "A Clean
Well Lighted Place" which on the surface is about nothing
more than men drinking in a cafe late at night, is in fact
about that which brings the men to the cafe to drink, and
the reasons they seek light in the night none of which is
available in the surface of the plot, but lurks in the iceberg
below.[17] Hemingways story Big Two-Hearted River
is ostensibly about nothing, as is A Clean Well Lighted
Place, but within nothing lies the crux of the story.[17]
4 Novels
Benson believes that the omission Hemingway applies
functions as a sort of buer between himself as the cre-
ator of a character and the character. He explains that as
an author creates a distance between himself and the
character he becomes more practiced, it would seem.
Benson says in Hemingways ction the distance is nec-
essary, and successful in early ction such as in The Sun
Also Rises, but if he as the author does not deliberately
create such distance the ction fails, as in the later works
such as Across the River and into the Trees.[12]
Baker calls Hemingways Across the River and into the
Trees a lyric-poetical novel in which each scene has
an underlying truth presented via symbolism.[18] Accord-
ing to Meyers an example of omission is that Renata,
like other heroines in Hemingways ction, suers a ma-
jor shockthe murder of her father and the subse-
quent loss of her hometo which Hemingway alludes
 3

only briey.[19] Hemingways pared down narrative forces Show, don't tell
the reader to solve connections. As Stoltzfus remarks:
Hemingway walks the reader to the bridge that he must
cross alone without the narrators help.[20]
7 References
Hemingway believed that if context or background had
been written about by another, and written about well,
then it could be left out of his writing. Of The Old Man [1] Meyers 1985, p. 23
and the Sea he explains: In writing you are limited to
by what has already been done satisfactorily. So I have [2] Reynolds 1998, p. 17
tried to do something else. First I have tried to elimi-
nate everything unnecessary to conveying experience to [3] Meyers 1985, pp. 9899
the reader so that after he has read something it will be-
come part of his experience and seem actually to have [4] qtd. in Oliver 1999, p. 322
happened.[5] Paul Smith, author of Hemingways Early
Manuscript: The Theory and Practice of Omission, be- [5] qtd in Smith 1983
lieves Hemingway applied the theory of omission in ef-
fort to strengthen [the] iceberg.[5] [6] Baker 1972, p. 117

[7] Oliver 1999, pp. 321322

5 Legacy [8] Hemingway, The Art of the Short Story

In October 1954 Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in [9] Jenna Blum, 2013, The Modern Scholar published by
Literature. He jokingly told the press he believed Carl Recorded Books, The Author at Work: The Art of Writ-
Sandburg and Isak Dinesen deserved the prize more than ing Fiction, Disk 1, Track 9, ISBN 978-1-4703-8437-1,
he, but that the prize money would be welcome.[21] The ...that is what gives your story weight and gravitas....
prize was awarded to Hemingway for his mastery of the
art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old [10] Meyers 1985, p. 114
Man and the Sea, and for the inuence that he has ex-
erted on contemporary style.[22] A few days after the [11] Trodd 2007
announcement, Hemingway spoke with a Time magazine
correspondent, while on his boat shing o the coast of [12] Benson 1989
Cuba. When asked about the use of symbolism in his
work, and particularly in the most recently published Old [13] Halliday, E.M. (1956). Hemingways Ambiguity: Sym-
Man and the Sea, he explained: No good book has ever bolism and Irony. American Literature. Ameri-
been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand can Literature, Vol. 28, No. 1. 28 (1): 122.
and stuck in...That kind of symbol sticks out like raisins doi:10.2307/2922718. JSTOR 2922718.
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 [14] Tetlow, pp. 5355
sea, a real sh and real sharks. But if I made them good
and true enough they would mean many things. The hard- [15] Mellow 1992, p. 348
est thing is to make something really true and sometimes
truer than true.[23] [16] Smith 1983

[17] Baker 1972, pp. 123125

6 See also [18] Baker 1972, pp. 274275

Abductive reasoning [19] Meyers 1985, p. 445

Case-based reasoning
[20] Stoltzfus 2003
Casuistry
[21] Baker 1972, p. 338
Concision
[22] The Nobel Prize in Literature 1954. Nobelprize.org.
Gonzo journalism
The Nobel Foundation. 1954. Retrieved 2010-04-25.
I know it when I see it
[23] An American Storyteller. Time Magazine. Time, Inc.
Purposeful omission 13 December 1954. Retrieved 2010-04-25.
4 8 SOURCES

8 Sources
Baker, Carlos (1972). Hemingway: The Writer as
Artist (4th ed.). Princeton University Press. ISBN
0-691-01305-5.

Ernest Hemingway (1990). The Art of the Short

Story. In Benson, Jackson. New Critical Ap-
proaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway.
Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-1067-9.
Benson, Jackson (1989). Ernest Hemingway: The
Life as Fiction and the Fiction as Life. American
Literature. 61 (3): 345358. doi:10.2307/2926824.

Oliver, Charles M. (1999). Ernest Hemingway A

to Z: The Essential Reference to the Life and Work.
New York: Checkmark. ISBN 0-8160-3467-2.
Mellow, James R. (1992). Hemingway: A Life With-
out Consequences. New York: Houghton Miin.
ISBN 0-395-37777-3.

Meyers, Jerey (1985). Hemingway: A Biography.

London: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-42126-4.

George Plimpton (Spring 1958). Ernest Heming-

way, The Art of Fiction No. 21. The Paris Review.

Reynolds, Michael S. (1998). The Young Heming-

way. New York: Norton. ISBN 0-393-31776-5.

Tetlow, Wendolyn (1992). Hemingways In our time:

lyrical dimensions. Cranbury NJ: Associated Uni-
versity Presses. ISBN 0-8387-5219-5.
Smith, Paul. (1983). Hemingways Early
Manuscripts: The Theory and Practice of Omis-
sion. Journal of Modern Literature. Indiana Uni-
versity Press. 10 (2): 268288. JSTOR 3831126.

Stoltzfus, Ben (2003). The Stones of Venice, Time

and Remembrance: Calculus and Proust in Across
the River and into the Trees". The Hemingway Re-
view. 22 (2): 2029.

Trodd, Zoe (2007). Hemingways camera eye: The

problems of language and an interwar politics of
form. The Hemingway Review. 26 (2): 721.
doi:10.1353/hem.2007.0012.
 5

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