Ernest Hemingway is one of the most widely read, widely criticised and highly respected authors of the last century. He had a unique style of writing that he described as the ‘iceberg technique’.

It is a controversial technique of storytelling that can never be separated from its brutal and masculine feel, but Hemingway was a master at the craft and his style is well worth studying.

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1. Who Was Ernest Hemingway?
2. Definition of the Iceberg Theory:
3. Examples:
4. Criticism of the Iceberg Theory:
5. Conclusions:

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Who Was Ernest Hemingway?

Hemingway was a controversial, troubled, brilliant and radical writer. He lived a life that was as adventurous as it was painful, frequently dissolving into alcoholism, violence and debauchery. He was born in Illinois in 1899, and killed himself in 1961.

He served in World War I and many of his books reflect his experiences as an ambulance driver in Italy, where he was wounded. Hemingway travelled extensively, spending a great deal of time outside of the USA. Most of his books are indeed set outside of his home country.

Today, he remains a contentious figure in American literature. He is often cited as being overly masculine, brutish and was known to be a violent, unpredictable man.

His books were considered so dangerous to the German people they were burned in 1933 by the fascists. His parents hated his stories and decried them as filth. Many feminist critics have claimed his work to be actively anti-female.

His works include; A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, To have and Have Not, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea which I have written a review of here!

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Definition of the Iceberg Theory:

According to Ernest Hemingway, an iceberg’s tip is only an eighth of its entire mass, and this is how one should write stories.

Only an eighth of the entire narrative needs be presented, the rest is inferred by the reader and known – intimately – by the author.

Hemingway wrote in such a way that omits in-depth narrative and authority. The characters and events in his book are described purely on a factual basis, rather than emotional.

The reader, if the writer has done their job properly, should be able to infer the feelings of the characters just as well as though they were intimately described.

“Hemingway’s art has a very small ‘a’ and is buried as deep as the message. He left so much unsaid in his stories that they say far more than you think.”

David Hughs, 1986.

This style likely developed as a result of Hemingway’s time as a journalist. Having to publish only the basic facts and omitting the emotive language carried over to Hemingway’s novels.

In short, the iceberg theory is the notion that there is more to a story than what is written on the page.

By omitting details like feelings and emotions – stripping a story down to the bare bones – a writer can create a more captivating read for the audience.

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Examples:

Obviously, Hemingway is the prime example of the iceberg technique and to my mind The Old Man and the Sea (1952) is his magnum opus; it is the novel that best demonstrates his literary style.

“He is a great fish and I must convince him, he thought. I must never let him learn his strength nor what he could do if he made his run. If I were him I would put in everything now and go until something broke. But, thank God, they are not as intelligent as we who kill them.”

Using the iceberg technique does not negate any of the emotion from the story. In fact, this style enhances the emotion felt by the reader because it is the reader that must feel it rather than the author describing it.

Allegedly, Albert Camus was influenced by Hemingway to use the iceberg technique in his novel L’Étranger (1942). Perhaps the most obvious example of this influence is within the first paragraph of the novel.

“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know. I had a telegram from the home: ‘Mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.’ That doesn’t mean anything. It may have been yesterday.”

Descriptive omission is not always present in Camus’ work, however. Whilst it is clear to see how Hemingway may have influenced L’Etranger, I find it less believable that this was the stylistic choice for the later novel La Chute (1957) and others.

Whilst Franz Kafka can’t be said to fully correlate to the stylistic choices of Hemingway – his style is inherently his own – I get the same feeling, when reading The Metamorphosis (1915), as in the Old Man and the Sea. The feeling that so much emotion is being left out of the narrative.

“His father looked hostile, and clenched his fists as if wanting to knock Gregor back into his room. Then he looked uncertainly around the living room, covered his eyes with his hands and wept so that his powerful chest shook.”

I would not claim that Kafka utilises the iceberg technique, rather that his style is detached in a different way. Emotionally detached. Cold and often matter of fact.

This being said, one only has to read his Letters to Milena to know that Kafka was a deeply emotional being. The Metamorphosis is an exercise in the absurdity of human emotion and how quickly it can be disregarded from the context of a situation. It is detachment, rather than a complete exclusion, of emotion from the narrative.  

George Orwell is also known to have been disapproving of overly emotive language. Again, this is not an author who utilised the iceberg technique, rather preferred a more direct form of writing. Removing the unnecessary; the “swindles and perversions” of English language, to create a purer form of writing. In his essay, Politics and the English Language (1946), Orwell writes “if it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.” In the same way, Hemingway is known to have been scrupulous in his writing, analysing every sentence to ensure it had function.

Finding examples of the iceberg technique in Hemingway’s works is an easy task. The technique’s influence, however, is harder to pinpoint. Many authors may have been influenced by the iceberg principle whilst not directly using it as a style.

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Criticism of the Iceberg Theory:

Often, a noted criticism of Hemingway’s novels is the brutish and masculine nature of his writing. The iceberg technique can certainly give this impression of a detached and unemotional writer.

Early critics also claimed that Hemingway’s use of chronological order made his work boring. It is true that most of his work avoids the use of flashbacks and follow a very linear path.

He is often decried for being unamerican in his lack of emotive language too. This is something, being British, I am unqualified to speak on. However, criticism often follows on from praise of F. Scott Fitzgerald as a great American writer when compared to Hemingway, who was far more international. Most of Hemingway’s novels are indeed set outside of the United States calling forth questioning of his place as a part of ‘American Literature’.

More recently, the claim that Hemingway’s writing is just another example of dead-white-male-ism has been made. Some critics find that the writer’s influence in today’s society is an out-dated view of masculinity. His personal life has come under scrutiny; he was a heavy boozer and known to be a bully. His opinions certainly would not be described as ‘politically correct’ in today’s zeitgeist.

Often, Hemingway is criticised for lack of imagination in connectives. He regularly repeats ‘and’ over and over again in the same sentence. Personally, I find this to be a charming break from the standard use of English – it is a breaking of norms – but I can understand why others find it annoying.

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Conclusions:

I like Hemingway as a writer but, I imagine, I would have hated him on a personal level.

I think his obsession with being perceived as macho and manly is unbecoming, and his abuse of alcohol was a sign of someone deeply unhappy within himself.  

That being said, I appreciate his style. The iceberg technique is centred in the notion that the writer knows more than the reader, which I think is an important boundary to maintain in fiction and non-fiction alike.

I think his writing style promotes a more active reading of his work, as the consumer has to work out for themselves, the emotions in each scene.

Hemingway still manages to convey meaning and emotion to those readers, who are willing to do the legwork, to find it within the narrative.

If you wish to read Hemingway and don’t know where to start, I recommend The Old Man and the Sea, which I have written a review of here! It is a short novel and perfectly demonstrates the iceberg technique so beautifully utilised by the great writer himself.  

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Written by R.P.C

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