The Iceberg Theory (also known as the "theory of omission") is the writing style of American

writer Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway began his writing career as a reporter. Journalistic writing,
particularly for newspapers, focuses only on events being reported, omitting superfluous and
extraneous matter. When he became a writer of short stories, he retained this minimalistic style,
focusing on surface elements without explicitly discussing the underlying themes. Hemingway
believed the true meaning of a piece of writing should not be evident from the surface story, rather,
the crux of the story lies below the surface and should be allowed to shine through. Critics such as
Jackson Benson claim that his iceberg theory, in combination with his distinctive clarity of writing,
functioned as a means to distance himself from the characters he created.

Gwendolyn Tetlow believes a story can communicate by subtext; for instance, Hemingway's "Hills
Like White Elephants" does not mention the word "abortion", although in the story the male
character seems to be attempting to convince his girlfriend to have an abortion.[14] "Big Two-Hearted
River" Hemingway explains "is about a boy...coming home from the war ....So the war, all mention
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.[15]
Baker explains that Hemingway's 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.[16] Hemingway's 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.[16]

From almost the beginning of his writing career, Hemingway's distinctive style
occasioned a great deal of comment and controversy. Basically, his style is simple,
direct, and unadorned, probably as a result of his early newspaper training. He
avoids the adjective whenever possible, but because he is a master at transmitting
emotion without the flowery prose of his Victorian novelist predecessors, the effect
is far more telling. In Observations on the Style of Ernest Hemingway, from
"Contexts of Criticism" by Harry Levin (Harvard University Press, 1957), the critic
says: "Hemingway puts his emphasis on nouns because, among other parts of
speech, they come closest to things. Stringing them along by means of
conjunctions, he approximates the actual flow of experience."
Hemingway has often been described as a master of dialog, and most readers
agree, upon being first introduced to his writing, that "this is the way these
characters would reallytalk." It is interesting to note, however, that Hemingway's
one attempt at playwriting was a failure. Actually, a close examination of his dialog
will reveal that this is rarely the way people really speak. The effect is
accomplished, rather, by the calculated emphasis and repetition which makes us
remember what has been said.
Since the critics cannot entirely agree on Hemingway's style, perhaps the best way
is to put it into the author's own words. Shortly before his tragic death,
Hemingway gave to the Wisdom Foundation in California a collection of his
observations on life and art, love and death. They were published in the January
1963, issue of Playboy magazine, and in them Hemingway said of his writing:
I do most of my work in my head. I never begin to write until my ideas are in
order. Frequently I recite passages of dialogue as it is being written; the ear is a
good censor. I never set down a sentence on paper until I have it so expressed
that it will be clear to anyone.

Yet, I sometimes think that my style is suggestive rather than direct. The reader
must often use his imagination or lose the most subtle part of my thoughts.

I take great pains with my work, pruning and revising with a tireless hand. I have
the welfare of my creations very much at heart. I cut them with infinite care, and
burnish them until they become brilliants. What many another writer would be
content to leave in massive proportions, I polish into a tiny gem.

Hemingway goes on at some length, but the essence of what he says may be in
this paragraph:

A writer's style should be direct and personal, his imagery rich and earthy, and his
words simple and vigorous. The greatest writers have the gift of brilliant brevity,
are hard workers, diligent scholars and competent stylists.

To explain Hemingway's style adequately in a few paragraphs is impossible. Scores

of articles, and even some books, have been written on the subject, and it is to
these that the serious student should go for additional, more detailed information.

Major Themes

Nature

Nature, in the form of beautiful landscapes and wholesome surroundings, is a constant

presence in Hemingway’s short fiction. It is often the only thing in the text, animate or
inanimate, that is described in a positive or laudatory fashion. Hemingway was a great
believer in the power of nature, both in terms of its beauty and its challenges, to
improve one’s quality of life. He was a lifelong outdoorsman, an avid hunter, fisherman,
camper and boater, and he believed that overcoming natural obstacles using only one’s
intelligence and skills made one a better person. In addition, Hemingway’s characters
look to majestic landscapes and other manifestations of natural beauty for hope,
inspiration, and even guidance during difficult or challenging times.

In many Hemingway stories, the ability to conquer nature by hunting and killing
animals is the test of masculinity. For example, in “The Short Happy Life of Francis
Macomber,” the title character comes into his own by shooting buffalo. In “Up in
Michigan,” Jim Gilmore is marked as masculine and therefore desirable to Liz Coates
because he goes on a deer hunt. In “A Day’s Wait,” Nick Adams goes hunting in order
to teach his sick son self-reliance. Lastly, in “Fathers and Sons,” Nick describes with
admiration his father’s ability to see and shoot game and describes with gratitude his
father’s transfer of hunting and fishing knowledge to him.

In other Hemingway stories, nature is simply a benevolent influence on the characters.

In “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” the protagonist Harry looks to a frozen leopard on the
summit of the mountain as an example of how to attain immortality. In “A Clean,
Well-Lighted Place,” the middle-aged waiter points out that one of his café’s most
desirable features is the shadows of leaves on the tables. In “Hills Like White
Elephants,” Jig looks to the beauty of the Ebro River valley for guidance as to whether
or not she should get an abortion, and in “Old Man at the Bridge,” the old man’s gaggle
of doves is the only symbol of hope in an otherwise depressing situation.

Death

Also a near-constant presence in Hemingway’s stories is the theme of death, either in

the form of death itself, the knowledge of the inevitability of death, or the futility of
fleeing death. Clearly evocative of death are the stories in which Hemingway describes
actual deaths: the war experiences of “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and “In Another
Country;” the suicides of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” and “Fathers and Sons;” and
the accidents of “The Capital of the World” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis
Macomber.”

Hand-in-glove with the theme of death is another Hemingway favorite: fatalistic

heroism or heroic fatalism. This attitude entails facing one’s certain death with dignity.
In addition, Hemingway can be seen to embrace nihilism, the belief that life is
meaningless and that resistance to death is futile, in some of his stories. In short,
Hemingway, critics have speculated, feared death but was fascinated by it; it crops up
in one form or another in nearly every one of his stories.

Fatalistic Heroism

Also known as heroic fatalism, this attitude was a Hemingway favorite. Fatalistic
heroism derives from the belief that death is certain to come and that resisting it is
futile; one may as well face death with stoicism and resignation. This belief and its
accompanying stoic behavior patterns appear in several short stories.

In “A Day’s Wait,” a 9-year-old boy believes he is dying based on a mix-up between the
Fahrenheit and Celsius thermometers; he holds his feelings in all day until his father
disabuses him of the notion that his death is imminent. The next day, Schatz cries
easily at things that do not merit such a display of emotion as a backlash against his
earlier iron self-control. In “The Killers,” Ole Andreson awaits his death by hired hit
man with resignation, stating that he is through with running from his past mistakes
and is ready to face his fate. In “Old Man at the Bridge,” an old man is seated in a
position that will shortly be overrun by Fascist troops during the Spanish Civil War; he
is too old and tired to go on, and instead of panicking, he simply stares ahead and
talks quietly to himself, resolved that he will die.

The presence of fatalistic heroism in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” is debatable because

there is disagreement over whether Harry the dying protagonist meets his death
willingly or unwillingly. At his last moment of consciousness, Harry seems peaceful, but
he subsequently has a dream that he is rescued and flies to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro.
What he is actually doing is drawing his last breaths on his cot. Throughout the day
that the story covers, Harry has been upbraiding himself for not reaching his potential
as a writer, and he seems fairly dissatisfied with his own behavior; it is unclear whether
he absolves himself before he dies or not, and therein lies the crux of the fatalistic
heroism debate.

Disillusionment

Disillusionment and the depression that results from it are recurrent themes in
Hemingway’s short stories. Hemingway himself suffered from feelings of
disillusionment and dislocation following his harrowing experiences during World War I.
In this respect, he was a representative of “The Lost Generation,” the generation that
came of age during the Great War and arguably lost faith in many of the values, ideas,
and beliefs that gave life meaning before the war. Awash in this abandonment of
tradition, Hemingway and others drifted into existentialism, a philosophy that posits
life is meaningless until an individual gives his or her own life meaning, and nihilism, a
philosophy that posits life is meaningless and without objective value.

Hemingway’s clearest expressions of this bleak and depressing disillusionment are “A

Clean, Well-Lighted Place” and “The Capital of the World.” In the former story, a
middle-aged Spanish waiter expresses the belief that everything is “nada,”
nothingness; death comes to everyone and resisting it is futile. In the latter story,
Hemingway paints a vivid portrait of a small residential hotel in Spain where everyone
is an aging, disillusioned has-been except for Paco, a young waiter who dreams of
becoming a bullfighter because he believes in the “romance” of such a calling. When
Paco dies accidentally, Hemingway clearly implies that he was better off than all the
other inhabitants of the hotel who lived the dream that Paco had, fell short of the ideal
in one way or another, and must live out the rest of their lives in bitter disappointment.
Paco retained his ideals and his life and death meant something to him.

“Up in Michigan” describes a different kind of disillusionment: romantic disillusionment.

Liz Coates, long obsessed with Jim Gilmore, quickly loses her regard for him when he
drunkenly rapes her one evening on a misty boardwalk.

“The Killers” describes a subtler form of disillusionment. Nick Adams, a teenager, risks
his life to warn Ole Andreson, the target of two Chicago hit men, that his life is in
danger. Instead of doing something to save himself, Andreson turns his face to the wall
and says he is done running from his past. His death is inevitable. Nick is profoundly
disappointed and even sickened at the thought of Andreson waiting for his fate to
overtake him; the ways of the world are such that even great physical courage and
sacrifice go unrewarded.

Masculinity

Hemingway, it is often noted, was enamored of a particular notion of masculinity.

Hemingway’s heroes are often outdoorsmen or hunters who are stoic, taciturn, and
averse to showing emotion. Real men, according to Hemingway, are physically
courageous and confident, and keep doubts and insecurities to themselves. In addition,
there is always an emphasis on the necessity of proving one’s manhood rather than
taking it for granted. According to the author’s biographers and critics, Hemingway was
brought up with this notion of masculinity; it certainly pervades all of his works of
short fiction.
In “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” the title character goes from
emasculation to full manhood just by shooting buffalo. In “A Day’s Wait,” Schatz proves
his masculinity by stoically holding his emotions in check even as he believes he is
dying while his father proves his by going shooting in spite of having a sick son at
home. In “Up in Michigan” Jim Gilmore displays his masculinity by going on an
extended deer hunt with his buddies and in “The Capital of the World,” Paco and
Enrique play out a make-believe bullfight in order to prove they are manly enough for
the real thing. “In Another Country” describes Nick Adams’s inferiority complex with
respect to three Italian soldiers who received medals for bravery; he explains that
received his simply for being an American. “The Killers” describes Nick’s heroic physical
courage in defying hit men to warn their target, and “Fathers and Sons” describes
Nick’s coming of age in terms of hunting and killing black squirrels.

Ambivalence
Many of Hemingway’s characters have ambivalent feelings toward each other; in
Hemingway’s universe, people are not wholly good or bad. In “Fathers and Sons,” for
example, Nick Adams recalls his father’s admirable qualities, namely the ability to see
like an eagle and an outstanding knowledge of hunting and fishing, and his undesirable
qualities, principally cruelty and ignorance. The story is devoted mainly to Nick’s
memories of his father, which are mostly painful, but Nick insists that he loved his
father for a long time. In “Hills Like White Elephants,” Jig feels resentful toward her
partner, who is insisting that she get an abortion, but at the same time she wants to
repair her relationship with him, which has suffered because of the pregnancy. She
weighs his promise that their relationship will go back to the way it was before if she
gets the abortion with her own reluctance to get the procedure and certainty that their
relationship has been irrevocably altered just by the pregnancy. In “Up in Michigan,”
though Jim Gilmore’s rape of Liz Coates irrevocably disillusions Liz about him, she still
kisses his cheek and puts her coat on him as he sleeps in a drunken stupor before
walking back to the house and going to bed.

Animals as Symbols
Animals in the Hemingway canon, whether they are game, pets, or wild, sometimes
serve as symbols for their human hunters, caretakers or observers. In “The Snows of
Kilimanjaro,” the frozen leopard on the top of the mountain represents immortality,
which is the quality Harry strives for even as he is dying. The hyena in that story,
conversely, represents Harry’s impending death. In “Old Man at the Bridge,”
Hemingway switches the word “pigeons,” a reference to the old man’s eight pet birds,
for the word “doves,” a symbol of peace in the midst of the Spanish Civil War. In “Hills
Like White Elephants,” the “white elephant” of the title is Jig’s unborn baby, a
cumbersome, largely useless thing that is on the brink of driving the relationship apart.
In “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” the wounded lion that Francis shoots
and then runs away from represents the obstacle to his proving his masculinity;
though not cowardly itself, it represents Macomber’s cowardice.