Iceberg Theory

The Iceberg Theory (also known as the "theory of omission") is the writing style of American writer Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway is best known for works such as The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and The Old Man and the Sea. Hemingway began his writing career as a journalist and in the 1920s, while living in Paris, worked as foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star. As a journalist he learned to focus only on events being reported, and to omit superfluous and extraneous matter. When he became a writer of short stories, he learned to write a surface story in which he omitted or hinted at the point of the story. Hemingway believed the true meaning of a piece of writing should not be evident from the surface story because the crux of the story lies below the surface. Critics such as Jackson Benson claim his iceberg theory, or theory of omission, in combination with his distinctive clarity of writing, functioned as a means to distance himself from the characters he created.