The Iceberg Principle: what it is and how to use it in writing

This is how the writer Ernest Hemingway created the Iceberg Principle to explain stories.

The things we see, hear or read are, in reality, the most superficial layer of the whole story that might be behind it. People's lives are shown as an iceberg, with only the tip of the great iceberg visible.only the tip of the iceberg is visible.

This reality is what the famous writer Ernest Hemingway used to write his stories, rather short stories, with few details but with enough information for the readers to fill in the gaps of the story.

The iceberg principle is a literary technique used by the American writer Ernest Hemingway which we are going to see below and which can be related to practically any aspect of life, in which there is much more than meets the eye.

What is the Iceberg Principle?

If you read Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) you will get the feeling that his work seems to float on water. But, in spite of that, his stories were not shipwrecked, quite the contrary. The stories and tales of this American journalist have gone down in the history of world literature and there are few people who are not familiar with the name of this author, one of the leading novelists and short-story writers of the 20th century.

The symbolism of Hemingway's stories is found underwater, a metaphor that fits very well with the name of the technique he coined: the iceberg principle. What he wants to tell from his stories is not apparent with a mere quick and superficial reading of what the famous writer captured in his stories. of what the famous writer captured in printed words, but through assumptions. The core of his stories was suggested, in the form of brushstrokes that cannot be grasped by reading them verbatim.

His Iceberg principle is simple to understand. According to Hemingway, every story should reflect only a small part of the story, leaving the rest to be read and interpreted by the reader.the story, leaving the rest to the reader's reading and interpretation. Just as when we see an iceberg floating, what we are seeing is only its surface, with about 90% of the large chunk of ice submerged, not visible to the naked eye.

The story should not reveal the true background for free.It should be like that iceberg, be suggestive and make the reader strive to see it. With this we are not talking about morals or double meanings, although they can also be included in that submerged part of the iceberg. The concept proposed by Hemingway goes much further. For example, if we want to talk about love through a story, what we can do is to focus the story on a couple who have a fight while on vacation.

Through that discussion we will enter into a larger reality, love itself, and the consequences associated with aspects of living together as a couple, such as lack of communication or time in a couple's life. All this could be done without explicitly talking about love in the text.

Application of the technique

Applying this technique, Hemingway wrote or thought first a complete story and then, when he had it all shaped, with every detail and aspect of the story thought out, he would eliminate up to 80% of its content, leaving only the essentials.leaving only the essentials. With this method, he forced readers to make the effort to fill in the gaps left by the writer with their own interpretation.

On many occasions, Hemingway would make his stories revolve around a conflict or theme that is not explicitly mentioned throughout the text, leaving it up to the reader to figure out what is going on. Thanks to this technique, meticulously selecting the information worthy of being put in the text and omitting also the convenient, he made the reader have to reread the story, even though with the first reading he felt that there was something that had struck a chord.

Hemingway did not eliminate information at random.. He followed his own criteria, one so good that it was the one that made him go down in the history of universal literature. The American journalist eliminated those parts that he considered superfluous and that did not point or direct to what he wanted the reader to understand. Although in a subtle way, he managed to ensure that what he put in the story, at the end of the story, would lead the reader to where Hemingway wanted to direct him.

It is said that Ernest Hemingway began to mature this theory during the year 1923, after finishing his story "Out of Season". The author himself commented that omitted the true ending of this storyThe author himself commented that he omitted the true ending of this story, which was that the old man in the story ended up hanging himself. Hemingway omitted this seemingly crucial part, but it helped him to see that, according to his then new theory, any part can be omitted and that it is the omitted part that will strengthen the narrative.

One of Hemingway's biographers, Carlos Baker, once commented that the writer learned how to make the most of the smallest things, to shortening the language and avoiding unnecessary movements to multiply the intensity and the way of telling nothing but the truth in a way that allows to tell more of it.

Practical example of this method for writing

It is difficult to understand in depth how Hemingway's method works if you have never read one of his short stories.. For this reason we are going to talk about (and also disembowel) one of his stories: "Hills like white elephants". In this story he presents us with a conversation, apparently trivial, between an American couple who are waiting for the arrival of a train bound for Madrid at a station near the Ebro River. The couple is talking while observing the scenery and drinking some beer and aniseed. The story ends with the announcement of the arrival of the train.

The story is basically a conversation in which we are clearly told that the couple is heading to a place where the girl will have to undergo an operation and the two will discuss whether or not to continue with the plan. And little else. The man doesn't even have a name and the young woman we only know that her name is Jig. There is no description of how they look or how they behave or what gestures they have.

The story is pure dialogue and has almost no time markers. It is a sober looking story with very natural, plain and simple language.

However, as the as the reader reads it more carefully, however, he or she can senseHowever, as the reader reads more carefully, he or she may intuit that the two characters are talking about a possible abortion, an intervention that will have consequences for the continuity of the couple. That would be the first level of depth of the text, and it is something that can be interpreted as such since the text contains many elements that reinforce that idea.

For example, the characters are in a couple crisis, something that is reinforced by the space in which they find themselves, a halt overlooking a Mediterranean landscape. On one side of the tracks, the landscape is green and oozes fertility, while the other is arid and dry, symbols of pregnancy and abortion, respectively. The girl comments that the hills, very dry, actually resemble white elephants, something that could be interpreted as a metaphor for fertility. Even Hemingway shows duality when he states that the two have a different view of the taste of anise.

But We have not yet reached the deepest layer of the iceberg.. Underneath that layer, we find another, more submerged layer that speaks of the couple's situation and their breakup. The story notes the differences between the two characters and that reconciliation is impossible. It raises the possibility that neither of the two options, abortion or not, is the solution to their problems. The couple is already broken, and no matter what is done, there will be no possible solution. The couple ends up separated when the train arrives, even if, as readers, we never get to see the transport show up.

Recapitulating on the story and relating it to the iceberg principle, we can make a mental and graphic image of the data given to us in the story. The most superficial layer is what is read textually in the text, each of the words in Hemingway's own handwriting. The next two layers are the ones that actually give us a more extensive view of the story, getting closer to the core of the story. Read superficially, it's nothing more than a banal conversation between a traveling couple, but that's not what's really going on.