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Ernest Hemingway as photographed for the 1940 edition of For Whom the Bell Tolls. The iceberg theory or theory of omission is a writing technique coined by American writer Ernest Hemingway. As a young journalist, Hemingway had to focus his newspaper reports on immediate events, with very little context or interpretation.
In A Moveable Feast Hemingway wrote that "Out of Season", written in 1924, was the first story where he applied the theory of omission, known as his Iceberg Theory. He explained that the stories in which he left out the most important parts, such as not writing about the war in "Big Two-Hearted River", are the best of his early fiction. [ 33 ]
The iceberg theory has been termed the "theory of omission". Hemingway believed a writer could convey an object or concept while writing about something entirely different. In "Big Two-Hearted River" he elaborates on the mundane activities Nick carries out.
The piece is an early experiment in Hemingway's "theory of omission"—later to be known as the Iceberg Theory—in which nonessential information is left out or barely hinted at. [9] The story has attracted little attention from literary critics and much of that examines the allusions to Renaissance painters. [10]
He cut out the story's ending, which he meant to be tragic, on his theory of omission that "you could omit anything if you knew you omitted [it] and the omitted part would strengthen the story". [9] Expecting the birth of their first child, the Hemingways returned to Toronto in October. [ 10 ]
Hemingway's prose has been extensively analysed for its minimalistic style, which came to be known as the Iceberg theory of omission. According to Meyers, a respected biographer of Hemingway, Hemingway believed the quality of an author's work is assessable by the respective quality of the words eliminated.
Ellipsis was also used in literature, as in the modernist works of Ernest Hemingway who pioneered the Iceberg Theory, also known as the theory of omission. Virginia Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse contains famous examples of literary ellipses.
"Fathers and Sons" is another example of the classic "Hemingway Style." Characterized by economy and iceberg theory , the "Hemingway Style" is the product of obsessive revision. [ 1 ] Hemingway himself, when asked about his style, said "I must say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardness in first trying to ...