The Iceberg Theory of Writing

Ernest Hemingway's story Hills Like White Elephant is about a man and a woman talking and drinking together as they wait for a train.

Below the surface, there is a question of whether or not the woman will have an abortion.

Hemingway never uses the words "abortion" or "pregnant."

This is his theory of omission. Also known as the iceberg theory of writing because icebergs have more hidden beneath the waterline than what is revealed above it.

The warm wind blew the bead curtain against the table.

“The beer’s nice and cool,” the man said.

“It’s lovely,” the girl said. 

“It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,” the man said. “It’s not really an operation at all.”

The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on.

“I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig. It’s really not anything. It’s just to let the air in.”

The girl did not say anything.

“I’ll go with you and I’ll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly natural.”

Then what will we do afterward?”

“We’ll be fine afterward. Just like we were before.”

________________________

NOTE: The term "iceberg theory of writing" comes from “Death in the Afternoon", where Hemingway writes: “If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.”