The Iceberg Principle Hemingway Analysis

Legend has it Ernest Hemingway was eating dinner with his close friends and wagered them ten dollars apiece that he could write a complete short story on the tiny napkin 's surface. Hemingway proceeded to win the wager by scribbling down: “For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn” (Wood). This story epitomizes a writing technique that Hemingway called The Iceberg Principle. “An iceberg floats in the Arctic with only one‐eighth of its mass above water while the greater, more potentially devastating portion hides beneath the surface and attracts our concern precisely because it is hidden,” he noted (Wood). The six words that Hemingway wrote on the napkin are the tip of the iceberg floating above the water, and they are carefully selected to allow …show more content…
After Nick questions his father about the death, the story ends with this scene: “The sun was coming up over the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick trailed his hand in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning” (Hemingway, 19). Rather than attempting to spoon-feed the reader a concrete takeaway, Hemingway merely leaves the reader with an image; Nick sits in the stern of the boat and experiences the world around him. The description of “the sun coming up over the hills” contributes to the imposing feeling of nature. Not only is the sun rising a phenomenon that is driven by forces far greater than any human capability, it is also associated with an eternal cycle that transcends human life. “The sun coming up over the hills” puts Nick 's life in perspective, and emphasizes how much he has yet to discover about the larger system he is immersed in. When Nick “trails his hand in the water,” he physically experiences this system. The boat moving through the water is a smooth image, but Nick 's hand “trailing” in the water suggests there is a slow or weary aspect to the movement, which is accentuated in the context of a large lake. This dragging feeling subtly conveys the difficulty of making sense of life as time sails by. …show more content…
After the waiter watches an old, deaf man sit in his cafe and drink brandy until 3:00am, the waiter goes to a bar and rants about how everything in life is “nada.” The final scene describes that “without thinking further, he would go home to his room. He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it 's probably only insomnia. Many must have it” (Hemingway). Depicting the waiter lying in bed alone until the sun rises furthers the profound sense of emptiness and despair conveyed earlier in the story 's cafe scenes. There is no explicit mention of the waiter experiencing time slowly passing, but pain and monotony are inevitable when one “goes to sleep, with daylight.” The lack of emotional details adds to the brutal effect of despair in the story. The last line gives the reader their first peak into the waiter 's mind, and it reveals that he is in denial about his own depression. The fact that the waiter uses extreme language—“it 's probably only insomnia. Many must have it”—demonstrates that he isn 't thinking rationally, and is trying to downplay the actual problem. Hemingway builds a sense of emptiness throughout the story, but instead of a suicide or some other form of resolution to his grief, he ends it with an anti-climactic scene. This frustrating ending keeps the reader pondering the