Hemingway, the Iceberg, and the Art of Subtraction
I came rather late to Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. Which is almost embarrassing, really. How much more famous can a novel get? It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953, and Hemingway himself received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.
But perhaps that was how it was meant to happen. Because aside from enjoying the way Hemingway arranged his words, I found myself drawn to something he did not say, something left unsaid, yet somehow essential to the beauty of the novel.
The premise of The Old Man and the Sea is simple enough, and do not worry, no major spoilers here. An old fisherman named Santiago goes out to sea. He has gone a very long time without catching a fish, but he keeps going anyway. One day, he struggles with a giant marlin, and eventually returns with the remains of that struggle.
What struck me in the novel were the sentences that looked flat, simple, short, ordinary, almost as if they were not trying to be beautiful at all. Yet beneath those sentences, there was something deeper and wider. I could feel Santiago’s inner life. His old age, loneliness, stubbornness, pride, guilt, hope, and a kind of quiet resolve that never needed to be spelled out literally, but was unmistakably present.
Then I discovered that Hemingway’s way of writing was not accidental.
The Iceberg Theory
Ernest Hemingway once explained the writing style that later became known as the iceberg theory, or the theory of omission. He wrote about it in Death in the Afternoon, a nonfiction book published in 1932, built around his obsession with bullfighting in Spain, but which also contains his thoughts on writing.
The core idea is this: if a writer truly understands what they want to say, they do not need to write everything down. The reader will still feel the depth, as long as the writing stands on real understanding. Hemingway compared it to an iceberg floating in the sea, whose strength comes from the much larger part hidden beneath the surface.
That explains his prose, simple and brief, as if there were words or sentences he could have extended further. Strangely, though, we still understand. More than that, we feel it.
One passage from The Old Man and the Sea that I like goes like this:
“Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.”
The context is that Santiago, the old man, has gone 84 days without catching a single fish, to the point where he is considered unlucky.
On the surface, Santiago is talking about hope for a new day of fishing. Beneath the surface, he is defending his life as a fisherman, as an old man, as someone who has failed for a long time but refuses to define himself by failure. He is simply trying to stay realistic.
Through this passage, I feel that Santiago is not someone who surrenders to fate, but he is not pretending to be optimistic either. He is realistic. He knows there are things in life he cannot control. But he also knows that surrendering everything to luck is a form of defeat that comes too early.
And Hemingway writes all of this in language that is simple, brief, and unpretentious. He could have written something straightforward like, “Tomorrow, luck will finally be on my side!”
But that is precisely Hemingway’s strength. A sentence about resilience or luck is not left standing alone like a motivational poster. Around it, there is guilt, loss, danger, and the awareness that even luck does not erase consequence.
Creativity Is Subtraction
In creativity, Mr. Hemingway’s iceberg theory offers one important lesson:
Powerful work often does not come from the desire to explain everything. Many works become weaker because they tell too much. A writer wants to make sure the reader understands.
A speaker wants to make sure the audience gets the message. A creator wants every point to be visible. In the end, there is no room left for the reader, listener, or viewer to do any work, or to feel anything for themselves.
This reminds me of Austin Kleon, the American writer and visual artist who often writes about creativity, creative work, and how ideas grow in the middle of digital culture.
In his well-known book Steal Like an Artist, Kleon lays out ten principles of creativity. I will not quote them all. Please read the book, I highly recommend it. But there is one principle that says, simply:
“Creativity is subtraction.”
To me, “creativity is subtraction” can be understood this way:
Creativity is not always about adding more ideas, references, styles, or possibilities. In a world already overloaded with information, the creative act often lies in the courage to choose what should be left out.
For Kleon, limitation is not the enemy of creativity. In fact, it is often from limitation that the best work emerges. But this does not mean a work must always be short or minimalist.
It is about the ability to subtract: to reduce noise, reduce choices, reduce explanation, and remove what is unnecessary, so that what matters most can appear more clearly.
In Hemingway’s context, this connects directly with the iceberg theory. The strength of a work sometimes comes not from everything it shows, but from the creator’s ability to decide what is enough to show, and what is better left working beneath the surface.
In other words, creativity is not only the ability to produce something. Creativity is also the ability to decide what does not need to be shown.
When we create, we are often too busy asking, “What is still missing? What else can I add?”
Once in a while, perhaps we should replace that question with: “What can I remove so that the main thing can be felt more strongly?”
Because sometimes, what makes a work powerful is not only what it says. It is also what it entrusts to us, the audience, the readers, the listeners, the viewers, to feel for ourselves.
Lesson from Santiago
Finally, I want to leave you with a question. I hope it sparks something for those of you who are in the middle of creating.
In one part of The Old Man and the Sea, Santiago finally catches a giant marlin, but the fish is so large that he can only tie it to the side of his boat. The blood from the fish attracts sharks. The old man fights with everything he has, and in doing so becomes exhausted, wounded, and loses his harpoon. In the middle of that condition, it is as if he is speaking to himself:
“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.”
Now imagine that you are Santiago. Replace the boat, the marlin, the harpoon, the exhaustion, and the sharks with your own condition as you create.
The question now is: with what you still have in you, what can still be done?
Tangsel, 19 May 2026
