Hemingway’s style is known as the "Iceberg Theory," where hidden meanings lie beneath the surface of short, direct sentences. In The Old Man and the Sea, he layers brief statements to reveal the hero Santiago’s loneliness and pride. This concision grew out of his experience as a journalist covering World War I and the Spanish Civil War. His works stand out in 20th-century modernist literature and have influenced many writers and filmmakers. The Nobel Committee praised how his narrative technique reshaped contemporary storytelling, reminding us of literature’s power to shape society and culture.

Hemingway’s prose builds rhythm through short subject–verb–object sentences, offering concrete images and leaving emotional interpretation to the reader. His Iceberg Theory claims that only about one-eighth of a story’s meaning is visible, while the hidden seven-eighths lie beneath the surface. Published in LIFE magazine in 1952, The Old Man and the Sea sold 5.3 million copies in 48 hours and became a symbol of post-war American recovery. The struggle with the marlin can be read simultaneously as a Christian passion narrative, an affirmation of dignity in old age, and a critique of capitalist exploitation. This polysemy anticipated today’s concept of the "open text" and is often cited in post-modern literary criticism.

Hemingway’s narration rejects Joycean interior monologue in favor of a reportorial diegesis that elicits paratextual reader participation. In The Old Man and the Sea he maintains restricted focalization yet inserts moments of zero focalization, achieving minimal-elastic mimesis. While drawing on 19th-century naturalism’s direct depiction, he introduces omission to disrupt structuralist binaries (victory/defeat, life/death). The text also foreshadows global interconnection and serves as a hegemonic device in Cold War American cultural politics. Such stylistic and structural innovations underlie the Nobel Committee’s 1954 decision.