One of the "iceberg" styles is the art of simplicity, that is, deleting all unnecessary things in the novel to win more with less; Secondly, Ma Yuan, a novelist, thinks that its intrinsic quality can be summarized as "experience omission". Hemingway put forward the iceberg principle in Death in the Afternoon. He took the iceberg as a metaphor, and thought that the author should only describe the part of the iceberg exposed to the water, and the underwater part should be supplemented by words. Hemingway created his works according to the principle of "iceberg", which formed a unique artistic feature, embodied in his style and structure:

(1)' s fresh, smooth and unpretentious prose style established his position as the most talented and artistic prose writer of that era. The style of writing has the characteristics of simplicity and implication: a. He purified the style of writing with a simple and fresh style. What appears in his works are basically excellent sentences, simple sentence structures, commonly used words or everyday expressions. He hates "big talk" and abandons empty and grandiose words, thus shortening the distance between author, object and reader to a minimum and achieving clear, natural, true and elegant artistic effects. B adopts various simple and implicit but rich expressions. His works often contain a lot of subtext, and emotions are never over-described, but only contained in simple scenery description and character movements. He often uses telegraph conversations, inner monologues, symbolism and stream of consciousness to express complex psychology. These implicit writing methods leave readers a space for association, thus achieving the artistic charm of accumulating wealth and creating flowers.

(2) In the structure of his works, Hemingway opposed the traditional epic novel structure, and he never wrote grand novels. His novels often only intercept a time point or time period of the story to reflect major themes or historical events. As for the course and historical background of the story, it is hidden under the ocean as an iceberg, but he wants readers to feel its existence strongly. For example, The Old Man and the Sea could have been written for more than 1000 pages, and everyone in the village was talking about how to make a living, how to get an education and so on. But the novel is actually condensed to only more than 50 thousand words, focusing only on the thrilling three days when the old man was fishing at sea.