Hemingway's Emotional Adverbs: Why "With Sadness" Never Appears
Eighty-Four Days, Without a Single Word of Sorrow
That is: “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.” This is almost all Hemingway tells us at the beginning of The Old Man and the Sea. Not “in despair,” not “staring at the sky in hopelessness.” The reader has to carry the weight of those eighty-four days alone, and that is exactly what they carry to the last page.
This avoidance is neither accidental nor stylistic laziness. On the very first page, Hemingway scatters precise, vivid adjectives with generosity: thin, bony, deep wrinkles at the back of the neck, brown sunburn spots on the cheeks. What he sets aside is the judgmental adjective: sad, pitiful, magnificent. And the emotional adverb: sorrowfully, with difficulty, resentfully. Distinguishing between these two is the key to understanding his style.
The Emotional Adverb Imposes the Writer’s Understanding on the Reader
When you write “he rowed sorrowfully,” the reader no longer has to guess at anything; they simply accept your report. Their mind passes through the experience and goes straight to the label. What is removed is precisely what literature exists for: the opportunity for discovery.
Chekhov, whom the young Hemingway admired, said the same thing in a short sentence: don’t say the moon is shining; show the glint of light on broken glass. The emotional adverb is in fact the shortcut of the impatient writer; a way for the work to produce emotion without taking the trouble to build it. The problem is that the shortcut also destroys the pleasure of the journey.
George Orwell, in “Politics and the English Language,” lays down a rule that is directly relevant here: if a word can be cut, cut it. The emotional adverb is almost always one of those cuttable words—provided the scene has done its job.
The Iceberg Theory: Seven-Eighths Under Water
In Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway creates his famous image:
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 has written truly enough, will feel those things as strongly as if the writer had stated them. The dignity of the movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.
The crucial point is that the iceberg has two conditions. First, the seven-eighths under water must actually exist; that is, the writer must know the scene completely—the weight of the fish, the pull of the rope, the habit of the hand. Second, the one-eighth above water must be sharp and precise enough for the reader to sense the existence of the rest. Omitting the adverb without these two conditions is merely silence, not concision.
The ending of the book is a perfect example: the old man is asleep, the boy sits beside him and watches over him, and the old man dreams of lions. Nowhere does it say “calmly” or “with longing.” The lions do all the work.
Practical Alternatives: From Judgment to Evidence
Cutting the adverb is half the work; the other half is putting something in its place. This table shows a few simple rewrites:
| Adverb-driven version | Economical version | What took the adverb’s place |
|---|---|---|
| He rowed sorrowfully. | He sank the oar into the water and did not look at his hands. | Avoidance of looking |
| He looked at the shark angrily. | He drew the knife from its sheath, rinsed the blade in the water, and looked at the line. | Sequence of action |
| He was afraid. | He gripped the rope with both hands and pressed his palm against it. | Physical reaction |
| He looked at the fish with longing. | He touched the fish’s snout and pulled his hand back. | Sudden withdrawal |
| He was tired and helpless. | He lay down on the floorboards of the boat and fell asleep. | Physical state and consequence |
In the third column there is something that was not in the first: evidence. Faced with evidence, the reader is compelled to judge for themselves—and that very judgment creates the real feeling.
The Opposite Error: Gratuitous Coldness
Eliminating adverbs is not an absolute rule, and this is where many Hemingway imitators fail. In On Writing, Stephen King writes that the road to hell is paved with adverbs and that adverbs are not a writer's friend; yet in the same book he uses them freely. The issue is not counting adverbs; it is their placement. An adverb is the enemy when, instead of building the scene, it hands over the judgment.
The six-word story attributed to Hemingway — "For sale: baby shoes, never worn" — shows how much emotion can fit into silence. Still, a text that removes every sign of emotion and offers no evidence from within becomes cold, not concise. Conciseness is the removal of something the reader can construct for themselves; coldness is the removal of something only the writer knew.
Why This Is Harder in Persian
Persian has ready-made, melodious structures for emotional adverbs: "with sadness," "resentfully," "while a lump pressed in his throat." These combinations are so fluid that they come to the page automatically, and the writer does not notice that they have bypassed the scene. A few ways to counter this:
- Word search: At the end of the draft, search for "with …" and "-ly" constructions; most of them are candidates for deletion.
- The question test: Ask yourself which sentence tells the reader that the protagonist is upset. If the answer is "the next sentence itself," remove the adverb.
- Mental translation: Turn the sentence into simple English; extra adverbs usually fall away in the process.
- Preserve rhythm: Sometimes an adverb is necessary for the music of the sentence; in that case, keep it deliberately, not out of habit.
- Strengthen the verb: Replace "he said angrily" with a more precise verb such as "he snapped" or "he cut her off"; in Persian, the verb carries the emotional charge better than the adverb.
A Three-Step Exercise
- Take a page of your own writing and pencil out all judgmental adverbs and adjectives; for now, do not add anything.
- Under each line, write a visible detail or an action that conveys the same feeling — use the body, objects, or distance.
- Read the text aloud. If the feeling gets lost somewhere, do not put the adverb back; make the evidence more precise.
After a few drafts, this cycle becomes a habit, as it did for Hemingway. In A Moveable Feast, he says that all you have to do is write one true sentence. A true sentence is often one without adverbs.
Conclusion
Hemingway's avoidance of "with sadness" and its relatives is not a language game; it is a form of respect for the reader. Instead of announcing the conclusion, the writer sets up the conditions and leaves judgment to whoever is constructing the experience. Removing emotional adverbs, when combined with precise detail and concrete action, does not make the text shorter; it makes it deeper. The difference between a text that tells you to be sad and a text that makes you sad is the difference an adverb makes.
