This essay focuses on the female character Catherine Barkley in

A Farewell to Arms (1929)

written by Ernest Hemingway. The main question is: To what extent does the iceberg technique contribute to the way Catherine Barkley is portrayed and perceived in the novel?The novel itself has been studied along with biographies and essays on the subject of Hemingway’s female characters and his iceberg technique. Hemingway’s novel was also used in a classroom activity at an upper secondary school, as a ground for discussing the iceberg technique and the effect it had on Catherine Barkley. The conclusion is that the iceberg technique contributed to the stereotyping of Catherine Barkley, but not on its own. Other aspects need to be addressed as well, such as the use of a male narrator and the stream-ofconsciousness in dialogues.