Big Two Hearted River, Part I, By Ernest Hemingway

Everyone has a desire, something that they want to achieve or obtain for them. Whether it is ethical or immoral, having desires is almost inevitable. Sometimes these desires make people go through tough times. Tragic occurrences such as death and broken relationships shape the lives of people positively or negatively. In the following essay, “Many Rivers to Cross” and the short stories, “Two Kinds” and “Everyday Use”, the protagonists of these texts struggle to achieve their desire, but because of those struggles the main characters do eventually come to a revelation.

Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain is his memoir about vital river life during the steamboat era and a remembrance of it after the Civil War. . Mark Twain (1835-1910) grew up Samuel Langhorne Clemens on the Mississippi River in the small town of Hannibal, Missouri. Twain was a journalist, essayist, and writer of short stories and novels. Mark Twain tells of his life on the river, humorous stories, and a glimpse of his life during his childhood. This Memoir displays a detailed account about how life was like in America in the nineteenth century. The way Mark Twain writes this book is very interesting. It is not a straight forward bibliography. It is more like a book based on actual events. The book tells the story of Mark Twain’s life,

Reading the book, The Other Side of the River, by Alex Kotlowitz, the author writes about the relationship between two towns in Michigan, and the death of a young boy named Eric McGinnis. The two towns, Benton Harbor and St. Joseph, are called the “Twin Cities”, but are ironically not related in any way. St. Joseph is 95 percent white, while Benton Harbor is impoverished and is 92 percent black. Throughout the book Kotlowitz questions the residents from both towns and how they are affected by the environment around them. The author also starts with the climax on the first page of the book – the death of Eric, and uses this as an technique to tell the story of the disagreements between the two towns.

Hemingway, to illustrate the theme of sovereignty, uses the character of Nick Adams. Nick is a character who has been injured in the war and, though his wound has healed over, Nick has yet to recover mentally from the attack. Hemingway’s portrayal of Nick is of a man who is trying to regain his identity. Hemingway depicts this through stream of consciousness and symbolism. The stream of

Love is an unexplainable emotion that exceeds the boundaries of all. In Earnest Hemingway 's "A Farewell to Arms" two character 's share a climactic endeavor through pain and suffrage finding their way back to each other no matter what. Hemingway expresses love as a necessity in one 's life, and even through gruesome terror and war it can never be broken. The story resonates with it 's readers on a personal and realistic level, being that it is written with some truth behind it; Hemingway 's style of writing portrays the definition of unexpected reality.

In the book, A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park, Salva realizes that perseverance is key when facing life’s challenges.

Nick is a World War I veteran who, as many veterans, suffers from emotional trauma that his experiences from the war left him with. Multiple scenes throughout the story, Big Two Hearted River, relates to Nick, the main character’s, journey toward recovery. Nick describes his surroundings in way that parallels to his own experiences and current voyage in respect to his revival.. He takes a calming adventure saturated with calming natural paths over hills, through woodland, and along a river to find peace with himself and to return to his prewar state of mind.

Ernest Hemingway uses the characters in The Old Man and the Sea to demonstrate how perseverance is necessary for survival. After battling with the fish for several days, Santiago wishes the circumstances could be different: “‘Be patient, hand,’ he said. ‘I do this for you.’

In the book The River by Gary Paulsen they use again and again moments a lot. He uses the again and again moments well because the again and again moments actually mean something. They mean a lot and in pack to the story.

The world of Ernest Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River” exists through the mostly unemotional eyes of the character Nick. Stemming from his reactions and the suppression of some of his feelings, the reader gets a sense of how Nick is living in a temporary escape from society and his troubles in life. Despite the disaster that befell the town of Seney, this tale remains one of an optimistic ideal because of the various themes of survival and the continuation of life. Although Seney itself is a wasteland, the pine plain and the campsite could easily be seen as an Eden, lush with life and ripe with the survival of nature.

In Big Two Hearted River, Ernest Hemingway used his own experiences he had during the war and the issues he had when injured in the war. As soon as Nick stepped off the train the reader could feel the disappointment that Nick had and the understanding that he was a troubled soul. At the same time this was Nick’s way to treat himself by staying close to nature and the simpler things in life. No matter how happy Nick would get he would continue to have flashbacks of things he has done and friends he has lost along the way. Throughout the short story by Hemingway, Nick will continue to move through his problems from the war by camping and catch his food from the river and the reader will be able to see Nicks pain and happiness.

“Big Two Hearted River”, a semi-autobiographical short story by Ernest Hemingway, is a story about the main character, Nick, returning to Big Two Hearted River in order to recover from his inner wounds. Nick Adams goes on a journey alone in nature for a therapeutic purpose as he suffers from PTSD. However, Hemingway purposely avoided any direct discussion regarding to Nick’s mental wounds. The absence of the discussion is contributed by Hemingway’s writing style, the Iceberg principle. Hemingway focuses explicitly on what occurs on the surface without mentioning actual theme. This indicates that the theme of self-healing cannot be uncovered by simply looking at the text itself. In order to comprehend the actual theme of the story, the character development of Nick must be examined. This is possible since Nick Adams is a recurring character of Hemingway’s stories. The two preceding stories of “Big Two Hearted River”, “Now I lay me” and “A Way you’ll Never Be”, directly discusses Nick’s suffering from shell-shock and how he comforts himself by returning to Big Two Hearted river in his mind. The two short stories will be analyzed and connected to “Big Two Hearted River” in the essay first. This will provide a strong understanding of Nick’s psyche and the reason behind his return to nature. Then, “Big Two Hearted River” the short story itself will be carefully analyzed.

“But man is not made for defeat," he said. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated. (Hemingway 103).” This quote, written by Ernest Hemingway in the short story The Old Man and the Sea, captures the theme perseverance in numerous ways. This quote describes when the old man Santiago was struck down physically, with the injuries of his hands and the pain of staying awake for a number of days. However, he mentally kept pushing forward, leading to his ultimate survival and his arrival home. Ernest Hemingway wanted the readers of this story to learn about the rewards of perseverance because of the hardship Santiago and the marlin had to endure, rather than themes such as luck, pride, and suffering.

The Great War, as it is famously known, caused a major cultural shift. It had the consequences of breaking the social norms that existed at that time and was replaced with newer ways of interaction with the world. The war prompted the society to be more experimental and convinced them to embrace the unfamiliarity of individualism. The people saw war as a constant and therefore were actively looking for means to escape this reality. As the lost generation focused their literature on the inner workings of their consciousness, so did the society, but wholesomely. Due to this fact, the Modernist writers cultivated the core and fundamental virtues of that era that is how the inner consciousness functions and how it affects the self. The Big Two-Hearted River by Hemmingway is a perfect example of this Modernism shift since it describes the life of a soldier coming back from war, in the quest of serenity after the mental torment suffered during the

Hemingway's world is one in which things do not grow and bear fruit, but explode, break, decompose, or are eaten away. It is saved from total misery by visions of endurance, by what happiness the body can give when it does not hurt, by interludes of love which