Comparing Big Two-Hearted River And Mary Oliver's The Wild Geese

Success comes only to those who stand firm throughout the trials and tribulations the world has to offer, as many people come to realize through the gaining of their personal life experience. In “Big Two-Hearted River, Part I”, Ernest Hemingway utilizes figurative language such as symbolism, imagery, and metaphors in order to impart and emphasize the importance of one’s determination to endure the challenges of existence in relation to their overall prosperity. Readers are led to reflect on how persevering through the negative experiences in one’s life can ultimately lead to positive experiences, as well as the role perseverance plays in the lifelong search for stability. According to Hemingway, the only method of attaining true

Loneliness is usually a common and unharmful feeling, however, when a child is isolated his whole life, loneliness can have a much more morbid effect. This theme, prevalent throughout Ron Rash’s short story, The Ascent, is demonstrated through Jared, a young boy who is neglected by his parents. In the story, Jared escapes his miserable home life to a plane wreck he discovers while roaming the wilderness. Through the use of detached imagery and the emotional characterization of Jared as self-isolating, Rash argues that escaping too far from reality can be very harmful to the stability of one’s emotional being.

It is often noted that one can never truly understand the beauty of life until they go and experience it. This idea parallels with getting to know who they really are and figuring out what their purpose in life genuinely is, which not many people cannot comprehend. Everyone has different fears, desires, and feelings, but not until you live a life of new experiences do you harness your true self. Growing through experiences and connecting with nature allows someone to more deeply reflect on their individual purpose on Earth and discover their own definition of happiness. Henry David Thoreau comments on this even further by proposing that the disconnection from a society in which we are comfortable is the only way to cultivate an understanding of ourselves. Chris McCandless sets out on an adventure in a life absent of routine to push his boundaries and prove that he could make it on his own, finding the meaning of life in the process. Henry David Thoreau’s statement “Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves”, is correct, as evidenced by Jon Krakauer’s novel Into the Wild.

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

I engulf the feeble victim in seemingly unescapable loneliness, overtaking the joys of their heart and ensnaring them in a pit of desolate solitude. The sense of bleakness will overcome the senses and suck out all the bliss they hold close. Because it appears most of humanity rely on one another for comfort and joy, the unavoidable reality of being unaccompanied is enough to drive a man mad. I describe the sense of separation that strikes a soul, sucking out every ounce of remembrance and comfort the past attempts to bring. Yesterday will never return, just as tomorrow always comes; it’s inevitable. Once I reach you, it’s a struggle to get rid of this parasite that I am, called isolation. There comes a point where the victim will decide

After the doctor meets with Nick and Nick cannot bend his knee, the doctor tells Nick to be positive and hopeful that his life will be normal again: "That will all pass. You are a fortunate young man. You will play football again like a champion" (Hemingway 169). Nick understands why the doctor calls him "fortunate" to only walk out of the war with a hurt knee because soldiers in rooms next to him received more traumatizing injuries. Later he meets about his future with a major. Nick talks about his plan to marry, and the major tells him that marriage hurts a man: "If he is to lose everything, he should not place himself in a position to lose that. He should not place himself in a position to lose. He should find things he cannot lose" (Hemingway 173). Nick hopes that his return will be simple, but he still has much to experience and adventure. The war changes Nick from an innocent, young man with many hopes and aspirations to a scarred man with an arduous return to his regular life

The author uses Nick Carraway as the narrator of the story to describe the thoughts and feeling of Nick about everything he experiences for the purpose of contrasting his actions to his ideals.This stand, however controversial it may seem, is in total coherence with the whole story. Even though Nick constantly judges the actions of those around him, he chooses to involve himself with those he so greatly despise. For some people he may appear to be greatly tolerant, however he crosses the line between

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.

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.

In her discussion of shell shock, Elaine Showalter writes, “Men were silenced and immobilized and forced, like women, to express their conflicts through the body. Placed in intolerable circumstances of stress, and expected to react with unnatural ‘courage,’ thousands of soldiers reacted instead with symptoms of hysteria” (Showalter 171). In Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River: Part I,” Nick Adams embodies this symptom of hysteria. His actions and interactions with his belongings and surroundings showcase different dimensions of his recollection of the “intolerable circumstances” which he faced in the Great War and the ways in which he seeks to “choke” his thoughts of the experience.

     In Hemingway’s collection of short stories, In Our Time, we follow a character by the name of Nick Adams. We are introduced to Nick in “Indian Camp” as a young boy, and follow him to adulthood in both Parts I and II of “Big Two-Hearted River”. Through this we see Nick develop and learn about some major facts of life. Nick is a character who changes through the effects of war on many different levels. Although Hemingway hardly mentions the war, he uses the stories to express different effects and emotions caused by the war.

The focus of this essay will be to analyze Nick's transition as he moves from mental isolation, to physical isolation, to maturation and self-discovery.

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

In Hemingway's collection of short stories, In Our Time, we follow a character by the name of Nick Adams. We are introduced to Nick in "Indian Camp" as a young boy, and follow him to adulthood in both Parts I and II of "Big Two-Hearted River". Through this we see Nick develop and learn about some major facts of life. Nick is a character who is changes through the effects of war on many different levels. Although Hemingway hardly mentions the war, he uses the stories to express different effects and emotions caused by the war.