Essay on Ernest Hemingway's Big Two-Hearted River

Nick is an unreliable narrator. He seems, from the beginning, to be level headed and wholly observant. However, he blacks out when he gets drunk, and we lose time. Also, he is deeply embedded and prejudices us against Tom and for Gatsby.

Where was Nick? Nick was out in the cold, smoking weed in front of his school’s art building, having the time of his life because he finally earned the right to smoke greens with the other guys. Nick was having a good time, being stupid,

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.

No two men are exactly alike, not even identical twins. Some attributes, appearance, and ideology may mirror, but no two men are alike. Differences in how the world is perceived will allow this individual to stand together, but appear far apart. The modern method of writing allows for individuals do exactly that, stand together, but appear to be fair. Writers Ernest Hemingway and T.S. Eliot demonstrated such disassociation in living deliberately in time and place of Nick and J. Alfred Prufrock.

Having returned from war, Nick encounters Seney completely incinerated, as Hemingway describes, "There was no town, nothing but the rails and the burned-over country" (Hemingway 133). The complete destruction of this town reflects the inner reality of Nick, with his whole life prior to the war annihilated; however, Nick still holds hope for recovery as shown by his conviction, "It could not all be burned" (Hemingway 135). Thus, Nick sets out on a journey up the river, carrying a heavy backpack and walking uphill under the hot sun, which symbolize the difficulties of striving for his hope. Nick's experience closely resembles that of Krebs in "Soldier's Home," in which Krebs struggles with his apathy to life at home but eventually attempts to return to normal by planning to seek a job. Throughout Nick's hike along the river, Hemingway provides many symbols of this struggle in nature. For example, the trout swimming against the rushing current to hold steady reflects how people attempt to cope with the challenges of life as best as they can. Later in the hike, Nick notices that all the grasshoppers are black due to the fire and wonders how long they remain black, symbolizing how war radically changes soldiers who now must slowly recover. As Nick continues

The first image of the story is one of death; “Dying is replaced in dreams by departure, by a train journey” (Freud Lectures 190), and each proceeding image indicates the death of the woman. The baggage man throws his baggage from the doorway of the car, and as “doors and gates are symbols of the genital orifice,” (Freud Lectures 192), it can be assumed that here Hemingway is associating Hemingway’s “things” in his baggage, to be crude, to his “thing.” After the departure of the train, i.e., the departure of the woman, the landscape is described as burned and annihilated. “The complicated topography of the female genital parts makes one understand how it is that they are often represented as landscapes, with rocks, woods, and water” (Freud Lectures 192). The narrator also notices only hills where once there were houses, typically male images taking the place of the homes, “the symbol of a woman as being a space which encloses human beings” (Freud Lectures 201). Within the first two paragraphs of “Big Two-Hearted River,” Hemingway covers half of Freud’s “Symbolism in Dreams.”

The movie introduces Nick as an "antagonist" at the beginning who is shifty and mischievous. It then reveals the reason that causes Nick's trouble history, which is the cynical and prejudiced society in fox's point of view. When Nick is 9 years old, his mother buys a brand new scout uniform since he always has a dream of joining the Junior Ranger Scout. However, since Nick is the only fox there and fox usually is a symbol of untrustworthiness, the first conference that he attends turns out a hazing and he is brutally beaten by the other animals for being a fox. After escaping his tormentors, Nick wails and thinks the Zootopia and the prey as an abysmal place. This horrible experience prompts Nick to not believe in the goodness and become a

Hemingway allowed some of his personal experiences regarding war to influence a major theme of his writing, and he situated this theme throughout his works. Hemingway’s initial attitude towards war and gender was exhibited in “A Simple Enquiry,” where he has sexual feelings towards a higher-up member of the army. War and gender, especially regarding the absence of the female and the male’s strength, are two key themes that are displayed in Hemingway’s works. “Big Two-Hearted River” is a short story written by Hemingway that showcases a scene of Nick Adams being without love. In this case, war is not directly mentioned, but it serves as a point of explanation in Nick’s life and his duties as a hero. Hemingway was an advocate of the male image

     Ernest Hemingway was one of the greatest writers of the century. He was born at the close of the old century but was able to see the Disorders of the new century. Hemingway was marvelous in bringing about his pictorial effects for his readers even in his drunken state. Hemingway was skilled in the way he presented the “real” and “concrete” to be the first essentials in his writing. He put life back on the page so that we could see the grim reality of the truth. Hemingway’s style brought minute details to the surface so that the readers would understand his meanings. In the stories that I have chosen the critics have analyzed the story. In this paper I intend to prove that Ernest Hemingways writing in

In the beginning of the story, the man, who was foreign to the wintry conditions, had an attitude of dauntlessness, but nevertheless, him being ignorant about the warnings and circumstances. When he was in the dawning of his journey, the man would journey cautiously having time limits of how long he would expose skin, and how the man would travel an amount of miles per hour to reach his destination safely. As told in the book, “Empty as the man’s mind was of thoughts, he was keenly observant, and he noticed the changes in the creek, the curves and bends and timber jams, and always sharply noted where he placed his feet (page 84-85, lines 121-123).” After the midst of the journey where the man was nearing his fate, he felt as if he would not make it or survived, so therefore, he took perilous acts of desperation which led him to his downfall. When the man and the fire was buried in snow, the man thought to himself, “For a moment he sat and stared at the spot where the fire had been, Then he grew very calm. Perhaps the old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right.

Nick Adams and J. Alfred Prufrock Comparison and Contrast Nick Adams of Ernest Hemingway’s The Big Two-Hearted River and J. Alfred Prufrock of T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, are both on journeys dealing with emotional devastations and the perils in life. However, differ in their personal characteristics and how they respond to their situations. A study of these two men reveals similar likeness of modern men emotional characteristics, inabilities to face the society and significant differences in how they seek their purpose and resolve in life. Nick Adams and J. Alfred Prufrock are both modern sensitive, intellectual and independent men on a present day journey trying to find meaning and their position in life.

Although Ernest Hemingway and John Burroughs belonged to different generations and wrote in different times, Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River” (BTHR) and Burroughs “A Bed of Boughs” (ABOB) share a particularly intimate connection. Both Hemingway’s and Burroughs’ works are underlined with spiritual depth and exactitude. The fishing narratives of both Hemingway and Burroughs, are embedded with precision, and praise for the natural world. Hemingway’s BTHR parallels John Burroughs’ ABOB in both journey and spirit; both writers find joy, and renewal through love for nature and total immersion into their landscape. Although, Nick’s journey is a remarkably similar one to Burroughs, Hemingway as a modernist must move beyond the condition of John Burrough’s pre-war perspective in order to reconcile with the post-war trauma and face the tragic condition of the modern world.

Ernest Hemingway based his writing on real life experiences concerning death, relationships, and lies. He then mixed these ideas, along with a familiar setting, to create a masterpiece. Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park Illinois. One of Hemmingway’s first works was Indian Camp published in 1925. In many ways Indian Camp shows the relationship between Hemingway and his father. Hemingway then digs deeper into the past to create the love between Frederick Henry and Catherine Barkley, in A Farwell To Arms. Hemingway was later able to reflect his disgust of home life when he portrayed himself as the character Krebs in Soldiers Home, the character had problems with lies, women, and at home.

Ernest Hemingway's “Big Two Hearted River Part 1” appears as simple tale of a man going camping. It talks about his journey through a burnt area of land. He ultimately sets up camp, has some fond memories of a friend, and then he goes to sleep. However the story, in my opinion, has a much deeper meaning. Everything that happens in the story has a reason behind it being mentioned. Hemingway, I believe, shows Nick’s growth through analogies that often fly over the reader's head, including the transition from the burnt town to the river, the river conditions, and the trouts’ movement in the river and the sooty appearance of the grasshoppers.

Ernest M. Hemingway      Ernest Miller Hemingway was a novelist and short story writer, who became well known for the passion that he used in all his writings. Many of his works are regarded as classics of American Literature, and some have even been made into motion pictures. The Old Man and the Sea, which is the story about an old Cuban fisherman, was published in 1952. Because of this creation, in 1954 Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.