Hysteria In Hemingway's Big Two-Hearted River

It is unclear whether or not they will stay that way permanently, but Nick has hope that they will overcome their unfortunate situation; when he wonders how long they will be stained, Nick is insinuating that there will eventually come a day, be it in weeks or years, that the grasshoppers will return to their natural state. Hemingway uses this metaphor to parallel our perception of Nick himself. The trauma Nick has endured throughout his life has impacted him as well as his identity significantly, but there is hope and the promise of a better future if he is willing to withstand the burden in the meantime. This sentiment is echoed by Nick when he lets go of the grasshopper, instructing it to “fly away somewhere” (212). The message conveyed here is that life goes on; though the grasshoppers are sullied by their experiences, as they might be for a while, there is a way for them to be free and thus, there must be a way for Nick to be free as well. The rewards that follow in the wake of a negative or traumatic event are earned by the mere fact that an individual was not willing to be swayed from their path or to give up simply on the basis that it was difficult. Nick himself sums it up rather nicely when he states that he’s “...got a right to eat this kind of stuff, if [he’s] willing to carry it”(215) - referring to, of course, his backpack full of food and supplies that he’d been shouldering for

“The Battler” exhibits Nick’s first initiation into the real world without his father’s guidance. Nick’s journey begins after the brakeman kicks him off the train when he finds Ad, a former prize-boxer, and Bugs, Ad’s close friend, up the track near a swamp and joins them for supper. However, after a conflict over a pocket knife, Ad turns violent and Bugs politely asks Nick to leave, which Nick complies with. The brakeman exhibits the first act of violence when he administers a punch, giving Nick a black eye that Nick “[wishes] he could see.” Initially Nick glorifies his wound as a prize of his first street fight. This wound represents the irrational hostility of life and the presence of destruction and death; however, this wound makes Nick feel tough and possibly like a man. Yet, when Ad initiates a fight, Nick “[steps] back” and responds, “I [do not] want to hit you.” Nick’s second violent encounter frightens him and contradicts his initial bravery and toughness, possibly, because Nick understands Ad’s mental state. Regardless, Nick faces the hostile workings of chance and accident, bringing him into this violent encounter. Hemingway also employs the motif of the battler to emphasize the idea that how one deals with his battle determines his future. Nick faces the real world alone with no particular destination as he “climbs up the embankment and [starts] up the track.” Ad and Bugs’ shelter acts as Nick’s first

“Bodies bleed in his novel, at times uncontrollably, and Frederic's narrative likewise suffers at times from troubling and uncontrollable outflow” (Dodman 98). These soldiers are bleeding uncontrollably, which shows the physical destructiveness of war, but these doctors are more greatly emotionally traumatized by witnessing these soldiers bleeding out and dying and knowing that there is not much they can do to save them. Just as the bullets and bombs have caused the soldier’s “uncontrollable outflow” of blood, Hemingway’s novel suffers from “uncontrollable outflow” because of the traumatizing events he witnesses.

In "War," Nick Adams progresses from an innocent, invincible soldier to a traumatized, realistic human. Ernest Hemingway utilizes his minimalist approach to highlight the destructive consequences of war and display that no benefits come from violence. Nick departs for war as a confident soldier but learns very quickly about the reality of war because of his injury. Then, he feels the psychological effects of the war through his lack of rest. Finally, Nick leaves the war as a fortunate, hopeful man with much still to experience. The war gives Nick a realistic outlook on life and matures him through all the death and destruction.

‘No doubt they’ll soon get well; the shock and the strain / have caused their stammering, disconnected talk,’ writes Siegfried Sassoon in the poem Survivors (1917). Sassoon’s irony in these lines condense a prevalent view of non-combatants during the First World War that the soldiers would recover from their physical injuries and mental illness after the phase of shock had concluded. In the short story Speed the Plough (1923), Mary Butts articulates scepticism towards the idea that Shell Shock will simply pass. Instead of employing the habitual indicators of war, the story showcases Butts’s fixation in avoiding them. Modernist writers, such as Butts, were interested in innovation and experimentation with language to create new forms of expression. The following analysis will explore how the modernist aesthetics shape this passage in order to express the experience of war but avoid recurring to the same language that explicitly evokes it.

Coming back from war is dramatic. War causes PTSD. PTSD is a disease which causes you to freak out and be anxious a lot because of what you've seen in the past. "The train went on up the track out of sight, around one of the hills of burnt timber" (77) The word to emphasize on is burnt. If you look further into the word it'll take you into nicks world. When Nick came home there was almost a part of death inside him, dragging him on. He went through some much. "In the swamp the banks were bare, the big cedars came together overhead, the sun did not come through, except in patches; in the fast deep water, in the half light, the fishing would be tragic."(198) Thinking about going to the swamp is like thinking about war. He tries so hard to not go to the swamp, because it made him think about his awful times. He's lonely in the woods but it's a good type of lonely. His brain is foggy. Stepping off that train step brought him

What Nick does concentrate on at this point is the color of the grasshoppers that he has so far encountered. The black grasshoppers are a symbol of a means of survival, having adapted through natural selection to be all black in only a year’s time. In this way they blend in better with their charred surroundings and have become less noticeable to predators. Nick wonders “how long they would stay that way,” indicating his belief that this is a temporary mode of survival for them, and by extension that the charred landscape is also temporary. When it returns to its former state, the grasshoppers will adapt to that situation, and will continue to survive by changing their color again via natural selection.

Hemingway was explaining that Nick was using this to help himself cope with things in life as an example of what Nick’s wants in life or self-realization. Hemingway writes later in the story when Nick sees the big trout in the river and decides not to go after it. Perhaps Nick sees it as the swamp is the misery in his life and the trout is the feeling way down deep that he does not want to obtain until he is ready. It seems that memories are the only hindrance that would keep him from getting closer to being fulfilled.

Nick has mastered what Hemingway later calls the greatest gift a soldier can acquire, the ability to suspend your imagination and live completely in the very second of the present minute with no before and no after” (Vernon). However, as the story progresses, Nick’s thoughts begin to increase in length and depth. For instance, as he draws closer to the swamp towards the conclusion of the story, it states, “He felt a reaction against deep wading with the water deepening up under his

Many authors often express internal emotions through their own writing. “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemingway is a short story about a returning Soldier from war. The story takes place in the late 1910’s. Krebs, the main character returns from war, lost and unable to transition from Soldier to civilian. After returning home, Krebs misses the “greeting of heroes” from his home town in Oklahoma (Hemingway). Throughout the story Krebs mentions several situations of being uncomfortable around the people in the town. Krebs even hurts some family members by being emotionless and unconcerned. The story ends with Krebs attempting to adapt by going with his sister to her baseball game. Using the biological and psychological critical reading strategies to analyze "Soldier's Home" by Ernest Hemingway demonstrates that the author’s purpose in writing the text was so that civilians could understand the harsh reality war and the effects that war has on soldiers.

Nick Adams, a mentally and physically wounded individual, featured in “Big Two-Hearted River” by Ernest Hemingway, written in 1925, experiences an emotional journey through the process of fishing. Whereas Big Boy, a black boy in “Big Boy Leaves Home” by Richard Wright and written only a decade later in 1936, endures the racial tensions between blacks and whites in the South and the struggles Big Boy encounters to ensure his survival.

From the contexts of the Narrow Road to the Deep North and The Railway Man as both were set in the same era, many of the same issues arise around the subject of post-traumatic stress disorder and grief. Through the war, and the hardships soldiers faced, it was hard to return home, with the unknown expectation of isolation and seclusion, particularly in thoughts and feelings. As friends and families who stayed at home and did not experience the war, empathy was often difficult, and opinions and experiences from the war were not often talked about. Through this, guilt and post-war emotions are often not expresses, and dramatic ways of dealing with the internal pain can often be life threatening. Often, these feeling are not wanted to be

mentions his wife often but never what she does. By context and the younger waiters desire it

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 tone, displayed by Henry’s lack of focus and wistful remarks on past events, mirrors the disconnect from the events of the front as well as the narrator’s boredom. Fredric Henry laments because that “[t]he fighting at the front went very badly”, there was “no more racing” as well as “riots twice in the town against the war” (Hemingway 116). As the narrator looks back on these events, there is also an element of longing towards the amusements of the past. By also removing himself from the riots and the fighting, there is a disconnect from Henry and the war, adding to the darkness of the passage. As Henry’s mind drifts from the conversation of war to the “beautiful boots” of a British major, the discursive tone further