Ernest Hemingway uses the various events in Nick Adams life to expose the reader to the themes of youth, loss, and death throughout his novel In Our Time. Youth very often plays its part in war, and since In Our Time relates itself very frequently to war throughout; it is not a surprise that the theme of youthful innocence arises in many of the stories. In “Indian Camp” the youthful innocence is shown in the last sentence of the story: “In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.” (19) When this sentence and the conversation Nick and his father have before they get on the boat are combined in thought it shows that because of Nicks age at the time that he does not yet understand the concept of death. Throughout the book youth has a complicated relationship with aging. This can be seen in “Three-Day Blow” when Nick and Bill are drinking, acting childish and just having fun. They talk about each others’ fathers and about missed opportunities even though they cannot really understand what they are...
There were many themes illustrated throughout the memoir, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael beah. These themes include survival/resilience despite great suffering, the loss of innocence, the importance of family/heritage, the power of hope and dreams, the effects of injustice on the individual, and the importance of social and political responsibility. Every theme listed has a great meaning, and the author puts them in there for the readers to analyze and take with them when they finish reading the book.
The Illegal, and Some Great Thing by Lawrence Hill both contain several important themes. To explain, The Illegal features the main character’s loss of innocence, and the racism towards people because of their country of origin, and ethnic background. Next, Some Great Thing includes the themes of racism and prejudice towards not only the protagonist, but also to French Canadians because of the colour of their skin, or the language they speak, and the courage of characters to stand up for what they believe is right.
Among the first indicators of Nick’s unreliability as a narrator is shown through his extreme misunderstanding of his father’s advice. When Nick’s father told him that “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages you’ve had” (1) he most likely meant not all people have the same opportunities in life. However, Nick perverted his father’s meaning and understood it as “a sense of the fundamental decencies us parceled out unequally at birth” (2). Nick’s interpretation of his father’s advice provides insight into his conceited, somewhat supercilious attitude, as he believes that not all people are born with the same sense of manners and morality.
The maturation of Nick begins with his description of his time leading to his arrival in West Egg, “I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War” (Fitzgerald, 3). The protagonist comes into the story having not lived much of his life in the normal world that he desires to successfully conquer. He goes directly from schooling into the war, where he found heroic satisfaction. Yet, somehow, Nick is able to keep part of himself innocent and pure despite being in the horrors of war. It is not long after attending his first party at Gatsby’s that Nick confesses that “Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known’ (Fitzgerald, 59). The level of Nick’s idealism and virtuousness begins at such an innocent pl...
Are classic novels still being referred in modern society? Yes. Yes they do. – David Ngo claims
In the story “Recitatif” author Toni Morrison, published in 1983, tells a story of two young girls, Twyla and Roberta, with two different ethnicities, who grow up in an orphanage together. Due to the fact that the story is narrated by Twyla, it seems natural for us the readers to associate with this touching story, as many of us have encounter racial discrimination back in the 1980s, making it clear that Morrison states the two girls grow up to always remember each based on the similarities and the childhood they both encounter together, come from different ethnic backgrounds, and as the story reveals, destiny is determined to bring the girls’ path together.
Nick notices that although the characters had lived in the east they were not truly from there. “I am part of that”, he mentions as he realizes he is a part of the West and not the East. Fitzgerald also adds realization that “this has been a story of the West, after all.” upon having Nick reminisce on his origin and that of his one time friends (176).
Ernest Hemingway pulled from his past present experiences to develop his own thoughts concerning death, relationships, and lies. He then mixed these ideas, along with a familiar setting, to create a masterpiece. One such masterpiece written early in Hemingway's career is the short story, "Indian Camp." "Indian Camp" was originally published in the collection of "in Our Time" in 1925. A brief summary reveals that the main character, a teenager by the name of Nick, travels across a lake to an Indian village. While at the village Nick observes his father, who is a doctor, deliver a baby to an Indian by caesarian section. As the story continues, Nick's father discovers that the newborn's father has committed suicide. Soon afterward Nick and his father engage in a discussion about death, which brings the story to an end. With thought and perception a reader can tell the meaning of the story. The charters of Nick and his father resemble the relationship of Hemingway and his father. Hemingway grew up in Oak Park, a middle class suburb, under the watchful eye of his parents, Ed and Grace Hemingway. Ed Hemingway was a doctor who "occasionally took his son along on professional visits across Walloon Lake to the Ojibway Indians" during summer vacations (Waldhorn 7). These medical trips taken by Ernest and Ed would provide the background information needed to introduce nick and his father while on their medical trip in "Indian Camp." These trips were not the center point of affection between Ed and Ernest, but they were part of the whole. The two always shared a close father-son bond that Hemingway often portrayed in his works: Nick's close attachment to his father parallels Hemingway's relationship with Ed. The growing boy finds in the father, in both fiction and life, not only a teacher-guide but also a fixed refuge against the terrors of the emotional and spiritual unknown as they are encountered. In his father Ernest had someone to lean on (Shaw 14). In "Indian Camp," nick stays in his father's arms for a sense of security and this reinforces their close father-son relationship. When Nick sees the terror of death, in the form of suicide, his father is right there to comfort him. From this we are able to see how Nick has his father to, physically and mentally, "lean" on, much like Hemingway did (S...
The paragraph starts with a description of his liking for New York, using lucid examples of why he does, such as “the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women...gives to the restless eye” (Fitzgerald 56). He goes on to picture himself picking up women from Fifth Avenue, becoming involved romantically, fantasizing about being welcomed into their homes. There is a shift in tone, however, after this fantasy, wherein Nick expounds his isolation: “I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes” (Fitzgerald 56). His heart sympathizes with the individuals having to work nights, in order to feed themselves, instead of seizing the moment and partaking in the pleasures the city has to offer. These vivid descriptions work to present Nick’s character and mental process, and are central to his development as
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.
Nick is our narrator and the voice of reason in a time and place where parties are the goals and having a good time is all that matters. Parties at Gatsby’s mansion are the rule not the exception and all who attend pay homage to their false prophet Gatsby. He is their leader the charming man living in a mansion and driving and awesome care. Too bad he has no sense of real worth. Yet nick seems to be loyal to him the whole time “They're a rotten crowd, “I shouted across the lawn. “You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.”I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end. First he nodded politely, and then his face broke into that radiant and understanding smile, as if we’d been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time” (Pg 162). Nick appears on the sidelines more than in the mix with all the drinkers and boasters and unfaithful spouses. “I forgot to ask you something,...
Hemingway's protagonist, Nick, in the short story "Indian Camp" rides curiously asking "where are we going, Dad? (28). Yet, being secure while Nick lay back with his father's arm around him (28). Upon arrival of the shanty lined beach, life's lesson begins to unfold. Nick's sympathy for the woman screaming in pain because of delivering a baby without anaesthetic unleashed a feeling of compassion. Nick's apathy for the final stage of the...
...is story, Hemingway brings the readers back the war and see what it caused to human as well as shows that how the war can change a man's life forever. We think that just people who have been exposed to the war can deeply understand the unfortunates, tolls, and devastates of the war. He also shared and deeply sympathized sorrows of who took part in the war; the soldiers because they were not only put aside the combat, the war also keeps them away from community; people hated them as known they are officers and often shouted " down with officers" as they passing. We have found any blue and mournful tone in this story but we feel something bitter, a bitter sarcasm. As the war passing, the soldiers would not themselves any more, they became another ones; hunting hawks, emotionless. They lost everything that a normal man can have in the life. the war rob all they have.
In his popular 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway illustrates how war plays a huge role in the real world and character identity. Although the novel features a fresh literary style, enjoyable dialogue, and beautifully constructed meaning, “nothing leads anywhere in the book, and that is perhaps the real point of it” (Young). The characters that Hemingway creates rarely mention the war; nevertheless, it affects everything they do and say. Jake Barnes, the protagonist of the novel, suffers from an emasculating war wound that results “in his frustrated love for an Englishwoman whom time and misfortune have driven into alcoholism, promiscuity, and self-destructive irresponsibility” (Sanderson). Participation in the war is seen as a major conflict as Jake’s impotence renders it impossible for him to have a relationship with Brett Ashley. Along with them, Jake’s friends have also lost their self-identity during the war; in effect, they are always agitated, itinerant, and searching for a constant change of scenery. While they favor to live in America rather than Europe, they have detached themselves from their home country and made themselves expat...
The Sun Also Rises is Hemingway’s first momentous literary work. It is a story about the lives of a number of Americans who were living in Europe after World War I. An American World War I expatriate and journalist, Jake Barnes, tell the novel’s storyline. The themes that are depicted by Hemingway in this novel include purposelessness of the ‘Lost Generation’, masculine insecurity, communication breakdown, binge alcohol consumption, and fake friendships. Nonetheless, as essential as the premise and the context of the novel are, the characters are the heart and soul of the Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises