Big Two-Hearted River: Part II, written by Ernest Hemingway, is the last short story in his collection, In Our Time. The main character of this short story, Nick, has been featured in previous tales. While it may be the last time readers get to see Nick, the scene written out is as pivotal as anything he has experienced before. Big Two-Hearted River: Part II is the final piece to Nick’s story and the reader gets to see how his journey has come full circle after analyzing the story literally, figuratively, and relationally. To take this story literally is to discover a rather plain story. Hemingway opens up with the main character of the story, Nick, waking up from a campsite. The narrator then describes the scene before him. “There was the …show more content…
Nick observes everything as the wildlife wakes up. Hemingway writes that, “Nick was excited” (145); to put this into context, the reader may realize Hemingway doesn’t typically reveal Nick’s emotions. If he does, they are revealed subtle. Nick starts preparing breakfast and while he waits on it to heat up, he travels farther into the meadow to catch grasshoppers. As Nick searches, the narration explains where the grasshoppers typically hide and how the cold will make them stiff and easy to grab. After Nick catches enough and keeps them alive in a bottle, he washes his hands in the river which seems to make him more excited. Nick makes flapjacks with apple butter and then coffee. He packs the leftovers away in his shirt pocket along with two onion sandwiches. After tidying up the camp, “Nick took his fly rod out of the leather rod-case, jointed it, and shoved the rod-case back into the tent” (147). Nick takes great care assembling his line and readying his gear, “It was a good feeling” (147). His first catch is too small, so Nick releases it. The narration tells how one must make their hand wet before touching a fish, or else a …show more content…
Today, readers can take away many things. One of which could be the healing power of nature. When Nick is alone in the woods, the readers sees him relaxed and enjoying himself. There are no pressures of society that nature requires. There are no sign of stress or worry in the story. It is simply a tale of Nick fishing in solitary and enjoying it. Horrors have occurred during the war but they seem to disappear and drown in the currents of the river and in Nick’s mind. Another take away could be that healing takes time and isn’t easy. While this is a good turn of events for Nick, it didn’t happen immediately after the war. Nor are there any guarantee that Nick is going to be okay. All Hemingway allows the reader to glimpse is a moment where Nick is happy to be alive. Despite his uncertain future, this story can be a reminder that healing is possible. It will take time and won’t always feel great but as Nick wades through the river of his memories, it hurts and it is
As much as generous and honest Nick Carraway is, he still needs a few important improvements in himself. Nick went to Yale, fought in world war one and moved to East of New York to work in finance. After moving to New York, Nick faces tough dilemmas throughout the story such as revealing secrets, and witnessing betrayal. His innocence and malevolence toward others was beyond his control. He did not have the ability or knowledge to know what he should have done in the spots he was set in. He seemed lost and having no control of what went on- almost trapped- but indeed, he had more control than he could have ever known. Because of the situations he has experienced and the people he has met, such as Gatsby, Tom, Jordan and Daisy, his point of view on the world changed dramatically which is very depressing. Trusting the others and caring for them greatly has put him in a disheartening gloomy position.
Here Nick speaks about his how father taught him, why he should be slow to judge people. And how everyone wasn’t as fortunate as him.
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).
Nick compares himself to a “casual watcher in the darkening streets” (Fitzgerald 35), reminding the reader that he is impersonal, and, “I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known” (Fitzgerald 59). Although Nick persistently defends his character as a spectator, it’s clear Nick is desperate to demonstrate the outlook of events based on his point-of-view.
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 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.
...eep my refuse away” (Pg. 177). This shows Nick’s sense of decency and friendship. He realizes that fast carousing life of the East Egg is a terrifying cover for moral emptiness from inside just like the valley of ashes. Before leaving to go back home he took care of all unfinished business. He ended his relationship with Jordan and walked away from Tom Buchanan who he only shared college experiences with. Nick needed to go back to a cleaner simpler time in life away from East Egg and the Great Gatsby. At last his greatest fear came true; he became all alone by himself. At the end he realized that he has been changed and won’t be able to go back to how he used to be. Even though his personality remains the same he is stronger from inside; not afraid of anything.
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...
Coming home from the grueling experience of being a soldier in World War I, he felt ecstatic when he saw a trout swimming in the stream. The perils of war took a devastating toll on Nick, as he suffered from a physical wound while in action. The camping trip here is like an oasis, which will let Nick to recover from all the distress. “Nick looked down into the pool from the bridge. It was a hot day. A kingfisher flew up from the stream. It was a long time since Nick had looked into a stream and seen trout. They were very satisfactory...Nick’s heart tightened as the trout moved. He felt all the old feeling.” (178) The healing process begins here with Nick re-acclimating himself with one of his favorite hobbies: fishing. “He started down to the stream, holding his rod...Nick felt awkward and professionally happy with all the equipment hanging from him...His mouth dry, his heart down...Holding the rod far out toward the uprooted tree and sloshing backward in the current, Nick worked the trout, plunging, the rod bending alive, out of the danger of the weeds into the open river. Holding the rod, pumping alive against the current, Nick brought the trout in...” (190,193,195) Nick finally reels in a trout after the big one got away, getting to the feeling of relaxation and washing away the horrors of war. By pitching his tent out in the forest and being able to function by himself so smoothly, Nick shows how he represents the trait of stoicism. He did not complain or stop living, coming back with the trauma of war. Going camping, he is able to relieve himself through using all the nature around him, showcasing his
In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume II. Edited by Paul Lauter et al. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1991: 1208-1209. Hemingway, Ernest. A.
Throughout the Nick Adams and other stories featuring dominant male figures, Ernest Hemingway teases the reader by drawing biographical parallels to his own life. That is, he uses characters such as Nick Adams throughout many of his literary works in order to play off of his own strengths as well as weaknesses: Nick, like Hemingway, is perceptive and bright but also insecure. Nick Adams as well as other significant male characters, such as Frederick Henry in A Farewell to Arms and Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises personifies Hemingway in a sequential manner. Initially, the Hemingway character appears to be impressionable, but he evolves into an isolated individual. Hemingway, due to an unusual childhood and possible post traumatic injuries received from battle invariably caused a necessary evolution in his writing shown through his characterization. The author once said, “Don’t look at me. Look at my words” (154).
Hemingway packed plenty of theme, symbolism, and overall meaning into this short story. However, the story would not have been nearly as meaningful had it been written from another point of view.
Fourthly, the scene in the swamp is the scene in part two of “Big Two-Hearted River” that shows Nick developing psychosis. The swamp serves as a reminder for Nick of where he was wounded, for “a change in the width of the river is what made the swamp horrible,” for he had been wounded “at a narrow place on the Piave River…near Fossalta” (Young 47, 54, Adair 584-5). This narrow place is the same place that Nick in “A Way You’ll Never Be” has dreams about, the “mosquito marshes” where he “wad[es] waist deep in swamp water, holding high a rifle (rather than a fishing rod[, as he does in “Big Two-Hearted River”])” (Adair 585, see Hemingway 409).
Hemingway’s concise prose and lack of unnecessary detail is infamous, and forces the reader to examine all included details for a greater meaning. Therefor, his decision to spend the first third of this story expounding on Nick’s skiing must serve a greater purpose. The vivid descriptions of skiing plucking “Nick’s mind out” and leaving him “only the wonderful feeling of flying, dropping sensation in his body” (Hemingway 108) symbolize Nick’s mental freedom. He can forget the
This line, spoken by Ole Andreson after Nick tried to save him from being killed, shows the level of desperation that can come of bad situations. Anderson had been given a guardian angel in the form of Nick yet he refused to be saved.. He most likely got mixed in with the mob, and had been running for so long, that finally he became weary and decided to stop running. He had accepted his fate. What Hemingway is trying to convey here is, that crime and unrelenting threats can break down the toughest and strongest of people, and it breaks down the society that has been built up around