The Last Good Country Essay

The Depiction of Nature in Ernest Hemingway's Unfinished Story, The Last Good Country

Ecological criticism in the 1990s has declared many works, including Ernest Hemingway's novels like The Old Man and the Sea, and many of his nonfiction works and short stories as nature-oriented masterpieces. "The Last Good Country," one of Ernest Hemingway's later short stories, however, still remains to be reinterpreted as more than merely, "a metaphor for childhood innocence" (Werlock 131), and his usual "imaginative use of the natural world" (Fleming 2).

Unlike other short stories in Hemingway's early days, this unfinished story has a unique background on writing. No other Nick Adams story had previously been planned to be a form of novel. But

See also Spilka, "Original Sin in 'The Last Good Country'," 211, where Spilka had already looked beyond former theories like Philip Young's thesis of a traumatic war wound.

2 Primitivism readings have frequently, mainly after 1980s, argued the inseparable connection between Hemingway's nature settings and Native Americans. See Paul Civello, 1-16; Jeffrey Meyers, 215-19. I have also discussed Hemingway's primitivism and involvement with his neighboring Native Americans in my previous paper, where I define the Spanish word cojones as "energy to live." See also Daisuke Fujiwara, "Mythicizing of the Ritualistic Cycle: Primitivism in 'Indian Camp'." Hokkaido Eigo Eibungaku 43 (1998): 27-36.

3 Trudy is Nick's girlfriend in "Fathers and Sons" and also known as Prudence in "Ten Indians." Some Native American characters including Trudy, Mrs. Tabeshaw and her husband are thought to have lived when Hemingway was young. For more information, see Peter L. Hays, "Hemingway's Use of a Natural Resource: Indians,"

"Man Cannot Live by Dry Flies Alone: Fly Rods, Grasshoppers, and an Adaptive Catholicity in Hemingway's 'Big Two-Hearted River'." Fleming, 31-44.

Fleming, Robert E., ed. Hemingway and the Natural World. Moscow, ID: U of Idaho P, 1999.

---. Introduction. Hemingway and the Natural World. 1-5.

Hays, Peter L. "Hemingway's Use of a Natural Resource: Indians." Fleming, 45-54.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Nick Adams Stories. NY: Scribner's, 1972.

Love, Glen A. "Hemingway's Indian Virtues: An Ecological Reconsideration." Western American Literature 22:3 (1987): 201-213.

Meyers, Jeffrey. "Hemingway's Primitivism and 'Indian Camp'." Twentieth Century Literature: A Scholarly and Critical Journal, 1988: 215-19.

Murphy, Charlene M. "Hemingway's Gentle Hunters: Contradiction or Duality?" Fleming, 165-74.

Phillips, Dana. "Is Nature Necessary?" The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 1996. 204-22.

Spilka, Mark. Hemingway's Quarrel with Androgyny. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1990.

---. "Original Sin in 'The Last Good Country': Or, The Return of Catherine Barkley." The Modernists: Studies in a Literary Phenomenon. Ed. Lawrence B. Gamache and Ian S. MacNiven. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson U P, 1987.