Big Two Hearted River Analysis

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The short story Big Two-Hearted River, written by Ernest Hemingway, is a piece that has drawn much literary attention due to its complex utilization of detail in brief simple sentences. With these factors Hemingway’s Big Two-Hearted River is able to have an abundance of critical expositions throughout the story, which shows the passion that Hemingway possesses for concise sentences. Most of the criticism for Hemingway’s River comes from the grave themes alluding to the war and the catastrophic events that harmed Nick’s mental and spiritual state. This somber theme becomes evident throughout the text especially when Nick returns to his hometown. The sentence describing the town as “nothing but the rails and the burned-over country,” makes the many dark themes apparent and shows why critics focus on these dark themes of physical and mental devastation. Despite the numerous somber critiques throughout Hemingway’s text there is ultimately a positive sensation in this story as a broken man endeavors to heal himself by returning home to nature to find and do what he loves. The vivid detail throughout the text can signify more than the sentence itself. Some of Nick’s actions appear to be normal, but have more meaning more when analyzed. Lewis Weeks addresses an issue in Nick’s tent assembling technique, which is described thoroughly: With the ax slit off a bright slab of pine from one of the stumps and split it into pegs for the tent. He wanted them long and solid to hold in the ground… He pegged the sides out taught and drove the pegs deep, hitting them down into the ground with the flat side of the ax until the rope loops were buried and the canvas was drum tight.1 From Nick’s actions, the reader can see that the tent had been... ... middle of paper ... ... area in the forest and the “earth felt good against his back… He shut his eyes again and went to sleep.”7 This captures what Nick meant when he “felt all the old feeling,” and is continuously ascending the road to recovery. As Nick ventures through the woods of the burned forest there are many jack pines and ferns lying about. At a glance this appears to be a hopeless wasteland of a once peaceful realm, which can hint to the turmoil of Nick’s mind, but on the contrary it is quite the opposite. Svoboda declares that jack pines are “opportunistic colonists after fire(s),” and Svoboda clarifies this by stating: jack pines… must burn in order to release the seeds from their cones. Without fire, they do not reseed themselves… Nick is not really out of the fire zone, but in an area where regrowth after fire is linked with the story’s theme of potential regeneration

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