Big Two-Hearted River

On the surface level “Big Two-Hearted River,” simply recounts the story of Nick Adams’s fishing trip after he arrives in the town of Seley. However, the free indirect discourse that characterizes Nick shows that he is constantly making an effort to control his thoughts and feelings. Hemingway’s “iceberg” technique excludes more than he reveals about Nick’s inner state, but the language provides strong clues.

Nick defines himself by his ability to survive privation. This highlights the theme of Post-Traumatic Stress and Resilience. He is young and physically strong: He hikes for miles while carrying a heavy pack of canned goods on his back. He mentions that he has been hungry in the past and is able to go long stretches without eating. Nick is depicted as emotionally “muted,” frequently triggered, and desperately controlling. He repeats that he is happy but also notes that he is “not unhappy,” suggesting that he is not entirely sure how happiness feels. He states that his campsite is “good,” the grasshoppers are “good,” and the story of Hopkins is “good.” The repeated descriptor suggests that Nick does not want to explore his emotions too deeply and that simple pleasures satisfy him.

Nick’s reaction on discovering that the town of Seley has burned is characteristically muted. The third-person narrator, seeing through Nick’s perspective, observes the devastation in considerable detail, but does not register any explicit emotion: “The thirteen saloons that had lined the one street of Seney had left not a trace. The foundations of the Mansion house hotel stuck up above the ground” (Paragraph 1). These details reveal that Nick has spent time in this town before and knows it well, but also that he has been away for some time. The image of utter destruction echoes the destruction Nick has presumably seen in the war. This is the other 80% of the iceberg—the story beneath the story, which goes unmentioned in the text but informs everything that happens. As Nick looks over the burned landscape, he sees that “The river was there” (Paragraph 2). This is one of the most deceptively simple sentences in the story, and it announces the theme of Nature’s Power to Heal. Emotionally devastated by what he has seen and experienced, feeling that a whole world has been wiped away, Nick turns to what is simple and enduring: the pleasure of being in nature and of knowing, for example, how to catch grasshoppers early in the morning, before their bodies have warmed enough to hop away. His actions as he sets up camp and puts together his fishing gear are meticulous and precise: He takes pleasure and comfort in knowing how to do these things, in imposing order and control over his life in these small ways.

The story was published in 1925. World War I had been over for seven years, but the physical and emotional toll of the war was still very present. Over 100,000 American soldiers died and over 200,000 were injured. Many more developed post-traumatic stress disorder, then called “shell shock.” To have shell shock was considered a sign of weakness, so most men did not talk about their symptoms. They avoided even talking about the war.

The story is divided into two parts, each with its own narrative focus. The first part details Nick’s arrival at Seley, as he walks through the burned-over hills, arrives in the woods, and builds his camp. The second part relates Nick’s fishing adventure. To understand this story—to discover what Hemingway has left out—the reader must look beyond the plot and focus on the symbols—the details that suggest or represent some meaning larger than themselves.

The narrator’s description of the burned-over town of Seley is reminiscent of a war-ravaged city. Nothing remains except the broken foundation of the hotel. And much like the forest of Argonne, the forest surrounding town has also been left devastated, with only charred tree stumps remaining. The grasshoppers living in this burned-out area have turned black from the soot, much like the men who were physically and emotionally changed by the war.

Nick then stands on the bridge watching the fish in the river below him. The bridge is a liminal space between two worlds—between the fear and devastation of the war and the simple, ordered world Nick enters, or creates for himself, in this story. The river itself suggests the stream of Nick’s consciousness and the passage of time. Nick is attempting to cross the bridge from a world of emotional turmoil into a world of healing. He sees a kingfisher fly above, casting its shadow over the river, symbolizing new beginnings, hope, and freedom. The kingfisher is a bird that dives into the water for food, as Nick must plumb the depths of his unconscious to find the strength he needs to continue living. Furthermore, the name of the bird calls to mind the story of the Fisher King, an Arthurian legend about a wounded king whose land has become infertile and who spends his time fishing while waiting for a knight to heal him.

Nick works with ritualistic exactness to build his camp, creating order out of chaos, both literally and emotionally. The work evokes the theme of Post-Traumatic Stress and Resilience, as Nick’s labor in building the camp restores him to a sense of security. When he finishes setting up his tent, he feels safe and at peace: “Nothing could touch him […] He was in his home where he had made it“ (Paragraph 25). Nick has created a sanctuary that feels familiar, where he feels at home. It’s significant that he has built this sanctuary with his own effort and knowledge; his place of safety is one he makes for himself.

The second part of the story depicts Nick wading into the river’s shallows and moving toward the deeper parts, drawing satisfaction and renewal from the act of fishing, showing Nature’s Power to Heal. He first catches a very small trout, which he releases back into the water, taking care not to disturb the delicate layer of mucus that protects the fish from infection. He remembers fishing more crowded streams and seeing the bodies of fish dead from the fungus that attacks them when they are touched with dry hands. The waste of life offends him. As in the scene from the first part in which he makes his camp, there is the sense that he is restoring order and peace to his own world by knowing the right way to do things and taking the time to do them that way. When the next fish, a huge one, breaks the line and goes free, the moment threatens to break his hard-won emotional equilibrium. The combination of thrill and disappointment briefly overwhelms him, leaving him feeling shaky and sick. When, finally, he catches two good fish, the healing process is complete. The catching of those fish is the story’s climax, and the process is narrated in meticulous detail. When Nick has the two fish is safely stored in the cloth sack he carries over his shoulder, he is able to relax and eat the onion sandwiches he prepared in the morning before setting out. Symbolically, he has delved into his subconscious mind and, through conflict and cunning, retrieved what he needed restore his sense of wholeness.

In the final paragraphs, he kills and cleans the fish and looks ahead to where the river narrows into a swamp, representing the wild, mysterious, and dangerous, but also the cyclical nature of life, a place where birth, growth, decay, and renewal come together. The swamp represents an even deeper part of Nick’s subconscious, where he has locked away the memories and trauma of war. Nick knows the danger of going into the swamp, and he does not venture into it that day; however, he does state that there is plenty of time to fish there in the future, suggesting that he will eventually succeed in healing his emotional trauma.