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Dylan Storm

Lui TR 330-445

Annotated Bibliography: Big Two-Hearted River

1. Brogger, Fredrik Chr. "Whose Nature?: Differing Narrative Perspectives in Hemingway's '"Big Two-Hearted River."' Hemingway and the Natural World. Ed. Robert E. Fleming. Moscow: University of Idaho Press. 1999. 19-31.

The main point Brogger makes in the section entitled Whose Nature?: Differing Narrative Perspectives in Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River” is how the narrator switches (as the title suggests) from the third person narrator to Nick himself. Though the narrator is always the one narrating throughout, there are moments when he is straightforward, and there are moments where he seems to relate Nick’s sensations as if he is Nick himself. This is made possible by the fact that Nick is the sole character in the story. By the only opinion being the subjective opinion of Nick it is the one that the narrator chooses to relay. This will be important to note when analyzing the text because the narrator saying it is “hot” from an objective standpoint is different then moments when the narrator and Nick become one, and Nick feels “hot.”

The narrator’s preciseness has potential to work well with Nick subjection when forming a project map. An example of precise narration that Brogger points out is, “Two hundred yards down the hillside the fire line stopped. Then it was sweet fern, growing ankle high, to walk through, and clumps of jack pine; a long undulating country with frequent rises and descents” (23). The writing of Hemingway is so descriptive in scenes such as this one that it will lend itself well to a 3D project design.

Brogger approaches the act of Nick fishing as a way for Nick to start the slow process of regaining order in his life. As Brogger says, “happiness to Nick is a matter of control” (25). Prior to this statement, Brogger had said, “Having his expectations confirmed gives Nick a sense of control—a satisfaction similar to the one he gets from mastering his simple camping and fishing rituals” (25). The overriding theory here is that Nick has come to the river to fish because he used to fish there when he was a kid. He feels comfortable there, and knows what to expect. By knowing what to expect, and having those expectations met, Nick is happy. Moments of Nick fulfilling his expectations must therefore be noted in order to mark them as being significant moments of happiness. Brogger finishes this notion of control by stating that the swamp is currently too complex for Nick. The last lines, “There were plenty of days coming when he could fish the swamp,” shows that Nick will continue to improve his tolerance for complexity, and will be able to face the swamp soon enough (26).

2. DeFalco, Joseph. The Hero in Hemingway’s Short Stories. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh PRess. 1963.

In the section The Hero as Symbol DeFalco addresses Nick’s internal struggles right away: “In the short stories focusing on Nick Adams…inner attitudes are externalized by means of symbolic reflection” (15). This means it is important to take note of the symbolism that is being addressed in The Big Two-Hearted River to better understand what Nick is feeling. Some external images that should be recorded are those things that are heavily repeated. As DeFalco says, “a sequence of images is repeated a sufficient number of times to create symbolic formations” (15). So what images in the story are so symbolic? DeFalco goes on to say, “One of the most important symbolizations takes the form of a ritualization of a familiar activity” (16). It is important then to look at what Nick ritual activities are. A lot of these activities can be seen around the campsite with his preporation of the food and pitching his tent. The biggest ritual would have to be the process of fishing itself. By understanding what symbols are at work and where, a better understanding of Nick and the story itself will become apparent.

These symbols are also closely tied with Hemingway’s language. As DeFalco says, “the language Hemingway chooses to illustrate Nick’s feeling suggests a symbolic or ritualistic activity aiming at some redemptive response” (108). These symbols can be provided by the landscape, and that is why it is important to represent them in a model. DeFalco states later in the book, in the section The War and After, “The war has laid the land to waste, and for the people, whose moral state reflects the same “waste,” there is no hint of a restoration” (146). This quotation links directly to the wasteland that is Seney. No longer is Seney a functioning town, but has now been burnt to a flat empty land. For the people to “reflect” the same waste as the environment, it shows how important the scenery of The Big Two-Hearted River is, and how important it is that Nick left Seney immediately. When studying the other images of the land, such as the river, it is important to understand what possible symbol it provides. Often times rivers are associated with re-birth. Nick is a man who is trying to start over. What comes before the river is the peaceful meadow, what follows is the swampy unknown. DeFalco believes these are stages of life, and stages of Nick's development. He will have to come to face the swamp at some point.

3. Flora, Joseph M. Hemingway’s Nick Adams. Baton Rough and London: Louisina State University Press. 1982.

Flora is heavily concerned with how Nick responds to different images and physical trials. According to Flora, Nick is in search of the order in his life that was lost when he went to war. The natural setting of an open landscape lends itself to order because there are no outside influences. Nick is able set up his camp where he wants, fish where he wants, and eat when he wants. By making simple decisions for himself without outside influences acting upon his decisions, he is able to be in complete control, and focus simply on taking the proper steps to get his life back on track.

Flora as well as other authors asserts that there is much religion intermixed with Nick’s journey. As Flora explains, “The word good…in Genesis is God’s verdict on the world He has created. Nick’s senses will continuously assert that life is good” (157). Noting where words such as “good” are located is important to better understanding the story because of the significance they carry with them. Just as God’s verdict on the world he created was “good,” so is Nick’s verdict on the camp he sets up. Is Nick trying to gain the ability to “order” his life much like God gave order to the universe?

Another one of the repeated words Flora references is “hot.” Specifically, the heat Nick feels as he climbs the large hill in the beginning to get from the burned down Seney to the river he desires to fish at. Not only is it important if Nick is hot, but what areas of the environment are hot. We are told Nick “leaves the burned town behind in the heat” (154). Seney represents the past for Nick, something he is to move beyond. Heat is important to keep track of because of its repetition, but further emphasis should be put on it due to the fact that as Flora says, “In terms of naturalistic probability, Nick would not inevitably find the kind of hot day in the upper peninsula that he does find” (154). One of the moments when Nick feels the hottest is when he is leaving Seney.

When Nick leaves Seney he begins his trek up a large hill. Flora’s interpretation of the assent is as follows, “Nick bears a heavy burden…as he begins the walk “up hill” leaving the burned country. Paradoxically, the burden becomes easy, even a joy. Twice we are told that Nick feels happy” (153-54). Here there is a noted correlation by Flora between the joy Nick feels and the physical peak he has reached. Such aspects of the story must be noted throughout to see if height is symbolic of joy, or whether they appear coincidentally.

4. Moretti, Franco. Graphs Maps Trees. New York: Versa. 2005.

In Moretti's book, Graphs Maps Trees the reader is provided with an explanation for why visual aids such as maps can be helpful even in cases such as documenting fictional landscapes. As Moretti says, "What do literary maps do...First, they are a good way to prepare a text for analysis. You choose a unit...find its occurences, place them in space...or in other words: you reduce the text to a few elements" (53). The goal of such a project is to be able to visually represent something in hopes that a greater knowledge will be gained that was unable to be provided by the text. It then becomes a matter of collecting the proper data from the text to be able to format a proper map that represents the literary work accurately. The project map will not be able to accurately reflect a fictional landscape, but the goal is to incorporate as much data as Hemingway provides so as to be able to create a representation of his environment. Key aspects will not focus on scale as much as they will focus on distinguishing between the multiple settings, and providing a comparative representation. Maps do not provide direct information in it of themselves, but they do organize the information to create comparisons and relationships. As Moretti says, "quantitative data are useful because they are independent of interpretation; then, that they are challenging because they often demand an interpretation that transcends the quantitative realm" (30). Maps can be great tools because they are based completely off of data. They also have the ability to become challenging because of the interpretation it requires to examine the data.

It is important to note that one of the benefits of map making is that it lends itself to new ideas and supplemental maps. Moretti says in his section entitled Maps, "A map of ideology emerging from a map of mentalite, emerging from the material substream of the physical territory" (42). Though the initial project idea is to create a physical map, what continues to branch off are ideas of how Nick's feelings can be encorporated in the map. This then creates a desire to build supplemental graphs, as well as provide additional symbols such as stickers or flyers onto the map that would express how Nick is feeling at a given location. The use of language, and specifically, the amount of times certain words occur, is also to be documented on the map. The final goal is best summarized by Moretti when he says that the point of maps is that they, "may bring some hidden patterns to the surface" (54).

5. Scafella, Frank. "'Nothing' in 'Big Two-Hearted River."' Hemingway up in Michigan Perspectives. Ed. Frederic J. Svoboda and Joseph J. Waldmeir. East

Lansing: Michigan State University Press. 1995. 77-91.

In the section entitled “Nothing” in “Big Two-Hearted River,” by Frank Scafella, the Big Two-Hearted River is seen as a story where the surrounding environment is a map of Nick’s psyche. This piece elaborates on the landscape in which Nick finds himself, and provides an interpretation for how the physical land reflect Nick’s current state of mind. As Scafella says, “It may be that in the burning of Seney and in the river we are dealing with images that are of Nick’s inner world” (78). The burned down landscape is a representation of where Nick is coming from. It is the image of destruction that was World War I. With the final project goal being a physical model of the landscape, such information is vital to understanding the significance of what each area of the model will represent in relation to how Nick is feeling.

One of the major concerns in “Nothing” in “Big Two-Hearted River” is what Nick is feeling and how that “feeling” is represented by symbols in the landscape. Due to the great amount of “feeling” correlated to the landscape, this inspired a possible addition to the project idea of mapping Nick’s emotional rising and falling in conjunction with the differing elevations at which he finds himself. Scafella says when referencing Nick’s attempt to catch the big trout, “From happiness to disappointment, that is, and from landing a trout to losing the big one” (88). Different elements such as whether Nick catches or loses a trout must be documented on the group model along with Nick’s emotional response to such an act. What also needs to be included is what the big trout represents. The big trout is more than just a fish to Nick, and it is more important to catch one big trout than several little trout. What should also be noted is where the big trout reside in relation to the smaller trout, and whether Nick is willing to journey to where the big trout are at this moment in time.