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Research Report: Narrative Voice in "The Big Two Hearted River"

By Carlvert Green Hemingway Short Story

Summerhayes, Don. "Fish story: ways of telling in "Big Two-Hearted River."." The Hemingway review 15.1 (1995):10-. 

Abstract:

This article is all about exploring the narrative voice in Hemmingway’s “The Big Two Hearted River.”  The author begins his article by discussing the many narrative voices that are heard throughout the story. In discussing all of these voices, his main point is how sometimes these voices blend and the lines that represent each voice are sometimes blurred. He then discusses how the reader’s voice recreates the text, and how that adds one more voice to the mix. Lastly, Summerhayes ends by discussing what effect all of these narrative voices have on how we read/interpret the text.

Description:

Don Summerhayes examines the unique way that Hemmingway chooses to tell “The Big Two Hearted River.” He contends that there is more than one narrative voice, which is different than most stories which are told by either a first or third person narrator. Instead of this usual structure, the author says that there are two narrative voices working here; first, there is an omniscient narrator that tells the story from an unbiased point. But every now and then between the narrative voice, the readers will hear Nick Adams voice, who is the only character in the play. In addition to these two voices that interject each other, he also claims that we hear a third type of voice, which is the voice of other people from Nick’s past. Summerhayes contends that having this many narrative voices in one short story does create some kind of confusion, and therefore readers should not be looking for what this means, but be more concerned with what we can make of the text, thereby moving to more creative strategies of interpretive analysis.

            Summerhayes then moves on to briefly discuss the numerous accounts of repetition in the story. In addition to the repetition that occurs in this story, he points out that repetition also occurs throughout the entire book of short stories in which “The Big Two Hearted River” appears, and says that at no point is this echoing acknowledged. The author’s conclusion about this repetition is that that it allows Hemmingway’s language to tell the story, not the narrator. This point can also be made for the fact that there is more than one narrative voice in “The Big Two Hearted River.” In other words, it’s fine that the narrative structure of the story is confusing, because that is not what should be telling the story, the language should.

            Lastly, Summerhayes digs into the story to find specific quotes that reiterate some of his main points. Through this Summerhayes also brings up important points about the position of “The Big Two Hearted River” in In Our Time, which is the collection that is appears in. He discusses how the short story is split up into two parts, and in anthologies of Hemmingway’s work they will occur one right after another. However, in In Our Time there is another story in between the two parts, and the author also takes some time to explore what that is about.

Commentary:

I chose this article because of how closely it deals with the language in “The Big Two Hearted River.” Sometimes the author’s points are unclear and not structured, but other times the points are very rich, and should be very helpful with the supplementary materials that go with our map. When we initially discussed the supplementary material we were only thinking about how Nick feels at certain points, and this article has opened up the possibilities of looking at the narrative structure and seeing how the shift in narrative voice can sometimes tell the reader a lot about how Nick is feeling.

            Another aspect of this article that should be very helpful is the fact that the author pulls out very specific quotes to make his points, and gives commentary about them. These pages often identify where the shift in narrative voice occurs and even gives possibilities for that those shifts might mean. Using this article would be like adding a fourth opinion to our own.

            Lastly, what is perhaps most useful about this article is that it places “The Big Two Hearted River” in its natural context of In Our Time. While our project is specifically about this story, Nick Adams appears in several other stories by Hemmingway, and some issues that led to the development of his character in other stories may be important to analyzing how he feels and why. For example, the fact the Nick was at war at one point puts “The Big Two Hearted River” in a completely different context than it would have if that information was unknown. This article will allow us to take a glimpse into the other stories, without having to read them, or make them a part of our project.

            Although this article can help is in many ways, it does have some disadvantages. First, the author is sometimes unclear about the point he is making and a paragraph will end without one being established. There doesn’t seem so be a clear argument (i.e “this” is the issue and “that” is the answer”) as much as it seems like the author is just trying to make points about narrative structure and the language. This article is also more like an opinion piece where the things said are only what the author thinks and are not solid facts. But overall the article should prove useful.

Resources for further study:

1. Summerhayes, Don. "Fish story: ways of telling in "Big Two-Hearted River."." The Hemingway review 15.1 (1995):10-. 

2. Lamb, Robert Paul. "Fishing for stories: what "Big Two-Hearted River" is really about." Modern fiction studies 37.2 (1991):161-.