-Role of Language and Narrative in Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River”-
The roles of language and narrative style are both important to interpreting and understanding the ways that memory, and the memories of past traumas, are presented in “Big Two-Hearted River” by Hemingway.
The story of “Big Two-Hearted River” is the third person account of the character Nick, who is a veteran of the first world war. The story is meant to be a literary interpretation of what veterans returning from the front felt upon their arrival back home, and the prevalence of lingering mental traumas that came along with them.
Taking place after Nick’s return from Europe, near his go-to fishing river near Lake Superior, the story starts off with his arrival to the town of Seney, only to find the town and surrounding country burned to the ground, with only the old hotel foundation, what was left of the trees and the river remaining amongst the ash and soot. Just in the first page we can see how the use of descriptive language allows us to get a good idea of what Nick himself is seeing and the way that the story is narrated allows us, the reader, to get and idea of what he might be thinking, hence the way the first passage is written, we can expect that the burnt down town evokes his memories from the war, of the battlefields and bombed out towns, and as a depiction of his mental status. To Nick, before the war, this town, and his fishing hole, could be considered “home” for him as it is where he feels at peace or, well, at home. Now during the war his “home” had been the trenches, not out of enjoyment but out of requirement. Now while both of those have been physically burned down, it serves to portray how both in Europe and back at home he feels alienated from his surrounding, how his experiences, and subsequent mental and emotional traumas, have left him as a burned out shell of his formed self, with only a few cracked foundations remain, similar to the town of Seney.
Although in Europe there might have been very little that made him feel happy and like himself again, back home in Seney, the river serves as a reminder of what his former self was and what made him happy. Throughout the story, with subtle hints, the river is what keep Nick on a steady path, and what keeps him connected with his former, pre-war self.
Throughout the duration of the story, both the language and narrative used, both help to portray Nick’s previous traumas as a result of the war. Throughout the story the depictions of the river and the trout held within it, provide Nick his sense of joy, while other things in his surroundings that are not the river or anything within its watery contents, such as the soot covered grasshoppers and the kingfisher, invoke memories and feelings from the war. While all feelings, besides happiness, are never directly mentioned they are however inferred and interpreted.