Character Clues

Character Analysis

Actions

Do actions speak louder than words? Not when we’re talking about words that describe actions, of which there are many in “Big Two-Hearted River.” If you head over to our “Tone” section, you can read up on why Hemingway seems so intent on describing every single step of setting up a tent. We mean every. single. step. (Why doesn’t he just get one of these?)

It’s all about the little things in this story. Opening a can of apricots, catching grasshoppers, making coffee—Nick enjoys the small things in life. What he doesn’t like is when things prove to be beyond his control, like when he loses that particularly big monster of a trout. Hey, no one likes to fail, but Nick seems to handle it particularly badly. So pay attention to the things that seem to relax Nick and the things that seem to make him tense. You’ll be surprised.

Thoughts and Opinions

Nick doesn’t say a whole lot in this story—in fact, he speaks only like three times—but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a whole lot going on in his head. A whole lot. The fact is, Nick is working through some nervous issues as a result of his service during World War I (take a peek at our “Character Analysis” and “Genre” sections to see how the heck you’re supposed to know this). So in short, his thoughts matter. The only problem, as we discuss in our “Narrator Point of View” section, is that it’s not always super obvious when Nick is thinking and when the narrator is narrating. But sometimes we know for sure, like in this case:

He could have made camp hours before if he had wanted to. There were plenty of good places to camp on the river. But this was good. (I.33)

“Good” is one of those über-bland words, and the use of it here (twice) is intentional. It reminds us of when Hemingway says of the trout that “They were very satisfactory” (I.4). It’s almost as though Nick is saying to himself, “Yes, this is good, not too good, just good, which means things are not bad, no sir, not bad at all.” See, when things are actually good, usually you don’t have to keep reassuring yourself that they’re good. The whole story is like one giant exercise in reading between the lines.