Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?
Third Person (Limited Omniscient)/Nick
“Wait a second, Shmoop,” you might be saying. “If there is a third person narrator, how can it be a character—nay, the character—in the story?” Excellent question, dear reader. Here’s the thing: it’s a deceptive third person. Not, like, the person himself is deceptive; like the story uses a third person voice, but is actually still narrating largely from inside Nick’s head.
Confused? Good, because it’s complicated in that so-intuitive-you-don’t-even-think-about-how-complicated-it-is way. What we mean is, when you read a line like, “Nick had looked into a stream and seen trout. They were very satisfactory” (I.4), you automatically know that “They were very satisfactory” is Nick’s thought. But how do you know? There is no “Nick thought… “ to prompt you. That’s because the narrator can’t be the one thinking about how satisfactory the trout are. Why would the narrator care about the quality of the trout? Here’s what’s going on: think of it as a film. When you read “Nick had looked into the stream,” it’s almost like the camera follows Nick’s gaze into the stream and focuses on the trout. Then, because the gaze now belongs to Nick, we know that the next sentence is his opinion.
How about a line like this:
The sun was just up over the hill. There was the meadow, the river, and the swamp. There were birch trees in the green of the swamp on the other side of the river. (II.1)
Is this Nick’s thoughts, or the narrator’s narration? It definitely has the once-upon-a-time feel to it. But we cheated a little bit, because this passage is preceded by a description of Nick coming out of his tent, feeling the wet grass, and holding his trousers. So it’s actually doing the same thing as the previous passage: Nick wakes up and comes out of the tent, and this description is actually a description from his perspective as he looks over the landscape.
But the narration isn’t always free and indirect. You definitely get some classic third person narration that distances itself from Nick’s thoughts:
He’s all right, Nick thought. He was only tired. (II.22)
Here, the narrator is like an objective recorder. And guess what? A sentence like this really stands out in this story because so much of it is not conveyed in direct thoughts. That’s no mistake. It just goes to show you how sparing Hemingway is about his he thoughts and he saids.