Character Analysis
Nick Adams isn’t just the hero of this story: he’s the hero of many Hemingway stories written (not in chronological order) over the course of about a decade. Biographically, he seems to be a lot like Hemingway, but don’t fall for that old trap of assuming that the main character is the author. Sure, Nick may have a lot in common with Hemingway the man, but he’s still a character, and a good rule of thumb is to never assume that the events and emotions in a character’s life were based on things that really happened. After all, even if they were, does knowing that help us understand the story? Not really. So moving on.
Can We Please Get a Bio in Here?
Who is the Nick Adams of “Big Two-Hearted River”? Where is he from? How old is he? All of this information is in the story for us to discern (kind of), but it’s never going to be just handed to us (definitely no David Copperfield character descriptions in Hemingway).
Think about Nick’s first thoughts as he gets off the train.
The thirteen saloons that had lined the one street of Seney had not left a trace. The foundations of the Mansion House hotel stuck up above the ground. (I.1)
First of all, we know that these are Nick’s thoughts (thanks to a little thing called free indirect discourse). So if Nick knows that there were once thirteen saloons and a particular hotel, then we know that he has been here before. But it must have been a while ago, because a lot has changed.
So now we can assume, at least for the time being, that Nick is a Midwestern boy (Seney is in the great state of Michigan). Now it’s time to play Guess My Age. Well, it’s doubtful that a young kid would be riding trains into the desolate wilderness, and Nick seems to conduct himself with a sense of self-reliance and personal direction. He also seems to be physically fit since he hikes for miles and miles without complaining about the arthritis in his joints. Add this all up, and without even really thinking about it we get a sense that Nick is a young adult.
War! What Is it Good for?
But now here comes the really tricky part. How do we make the connection between Nick’s behavior and his experiences in World War I? A lot of it actually has to do with historical context. When “Big Two-Hearted River” was published in 1925 (i.e. WWI had recently ended and WWII hadn’t happened yet), it would have been pretty clear to readers of the era that Nick was manifesting symptoms of shell shock, which is the outdated name for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Not everyone suffering from shell shock would have reacted the same way or with the same severity; in fact, Nick’s symptoms are so subtle that it would be easy to overlook them.
This subtlety is part of what makes this story so darn good. It would have been very easy to write a story that told you outright “Nick had been in the war and was suffering from shell shock,” but is a line like that emotionally moving? Certainly not as moving as “Nick’s heart tightened as the trout moved. He felt all the old feeling” (I.5). Wow! Suddenly we’re full of questions. What “old feeling”? Why does the trout’s movement cause it?
What we do know for sure is that Nick is trying to keep himself happy so that he doesn’t feel something else—something more dangerous and anxiety-inducing. And we know that little things can set Nick off, which is why he is insistent on being so careful about everything he does, like choosing where to set up his camp and hanging up his pack.
So looking at the bigger picture, the question now is whether or not Hemingway is making some sort of statement about war in this story. It’s hard to say. He’s certainly saying something about the effects of war. It’s possible too that he’s asking what war is good for. In terms of an answer to that question, though, he doesn’t seem to take a political stance one way or the other. The story doesn’t seem to be trying to teach a “moral” lesson either, otherwise we might expect it to end less hopefully (as in a Nick-is-irreparably-damaged-and-you-see-what-war-has-done-to-an-entire-generation-of-young-men sort of thing). But hey, even if Hemingway doesn’t have some sort of ostensible agenda in this story, that doesn’t mean you can’t be moved or persuaded by it for whatever reasons.
Also, if you want to read a story about Nick’s actual experiences in WWI (written after “Big Two-Hearted River,” though it takes place before the events of the story), check out “A Way You’ll Never Be” from Winner Take Nothing.