Where It All Goes Down
Up in Michigan
Hemingway gives us enough information to pinpoint where this story takes place—except then he throws us off with the title. Hemingway himself wrote in “The Art of the Short Story” (Source) that “The river was the Fox River, by Seney, Michigan, not the Big Two-Hearted.”
Well, gosh, thanks Hemingway. We get more into the name change in our “What’s Up with the Title?” section, but meanwhile, there are other place-names that help us out as well, like the town of Seney and mention of the Black River. The point is, we are definitely in Michigan territory.
But it’s not a pretty picture—at least, not at first. Seney looks like a dragon sneezed on it:
Seney was burned, the country was burned over and changed, but it did not matter. It could not all be burned. (I.8)
Think of this story as a kind of spirit journey. More often than not, isolation in the wilderness prompts some serious introversion—i.e. you start to think about things a lot—and then you might project those thoughts back onto the landscape. This isn’t the only moment in the story where Hemingway does this, either. He also does it with the grasshopper, the trout, and the swamp. (Check out our “Symbols” section for elaborations on each of these.) We’re talking about Man and the Natural World here (cough “Themes” cough). So Nick is not just remarking on the barbequed trees here; this sentence is really about himself.
Nick is going into nature to sort some things out—some things that can really only be sorted out by getting away from the complications of society (like, you know, war). War has “burned” Nick, and changed Nick, but it doesn't matter. It can't all be burned.
The historical context is important for this story too. “Big Two-Hearted River” was published in 1926, and WWI ended in 1918 (WWII wouldn’t begin until 1939). So WWI was a very, very recent memory for everyone, and it was pretty devastating, as far as devastating things go. For us readers now we might not automatically associate Nick’s tics with WWI, but for readers of the time it would have definitely resonated. Hemingway himself experienced WWI firsthand as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross, so he knew what he was talking about.