This post is on Hemingway's "A Big Two-Hearted River".
What amazed me most (and yet, I should have seen it coming) was my view on fishing and even camping before and after reading this story. My approaching thought was Oh great, another fishing story. Booooooring! Yet I found that while reading, I started growing this desire to attempt fishing--not for the first time, I promise; although I'm not close to the Idahoan of the year award for outdoor adventures.
The way he writes it emphasizes all the satisfying (and a few disappointing) aspects of the long trek, the camp set up, and the fishing trip. What he doesn't write about is (I'm about to go all girly on you): the stupid side aches from hiking, the time it takes to make the bed and camp, the awful bugs that crawl on you and bother you (I mean, he's by the river!) and how uncomfortable no shower would be.
With that said though, I still have this random desire to set up a camp and fish--the hard core fisherman way. Will I ever do it? Probably not anytime soon if at all. But it amazed me how Nick's, the character, satisfaction of the entire journey could provoke such thoughts in me. I know it's "just a story" but words are incredibly powerful--spoken and on paper.
Some other questions I had about the story included this main one: "Why did he go to all that effort just to fish?" I don't know if it's a guy thing, but i couldn't understand it. There were little hints that he was possibly A) running away from something or someone, B) leaving his previous life and starting completely over, or C) he was just on his way somewhere and stopped for a week long fishing trip.
One thought I did have was that he really did go to ALL the troubles to get to that very spot, with every intention of returning to his home, wherever it may be. Regardless of all that, this story is a favorite--not by me, but by many. I wonder if people just want to mentally escape with Nick on this glorified fishing trip if that's just all they get.
