Reflection on "A way you'll never be" and "Big Two-hearted River"

           After experiencing hardships or a shock, it is natural for people to seek for their own therapy. Some of them seek for drugs for their temporal pleasure and escape from reality while others try to overcome their hardships in a more “pure” way (like doing an intellectual work like painting or writing or going back to the nature). However, no matter what choices people make for a solution, they want their scar to be fully recovered, without any traces.

           Two stories of Hemingway, “A way you’ll never be” and “Big Two-hearted River”, which are connected in the context, express the scar the main character gained and the process of curing it. In the story “A way you’ll never be”, the gruesome atmosphere in the town where the war had occurred was depicted well. After that, in the story “Big Two-hearted River”, Hemingway insists that the “full recovery” cannot happen sometimes. Nick, who experienced the horrible war, walked away from the burnt town and went to the riverside in order to cure his scar obtained from the shock in the war. His situation and his desire to cure his pain are well-depicted in the part where Nick observes the black grasshoppers, wondering how long they would stay that way.

           In the nature, Nick works hard to overcome his pain “fully”. Although experiencing a series of failure, he kept trying to catch a “big trout”, which can be interpreted as a tool for full-recovery. However, after all, Nick satisfied on a medium sized trout. 

           Actually, I was surprised about the conclusion of this story because I thought Hemingway would have ended the story in a manly way. But still, I really like this ending. This ending is more realistic, still being hopeful to those who want to cure their scar.

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Yeji: Understand the time limit. So, next time when I see your revised version, hope that you added detailed explanation why “grasshoppers” is symbolizing curing treatment, etc. And it would be more interesting if you try to define what “full-recovery” is and what “medium-recovery” is. For instance, the latter can be defined as ‘remembering’ the war memories, but try to remember less..? I’m not sure. But well, you will be able to make better definition than mine lol Good job!

Sol Kim: Nice view about “total recovery” because it seems to make sense throughout the whole story. I partly agree with your example, and I don’t think the story was surprising or something unlike Hemingway because the failure Nick kept experiencing was also part of the world that worked against him. But Nick did not surrender; he caught grasshoppers and he caught two fish. Anyway, to say about your writing… I could see you were running out of time because there was a big lack of explanation. What is the “full recovery”? Why did you like the ending still? What does it mean to be “manly”? Nice work, still, because I liked your point. You just need to focus on that point more and elaborate, I think.