Essay/Term paper: Big two-hearted river: part ii

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Cliff Notes

Sudden, Unexpected Interjection "It is a tale told by an idiot,

full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." At one point in his

short story, "Big Two-Hearted River: Part II", Hemingway's

character Nick speaks in the first person. Why he adopts,

for one line only, the first person voice is an interesting

question, without an easy answer. Sherwood Anderson

does the same thing in the introduction to his work,

Winesburg, Ohio. The first piece, called "The Book of the

Grotesque", is told from the first person point of view. But

after this introduction, Anderson chooses not to allow the

first person to narrate the work. Anderson and Hemingway

both wrote collections of short stories told in the third

person, and the intrusion of the first person narrator in these

two pieces is unsettling. In both instances, though, the reader

is left with a much more absorbing story; one in which the

reader is, in fact, a main character. With the exception of

"My Old Man", which is entirely in the first person , and "On

the Quai at Smyrna", which is only possibly in the first

person, there is just one instance in In Our Time in which a

character speaks in the first person. It occurs in "Big

Two-Hearted River: Part II", an intensely personal story

which completely immerses the reader in the actions and

thoughts of Nick Adams. Hemingway's utilization of the

omniscient third person narrator allows the reader to

visualize all of Nick's actions and surroundings, which would

have been much more difficult to accomplish using first

person narration. Nick is seen setting up his camp in "Big

Two-Hearted River: Part I" in intimate detail, from choosing

the perfect place to set his tent to boiling a pot of coffee

before going to sleep. The story is completely written the in

third person and is full of images, sounds, and smells. In "Big

Two-Hearted River: Part II" Hemingway exactly describes

Nick's actions as he fishes for trout. Details of his fishing trip

are told so clearly that the reader is almost an active

participant in the expedition instead of someone reading a

story. He carefully and expertly finds grasshoppers for bait,

goes about breakfast and lunch-making, and sets off into the

cold river. By being both inside and outside Nick's thoughts,

the reader can sense precisely the drama that Hemingway

wishes to bring to trout fishing. Nick catches one trout and

throws it back to the river because it is too small. When he

hooks a second one, it is an emotional battle between man

and fish. Nick tries as hard as he can, but the fish snaps the

line and escapes. Then, as Nick thinks about the fate of the

trout which got away, Hemingway writes, "He felt like a

rock, too, before he started off. By God, he was a big one.

By God, he was the biggest one I ever heard of." This

sudden switch to first-person narration is startling to the

reader. Until this point Hemingway had solely used third

person narration, but he did it so well that the reader feels as

one with Nick. It is not definite whether this is Nick or

Hemingway speaking. It could easily be either of the two.

Hemingway doesn't include, "he thought," or, "he said to

himself," and so it is unclear. The result is the same

regardless. Using first person narration at this point serves to

make the story more alive, more personal. It jolts the reader

into realizing the humanity of Nick; he is no longer the object

of a story but a real person. If Nick is making so much stir

over it that he speaks directly to the reader, he must feel

passionately about it. Or if Hemingway is so moved by the

size of the trout that he exclaims at its size, I can only accept

that Nick also feels this excitement. The sudden intrusion of

the first person narrator makes the story more complete and

its only character more life-like. It also brings the reader into

the story as a listener. Sherwood Anderson's collection of

short stories, Winesburg, Ohio, also has a moment of first

person narration. The introductory story, "The Book of the

Grotesque", is written in first person. The story begins as a

third person narration, a tale about an old writer. Using a

third person narration, Anderson writes about an old man

and his episode with a carpenter. Then the old man goes to

bed and the reader learns his thoughts. In the middle of

describing what he is thinking, Anderson switches to first

person narration. Suddenly there is a narrator speaking

directly to the reader. The narrator says, "And then, of

course, he had known people, many people, known them in

a peculiarly intimate way that was different from the way in

which you and I know people." At this point the story

becomes more than just a static piece, for the reader is

somehow now in it. There is an ambiguity, however,

because the reader does not know if the narrator is

Anderson himself or another completely distinct character.

As when Hemingway used this ploy, the result is the same

regardless. The reader is no longer merely a reader, but has

unexpectedly been transformed into an active participant in

the book. Throughout the rest of "The Book of the

Grotesque", the narrator is speaking to the reader. Not only

that, but the narrator is telling the reader about a book which

was never published, but is almost surely the one the reader

is in fact reading. In case the reader should forget, there is

one other instance, several stories later, in which Anderson

adopts first person narration. In "Respectability" he writes, "I

go to fast." Like Hemingway would do years later,

Anderson was forcing the reader to become a part of the

story. The entire book is a dialogue between narrator and

reader. The effect is that the reader becomes even more

involved in the stories. Both of these works are unlike others

from the same time period which are told completely using

first person narration. Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography

of Alice B. Toklas and Anita Loos' Gentlemen Prefer

Blondes are both written wholly in the first person. But both

of these read like diaries, of which the reader is just that - a

reader. Neither one has a point at which the reader is so

definitely brought into the story consciously by the author.

By jumping abruptly into first person instead of using it all

along, Hemingway and Anderson more effectively do this.

Anderson's and Hemingway's sudden switches to first

person narration of course could not have been mere

mistakes, and their reasons may have been even more

convoluted than imaginable to late twentieth century readers.

What is left are two collections of short stories in which the

reader plays an actual role. The intrusion of first person

narration makes these stories come alive in a way that a third

person narration cannot, a tribute to the skill of both of these

authors.