Critical or Formal Approach - Essay Example

“Big Two Hearted River” by Ernest Hemingway Nature is in this account acts as a tool possessing immense healing power forall human beings. In the story, Nick who is the main character returns home from the WWI haunted by numerous traumatizing experiences and horrors of the war. Due to long exposure to active warfare, he suffers from shell shock and uses the forest as a way of healing and forgetting atrocities he witnessed while at the warfront. In this case, forest environment offers him both quietness and calmness he wants contrary to former traumatizing battlefields characterized by machine guns, bombs and tankers.

The phrase, “There was no town, nothing but the rails and the burned-over country “ symbolizes both burned and destroyed part of his life, which he longs to leave behind or forget (Becnel & Bloom 252). He hopes and searches for renewal in the rich, green and extremely fertile bank of the “Big Two-hearted River”. The trout of the river serve as both living and breathing symbols essential for his later recovery. As he tours through Seney, he realizes even the ground’s surface was also burned and remained covered with black soot.

This is a symbolic of the war’s atrocities and its devastating effect on Nick’s psychological well being, which has almost rendered him helpless searching for a lasting remedy in vain. Grasshoppers in the region had all turned black due to there continued living in the burned land, hence symbolizing traumatizing memories that resulted from the war, which still linger in his mind. Description of how he puts up the tent, for instance, art of preparing the ground by smoothing it, chopping of the stakes, pulling the tent taut and the hanging of the cheesecloth to repel mosquitoes, form an important part of his new life.

This is because they make him feel very happy knowing he is resuming his ordinary life. Therefore, he has achieved something positive, which is a “great place” as confirmed by the phrase, “He had made his camp. Nothing could touch him. It was a good place” (Ward, 75). Work Cited Becnel, Kim, and Harold Bloom, Bloom's How to Write About Ernest Hemingway, New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2009. Print. Ward, Joseph. American Silences: The Realism of James Agee, Walker Evans, and Edward Hopper, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2010. Print.