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Article: War, gender, and Ernest Hemingway.(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- The Hemingway Review
- Article date:
- September 22, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Ernest Hemingway Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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So much childbirth in Hemingway's stories. Especially in his war stories.
--Susan Griffin, A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War
ERNEST HEMINGWAY'S "Big Two-Hearted River" remains perhaps the most famous piece of fiction about war with no mention of the war in it. The absence of war is exactly the point of the story, as Nick Adams, a recently returned veteran of the Great War, attempts to forget the war, to recover his prewar adolescent self by engaging in his favorite prewar adolescent activity, fishing. Yet the very language of the story reveals Nick's soldierly sell and betrays his attempt to escape that self:
Nick went over to the pack ...