Hemingway Seminar, Week Two

Lux: Fishing. The body of the water is like the Freudian psyche. All these references to fish is a way for Hemingway to show him struggling with the dark thoughts/fears/struggles that he has stored inside him.

Connection to Bass in Indian Camp—the big fish in Big 2 Hearted is a return to the monster(s) beneath the surface. Some live in deep water (big stuff), some are under the surface and easier to catch/handle/filet, etc.

Schneider: “he felt all the old feeling. He was happy.”
--reeling in Big fish is like restoring his connection to a healthy state of mind; losing it is losing the place he’s trying to get back to . That’s why he feels sick and has to sit down.

Potter: Regarding “Now I Lay Me,” no mention of actual fish as in Big 2 Hearted—only of rivers and streams and bait. There, it’s the idea of fishing that confronts him. He’s trying to regain the manliness stripped away from him by the war.

Nahlik: Even in his attempt to escape the problems of his life by heading out to nature in Big 2 Heart, the problems still find him in the form of the burnt landscape, the fish that leaves him feels nauseated, ??

Quinlan: Big 2 Hearted River is a comic ending to the series of stories. The burnt town of Seney is a hopeful sign; the ashes of the town and of the landscape will fertilize a new growth, a second growth; nature will return (“it can’t all be burnt”). This is like Nick; will all his scars and burned out mind, he can return to a state of happiness. When he says, “there are plenty of days to fish the swamp,” he’s acknowledging a willingness to continue to face that which he has ignored as a child/young man. He just will take them in good time.

How old is he here? At what point in his life is he at river?

Hogrebe: Like “End of Something,” his environment—the setting or landscape in which he moves—is a metaphor for his interior landscape, his psyche. As he’s about to sleep there’s a mosquito that comes—another disturbance to bring pain and violence, to feed off of him. Here he burns it. And then has the ability to sleep, something he couldn’t do in the war (“Now I Lay Me”). He’s finding peace amidst the burned out world.

The longest story about “nothing.”
Who else thought comic ending? (question goes nowhere)

Dziedzic: yes, it’s comic because he was obsessed with death in earlier stories (“Lay Me”) but not escapes the confines.

Childs: he still has a battle in front of him.

Schmitt: interested in the references to hot and cold in Big 2 Heart. What he thought his life would be is gone; fishing has been the only certainty, the only steadfast joy. Note his “very heavy pack” he carries. This pack represents the burdens he carries—his experience of war, loss, death. When he makes it to the river after all the toil, he walks through “cool dew.” When fishing later, when he finally gets ahold of the big one, he feels that shock of the cold water (which comes all the way up to his man parts). Later, he catches a few smaller fish. Not going to the swamp and knowing he can go later, he acknowledges that he knows this will be a long process; his recovery will be gradual.

Kainz: Ok, imagine that the characters are trout and the war is the dry hand. Which character gets picked up with the dry hand and “fungassed”

Berger: Major?
Lux: the kid with the scarf on his nose?
Del Taco: Krebs
Childs: yeah, Krebs.

Hey, this is all marvelous so far. Good job.

Did anyone write about Krebs?

Hagerty: Me. In the war, one guy brags about the girls he has had. He carries back a misunderstanding of love as something you “get” instead of something you “return.” His notion of love is broken, leaving him unable even to admit that he loves his mother. He wants a girl, but he doesn’t want any consequences, anything complex. Love, by nature, though is complex (at least two-sided).

Kainz: So what is it about war that has done this to him?

Burgraff: I compared their opinion of women to death. “He could not get along without girls . . . he had to have them.” Another fellow says “he never thought of them . . . they could not touch him.” This seems like a stretch to relate this to death, but then Krebs says of love, “eventually it will come to you.” Soldiers views of women in Hemingway’s stories mirror their view of death.

Schmidt: Insides. Two extremes. All the fish know is water, which surrounds them all the time. The fish even have water inside them. With Jack, he doesn’t have any water—can’t sweat—but he can still live (as opposed to the dead fish in water?). This fish has only what sustains it but with no depth; Jack has nothing to
It’s foolish to live ONLY with what sustains us (water), with no death. But it’s also foolish to live without worry/fear (things that don’t sustain us).

Berger: After the fight, “Jack stands up and sweat comes out all over his face.” Here, because of the boxing, the struggle to fight for a happy life for himself and his family, he can’t sweat—can’t sustain himself. Now that that contest is over, he can live normally, release himself from the things he worries about when he should be sleeping.


Kainz : let’s compare these boxers: Jack, Ole Andreson, Ad Francis

What would you say Jack’s motto might be?
Ole?
Ad?

Which is healthiest?