We've got your back. With the Tough-O-Meter, you'll know whether to bring extra layers or Swiss army knives as you summit the literary mountain. (10 = Toughest)
(4) Base Camp
You won’t have any trouble reading “Big Two-Hearted River”—in fact, you’ll probably power through it pretty quickly—but you might get to the end of it and find yourself scratching your head. Was that really just a story about a guy fishing? No, dear reader, no it was not.
Don’t let the language fool you on this one. Though Hemingway makes good and sure not to use any fancy-shmancy big words, this story runs deep, and the real challenge lies in knowing what to interpret, and how. For instance, at one point in the story Nick hangs up his pack on a tree so that it’s off the ground. Hemingway goes into great detail about picking out a nail and hammering it in with the flat of an ax.
Is Hemingway giving us a crash course on camping? Nope: the language of the story is telling us how thorough and deliberate Nick is about everything. Other signs tell us that there is something a little wrong with Nick—things like the sight of fish suddenly making him anxious—and we’re supposed to extrapolate from these little observations what exactly is going on.
Hemingway does not waste any action; this is a story that’ll make you pay attention.