How we cite our quotes: (Part.Paragraph)
Quote #1
He smoothed the uprooted earth. He did not want anything making lumps under the blankets. When he had the ground smooth, he spread his three blankets. One he folded double, next to the ground. The other two he spread on top. (I.24)
Wow, this description of laying out sleeping blankets is really a thrill a minute. Is the conflict that Nick didn’t bring his memory foam mattress? Well, try to imagine a character who chooses the first campable spot, throws down all of his gear in a pile, and unrolls his sleeping bag in whatever spot it happens to land on. We might think that a character like this is sloppy, or easygoing, or careless. Nick is not this character.
Quote #2
He had not been unhappy all day. This was different though. Now things were done. There had been this to do. Now it was done. It had been a hard trip. He had been very tired. That was done. He had made his camp. He was settled. Nothing could touch him. (I.26)
Dang, this is an awful lot of sentences just to convey the idea of things being done (notice how many times the word “done” appears). We mean, it’s great to check things off of your to-do list and all, but this is taking it a bit far. In fact, we’re supposed to notice how much Nick likes the fact that he has accomplished the tasks he set out to do. We suppose it’s the small victories that count.
Quote #3
He hung the pack up on the nail. All his supplies were in the pack. They were off the ground and sheltered now. (I.28)
It’s great that Nick is conscientious about protecting his stuff from raccoons, but more than that, Nick seems preoccupied with averting disasters. Now, some raccoons running off with a can of beans might not seem like a disaster to most people, but think about how Nick reacts later in the story when he loses the particularly large trout. He’s being super careful here, and it’s not just because he’s a good camper.
Quote #4
He could have made camp hours before if he had wanted to. There were plenty of good places to camp on the river. But this was good. (I.33)
“Good” is one of those words that your English teacher has probably called a dead word—i.e. it means nothing—that you should avoid. Well, Hemingway is not being a lazy writer here. “Good” in this case is supposed to evoke all of those bland ideas: satisfactory, decent, okay, it will do. Why would someone need to reassure themselves that their campsite was good? It would be one thing to say “It was the greatest campsite there ever was,” but why just mention that it’s good? And why mention it twice (in case you haven’t picked up on it, there are a fair number of repetitions like this one in this story)? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that things aren’t bad. But why would they be bad? He liked to open cans. (I.35) Don’t we all? No? Okay, we admit that this is a little weird. Opening a can is about as mechanical a gesture as there is. There’s not much that can go wrong opening a can—it’s literally in your hands—and it serves a definitive purpose (getting food). Actually, given what we know about Nick so far, a love of can-opening makes a lot of sense for this guy. It’s such a mundane thing to mention that it’s pretty much begging us to read into it.
Quote #5
His mind was starting to work. He knew he could choke it because he was tired enough. (I.37)
“Uh-oh, there goes my mind again. It tries to think sometimes. Just one second, I’ll stop it.” Usually thinking is not considered to be so bad a thing. Why is Nick so worried about his mind working? Is he afraid of thinking about something? Let’s take a look at the line that comes immediately before this one: “It made a good ending to the story.” Remember, he’s talking about his old friend Hopkins here. An ending to the story implies that there will be no more of Hopkins; basically, the implication is that Hopkins is dead. And it’s the reminder that Hopkins is dead (presumably in the war) that makes Nick want to turn off his mind before it starts to think about it.
Quote #6
Nick did not care about fishing that hole. He was sure he would get hooked in the branches. (II.48)
Remember, Nick is a control freak. But he can’t control everything. So instead, he avoids things that he can’t control, like this fishing hole. Think of the imagery of bushes and branches and lots of things to get caught in versus the imagery of Nick’s camp.
Quote #7
Nick did not want to go in there now. He felt a reaction against deep wading with the water deepening up under his armpits, to hook big trout in places impossible to land them. In the swamp the banks were bare, the big cedars came together overhead, the sun did not come through, except in patches; in the fast deep water, in the half light, the fishing would be tragic. In the swamp fishing was a tragic adventure. Nick did not want it. He did not want to go down stream any further today. (II.60)
This passage begins and ends with “Nick did not want [it].” That’s quite a bit of emphasis if this is just any old swamp that’s bad for fishing. Also, the fact that Nick calls the place “tragic” is a pretty strong word to describe a swamp. There is something serious about this swamp for Nick, something that worries him. It’s like a magnified version of the fishing hole from the previous passage, but Nick also has a harder time trying to ignore its existence.