"Two-Hearted River" & "Almos' a man"

Hemingway’s “Two-Hearted River” and Wright’s “Almos’ a man” were very detailed stories, while I was reading them I felt I was there. Hemingway’s way to describe what can be a simple fishing trip was phenomenal! I loved it, he made me feel every detail in the story and I really felt I was next to Nick living and seeing what his eyes were witnessing. It’s almost as if Hemingway is recommending the reader to get in touch with nature, to get away and connect with earth and all the beautiful scenarios and experiences it has to offer. On page 981 he says: “…the day was hot but Nick felt happy. He felt he had left everything behind, the need for thinking, the need to write, other needs. It was all back of him.” Nick needed to reconnect with him and what better way to do it then going fishing. His amazement when he catches a big trout was so finely written by Hemingway.

Dave Sanders is quite a unique character, he’s so innocent but at the same time he feels like he needs to prove the world what kind of a man he is! A man brave enough to shoot a gun! While I was reading the story it reminded me of the first time I shot a gun, the combination of fear, excitement and adrenaline are something out of this world. This feeling is released when you pull the trigger and BOOM! It’s incredible how a gun can give you such sense of power and security. I felt sorry for the kid, if I was his mom I wouldn’t have trusted in his word. If his dad wanted a gun he would have bought one long time ago, that was such a lame excuse. The accident with Jenny left Dave as a fool in front of the people and I love how Wright ends the story with the lines: “Ahead the long rails were glinting in moonlight, the stretching away, away to somewhere, somewhere where he could be a man…” I took it as he could no longer prove the people of his town that he was “man” because he made a fool of himself with the mule incident.