After reading the works of both Thoreau and Hemmingway, I
cannot help but to draw a comparison between excerpts from Hemmingway’s “Big
Two-Hearted River” and Thoreau’s “Walking.”
Hemmingway depicts the main character, Nick, as he sets forth on a journey
through nature after parting ways with the “burned-over” town of Seney, his
hometown. After a period of watching
trout in a stream, Nick “felt he had left everything behind, the need for
thinking, the need to write, other needs.
It was all back of him (164).” At
this point, Nick turns his back on the destructed town of Seney and recollects
himself to step onto an unknown path and set off on a fresh passage through
nature, one that cleanses his mind, body, and soul from the destruction he
recently witnessed.
This moment in “Big Two-Hearted River” significantly relates
to the moment in “Walking” wherein Thoreau describes the prime condition for a
walk: “We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of
undying adventure, never to return; prepared to send back our embalmed hearts
only, as relics to our desolate kingdoms… if you have paid your debts, and made
your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man; then you are ready
for a walk.” Nick will never return to
Seney, for the Seney he knew and loved no longer exists; it is a “desolate
kingdom”. At the stream, Nick, in
essence, becomes a “free man” in that he physically and mentally parts ways
with Seney. Now, Nick, according to
Thoreau, is finally “ready for a walk.”
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