<P> Adair views the river setting as a fictional representation of the Piave River near Fossalta, the site of Hemingway's mortar wound . Hemingway may have taken the idea of the swamp from the terrain in the battle of Portogrande--a battle that Hemingway wrote about in a 1922 newspaper story, saying of it: "Austrians and Italians attacked and counter-attacked waist deep in swamp water". Furthermore, Adair suggests that Hemingway's own wounding is reflected in the scene where Nick loses a fish--the "biggest one I ever had"--with descriptive imagery such as shoes "squelchy" with water, suggestive of Hemingway's recollection of "feeling as if his boots were filled with warm water (blood) after his wounding ." </P> <P> Writing in A Moveable Feast, Hemingway remembered "Big Two - Hearted River", recalling when he "sat in a corner with the afternoon light coming in over my shoulder and wrote in the notebook...When I stopped writing I did not want to leave the river where I could see the trout in the pool, its surface pushing and swelling smooth against the resistance of the log - driven piles of the bridge . The story was about coming back from the war but there was no mention of the war in it ." </P> <P> Hemingway's stories typically position nature as a source of refuge and rebirth . His characters are often shown retreating to the country in search of regeneration . Nature acts as the setting for hunters' or fishermen's existential moment of transcendence--especially at the moment when prey is killed . In Big Two - Hearted River, Nick walks away from a ruined town, and enters the woods to hike toward the river, unharmed by the fire . His journey is motivated by absolution; the river is described as two - hearted because it gives life in the form of food (fish) and offers redemption . In the woods, Nick stops in a grove of trees that is described as chapel - like, a description that echoes Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage in which Henry Fleming flees to a chapel - like grove of trees . In the grove Nick sleeps well for the first time since the war, and there he begins the healing process . The next morning he goes to the river, wading into the water to fish . At first the strength of the current frightens him, and for some moments he has difficulty controlling himself . </P> <P>--Ernest Hemingway, "Big Two - Hearted River" </P>

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