Bill comments, "But he loses ball games'" (Hemingway 48). The idea that he may not be above board evokes the comment from Nick that "There's always more to it than we know about'" (Hemingway 48). The disappointment that both feel about this player indicates a kind of disillusionment with the game. Hemingway intentionally makes this suggestion based on the famous Black Sox scandal of 1919 when the World Series was thrown (Hurley). Americans so often believed in the power of baseball as something good and virtuous. The thought that baseball could be corrupted helps convey Nick's cynicism in this story (Hurley). Nick is a young man with a future and should be optimistic, but he has been tainted by something.
Baseball serves to illustrate the relationship between the men, but so do the novels that they discuss and evaluate. The conversation about books again shows the level of friendship between the men. However, like with baseball, it is not merely that. The content of the books they like and dislike are important in illustrating what Nick is feeling and thinking. He dismisses the book called The Ordeal of Richard Feverel without having read it. The book is about guiding youths away from the temptations of the flesh (Johnston 23). Other books such as The Dark Forest and the Forest Lovers that Nick declares "swell" have a certain romantic, knight in shining armor flavor to them (Johnston 23). As much as Nick would like to see himself as a gallant hero, he is working hard to be a tough modern man as indicated by his fascination with Fortitude, a novel about a young man who has to learn to be tough and ruthless in relationships (Johnston 23). It is this character that Nick tries to, but fails to resemble.
After alcohol and conversation have loosened the tongues of both young men, they turn to the subject of Nick's failed relationship with Marjorie. Bill repeats excessively how Nick is better off without this potential marriage. "Once a man's married he's absolutely *****ed,' Bill went on. 'He hasn't got anything more. Nothing. Not a damn thing. He's done for'" (Hemingway 56). Bill continues to beat the drum about the limitations that Nick would face if he continued...
Ernest Hemingway is considered by some as the greatest writer in American History, by those who do not consider him so, he is still considered one of the greatest American writers. While many have written articles and entire books on the subject of Hemingway, one need only read his books and short stories to understand the man. Hemingway's writings are a window into his soul and very often mirror happenings
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Hemingway If literary genius can be described as one person's ability to influence the thinking of others and to do it only with written words, then Ernest Miller Hemingway was certainly deserving of the title. With his direct, declarative and streamlined style of writing, a style he first learned while writing as a newspaper journalist, Hemingway observed the world around him and the people in it, and then wrote of his
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Wyche agrees with this notion, adding that the station's position "between two sets of rails, whose significance lies 'in their figurative implications' (Renner qtd in Wyche 34), and between two contrasting landscapes that symbolize the couple's options" (Wyche). One side of the tracks, the landscape gives the couple the scene of the hills and the valley and on the other side of the tracks trees and grain flourish on
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