In Ernest Hemingway's "Fathers and Sons," a part of the
Nick Adams series about a young man's coming of age, Nick drives through a small town
rather than take a detour. His son sleeps on the front seat beside him as Nick heads to
a town where they will stay for the night. As he drives on this trip to shoot quail,
Nick is reminded of his father, who taught him to shoot and imbued him with a passion
for hunting, a passion for which he is grateful to his father. As he continues to drive
through the town, Nick remembers that his father
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was very nervous. Then, too, he was
sentimental, and, like most sentimental people, he was both cruel and abused. Also, he
had much bad luck, and it was not all of it his own. He had died in a trap that he had
helped only a little to set, and they had all betrayed him in their various way before
he died. All sentimental people are betrayed so many
times.
It would seem that
while Nick's father had a very sensitive soul, he only exhibited certain of his passions
to Nick, such as the passion to hunt. Nick's memories are of things that "had gone
badly," and this part is not "good remembering." So, he decides that he will rid himself
of these memories by writing them down. These reflections of Nick's interior monologue
lead him to remember his native American friends, Billy and
Trudy:
It
wasn't how they ended. That all ended the same. Long time ago. Now no
good.
Nick realizes that
death finds everyone. But, if one lived a genuine life, uncompromising in principle,
then he was a man. So, when his boy awakens and asks about Nick's father, Nick tells
him,
He's hard
to describe. He was a great hunter and fisherman and he had wonderful eyes....He was
always very disappointed in the way I
shot."
Apparently, Nick was
not close to his father, and did not know all his inner thoughts. But, Nick's father is
the Hemingway Hero, one who has struggled against nature and faced his fate--"The face
had been making itself and being made for a long time--dying like a man: "It was a good
story." Nick respected his father, for when his boy asks about visiting the tomb of his
grandfather, Nick replies respectfully for the relationship of fathers and
sons,
"We'll have to go....I can see we'll have to
go."
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