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[prickvixen]

I read Ernest Hemingway's "Big Two-Hearted River." The last I read of Hemingway was A Farewell to Arms in high school. I think. Maybe I just heard the title somewhere. If I read it, I don't remember any of it

Comments

[mauvemaestra]

My father calls him Ernest Hem-and-Haw, which predisposes me against him, perhaps needlessly.

Your reading of the grasshopper thing sounds as correct as anything. No interpretation is incorrect if you can support it from the text. <3

[prickvixen]

I also mentally modified the initial metaphor. In the story, this rail town and the surrounding area have burned in a fire. The only grasshoppers still living on the patch of burned land are black; they are meant to represent the men who have been damaged by their involvement in the war. However... in real life, the grasshoppers would not have been burned black. The black ones would have survived because only they have camouflage against the charred ground. All the other kinds of grasshoppers would stand out and be easily picked off by their predators, in the same way moths in polluted industrial areas turned from gray to black. With that understanding, do the black grasshoppers imply that only a certain kind of person can survive the desperate conditions of warfare? (I don't think Hemingway was that much of a dork. n.n