In the attempt to get at the "truth" of real-life experience and to attain the ideal of writing a "classic" that he initially posed for himself, Hemingway began in his early volumes of short stories to describe the adventures of a boy on the threshold of manhood. As Philip Young and Carlos Baker have pointed out in their studies, half of the stories of In Our Time (1925), the first short story collection, are devoted to the development of Nick Adams. They are arranged chronologically, moving from Nick's boyhood to his young manhood, and all of these stories are thematically related. Several more stories about the same character appear in the next two collections, Men Without Women (1927) and Winner Take Nothing (1933). Of importance to the whole of Hemingway's fiction is this early focus on a young hero, for if Philip Young is correct, this hero is to become the prototype "Hemingway Hero" who later will have essentially the same background that Nick has had through his childhood, adolescence, and young manhood. More important than a mere similarity of background in the successive protagonists is the resemblance they bear to each other psychologically. All experience the same needs in meeting the struggle and frustration of twentieth-century man, and even of all men of all times. Some become involved in war, suffer wounds, and are forced to reconcile the psychological disturbances created by these hurts. Others are forced to come to terms with the reality of the traumata created by the pressures of a hostile environment. (pp. 13-14)

In his fiction Hemingway examines the effect upon the inner being of the traumata that modern man has experienced in the world. This attempt to get beyond surface manifestations and deal with more basic, primal contexts led Hemingway to apply certain distinct, psychologically symbolic techniques in his fiction. When these work for him, the entire tone and texture of his prose comes to a close approximation of the "classic" he always tried to write.

At the outset, Hemingway gives Nick Adams and the other protagonists a responsive sensibility. This technique is not a simple device of characterization intended solely to illuminate the character's inner feelings. More expansive, it parallels the questioning attitude that heroes have exhibited in literature since Homer shaped the epic form. Homer forged into two epic works the whole of Greek thought and culture. Just as his heroes in their victories and defeats represented the needs and drives and experiences of that culture, so Hemingway has for the twentieth century attempted to expand the significance of the experiences of his protagonists into a range far exceeding local and subjective considerations of ordinary fictional conflict. In short, he has tried to write "classics" by capturing the tone and tensions of his own culture.

As his organizing principle, Hemingway chose to depict a series of heroes who become progressively older and experience both literally and psychologically what all men of the twentieth century have experienced over a period of almost fifty years. When these heroes seem unusually introspective and the themes seem too narrow and local, Hemingway may have failed as a craftsman, but he has not lost sight of his ideals. Even in those works where he has been criticized most for organizational failures, one step further in his overall plan has been developed. This plan to view man's relationship to his culture, to the other men in that culture, and ultimately to the cosmos, he carefully develops throughout his short stories. An investigation of this pattern in them reveals the substance of an underlying organization which is the core of his artistry.

In the short stories focusing on Nick Adams and in the other short stories of the three collections, inner attitudes are externalized by means of symbolic reflection. These symbolizations manifest themselves in a variety of conventional ways, but they also appear in unique and quite unexpected combinations. Sometimes characters represent particular attitudes, or episodes point up conflicts, or a sequence of images is repeated a sufficient number of times to create symbolic formations; many times there is a major, controlling symbol from which all of the details take their meaning. One of the most important symbolizations takes the form of a ritualization of a familiar activity, thereby objectifying the intense struggle of the characters in their attempt to find a solution to their inner turmoil. In this way Hemingway maintains a studied control over his material, and this careful control forms a contrast to the content. Ordered artistry is always juxtaposed to the chaos in which most of the central characters find themselves.

In the development of Nick Adams as the leading protagonist in the early short stories, Hemingway utilizes one of his most significant symbolic devices to project his themes. This is the journey artifice. In one sense, all of Hemingway's works employ some aspect of this motif. (pp. 14-16)

[At] least two broad areas of interpretation and movement in all works of art may be recognized: the surface level, or outward movement, with the literal development of plot; and the psychological level, or inner movement, incorporating imagery and symbol as the primary means of expression. In Hemingway's works the employment of the journey artifice provides an outstanding example of these two movements. In his use of the artifice one can discern the employment of a surface narrative technique as his simple, mechanical method of furthering plot development, but one can just as surely discover that the content of his novels and stories, the more meaningful revelation, is far below the surface and lies in the realm of symbolic allusion. In part, the high artistry of Hemingway's fiction is derived from his ability to utilize these levels of meaning in such a way as to fuse the content of a work with its form. (p. 21)

When Hemingway gave the hero of so many of his early stories the name of "Nick Adams," he was doing more than designating a simple appellation to stand for a character. Rather, he intentionally used a symbolic name as a conscious device to illustrate what the character himself would reveal throughout every story in which he appeared. (p. 25)

The surname is particularly appropriate inasmuch as Nick Adams is in a very real sense a second Adam. He is not in any literal sense the progenitor of a whole race, but he does typify a whole race of contemporary men who have encountered irrational elements in their environment and have been forced to deal with them. In the stories in which Nick is depicted as a young boy, he is the innocent, akin to the first Adam before the Fall. But as in the biblical story, the state of innocence is short-lived, and the serpent here too enters the "garden." In this case, however, the entry is not a blatant caricature of the forces of evil; it is the subtle growing of awareness of the incalculable events that disturb the natural order of things, of the caprice in that disturbance, and, what is more important, it is a growing of awareness of the irrational forces that operate within the self.

Hemingway directly reinforces the implications of the name "Adam" as incorporating the forces of evil and the chthonic by giving his hero a first name that might easily be associated with "Old Nick" or Satan, the archetype of evil. Having thus named his character, Hemingway in one stroke characterizes the inherited tendencies of all men. The tension created by the implications of the association of these names is in itself archetypal in its suggestion of the eternal struggle between the forces of good and evil. But the hero in the Hemingway stories encounters evil in many guises, and it goes by many names, be it a wound—literal or psychological—terror in the night, death, or anything else. Always, however, evil is inescapable and unpredictable. In many ways what the Hemingway hero must learn throughout the stories is the nature of evil, and the tension created by the struggle of opposing forces within himself provides the underlying dynamics for the learning process.

Experience itself may be one of the guises of contingent evil. Just as surely as eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge precipitated Adam's fall, so for the innocent the initial encounter with elements foreign to the womb-like existence of home and mother is the first stage of a long and dangerous journey. To the individual involved, retreat from the implications of this first encounter might seem possible, but once exposed, his own nature automatically commits him to the entire journey. If he denies the validity of the commitment, he merely postpones the inevitable or damns himself eternally to the regions of infantile fantasy.

In the short story "Indian Camp," the first of the "Nick" stories of In Our Time, Hemingway illustrates the compelling tendency to revert to the state of naïve innocence once the first contact with forces outside the protected environment has been made. Nick as a young boy accompanies his father, a doctor, to an Indian village where an Indian woman is to have a baby…. Certain revelations concerning the doctor's character emerge because of the method of delivery, for he has failed to bring along the proper equipment. The operation must be performed with a jack-knife and without benefit of an anesthetic. As a result of the woman's screams during the operation, her husband, who has been lying all the while in the overhead bunk with a severe ax wound, commits suicide by cutting his own throat.

Although the surface plot is of some consequence in itself, the major focus of the story is Nick's reaction to these events. This emphasis clarifies in light of the initiatory motif around which the story is constructed, and a seemingly slight interlude with a bizarre ending is revealed as having more than situational import. In this story Hemingway establishes a controlling symbol, the Indian camp itself. As in other stories, the camp is suggestive of the primitive and dark side of life. It is a manifestation of the intrusive and irrational elements that impose upon the secure and rational faculties where order and light prevail. For Nick, whose own home is across the lake, the night journey to the camp has all the possibilities of a learning experience. But he must be prepared to accept the knowledge it can give him. As it turns out, Nick is incapable of accepting the events he has witnessed, and the initial preview of the realities of the world is abortive. (pp. 26-8)

Nick's denial of the learning experience begins when he addresses his father as "Daddy" instead of "Dad," as he had at the beginning. But the most telling revelation of the abortive nature of the learning situation comes when he asks, "'Is dying hard, Daddy?'" Having witnessed the bizarre events at the camp, the question reflects his inability to grasp the significance of his exposure to pain and death….

Nick's refusal to accept the terrors of pain and death and the father's inability to cope with them are revealed in an ironic light in the conclusion: "In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he [Nick] felt quite sure that he would never die."… But Nick has been exposed to some of the primal terrors of human experience, and his "feeling" is depicted as illusory and child-like because it is a romantic reaction to the experience he has undergone. (p. 32)

[The] early stories preface to a considerable extent many of the activities in which the hero of the later ones will engage. Whether he is in the guise of Nick Adams—the new Adam—or under some other apellation, the hero must learn to adjust to contingencies, reconcile himself to them, and eventually create for himself a new moral center in harmony with his own innermost drives…. [The] tremendous task of self-discovery requires the loss of all former attachments that indicate infantile dependence. As the hero divests himself of all former ideals, the creation of a new self must follow. (p. 39)

In "Indian Camp" and in "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife," Nick is depicted as a young boy on the threshold of adolescence. His actions and responses are unemotive and child-like…. This is typical of the young innocent about to begin the greater journey, but that journey is one that requires a positive commitment to an essentially moral purpose.

In the third story of the Nick sequence the title serves as a rubric to the surface plot as well as to the underlying psychological level of the story. "The End of Something" as a title indicates that this is to be a story of termination; it also poses a question as to the nature of the "Something."

The plot concerns Nick and a girl friend, Marjorie, and relates the events of a night fishing trip the two have taken. Nick has apparently planned in advance that this is to be the finale of their romantic interlude, for after preparing for the night's fishing and making the camp he tells Marjorie that "it isn't fun anymore."… The story closes with a touch of irony, for Nick is unhappy with the outcome of the episode. (p. 40)

In the final portion of this story a definite progression has been accomplished in the development of Nick Adams from child to adolescent, for with the exhibition of his inner feelings he has at the same time revealed his sensibility. No longer is he girded in the armor of protective infantile illusion and detachment; he takes a positive course of action, and he alone must bear the brunt of its consequences. The "Something" that has come to an end is his belief in the efficacy of romantic illusion. (p. 41)

"The Three-Day Blow" is the fourth in the sequence, and it expands the characterization of Nick. In this story Hemingway depicts a boastful, adolescent central character. His actions and attitudes, however, re-enforce the importance of the initiation into life encountered in "Indian Camp," the destruction of the father figure in "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife," and the insight gained into the cycle of existence in "The End of Something." The story may be said to be a story of recapitulation.

The subject matter directly complements "The End of Something." The events take place not long after those depicted in the earlier story and illustrate Nick's reactions. Essentially an adjustment story, it relates Nick's coming to Bill's cabin and talking of baseball, literature, and his affair with Marjorie. At the conclusion, having first decided to get drunk, then having decided not to get drunk, they go out to find Bill's father and to hunt. The surface line of action is obviously scant, but that is of little significance. What is important is the revelation of Nick's attitudes toward his experiences and toward life in general.

At the psychological level something quite different is expressed from what at first glance seems obvious at the literal level. Nick here engages in a fantasy of infantile regression and escape within that regression. This tendency is not unusual in any journey toward discovery of the self; for the implications of experience with the forces beyond the control of the individual are terrifying. No one would choose to destroy himself—an act which is what the discovery of the self implies—unless under the severest provocation. Thus it is that all heroes who set out on this journey have at some point faltered on the way. Nick Adams is no exception. (pp. 44-5)

[At] the end of the story he is poised at the peak of his infantile optimism: "None of it was important now. The wind blew it out of his head. Still he could always go into town Saturday night. It was a good thing to have in reserve."…

Hemingway apparently was keenly aware of and much interested in the inability of youth to accept the reality of a given situation. In all of these early stories, even though an external narrator relates the events, it is the youthful Nick's sensibility that is always the central focus…. The hero's exposure to the variety of forces which operate in the world and over which he has no control point to Hemingway's concern with the relationship of all men to an external world not of their making. The fact that many of the stories are complementary to each other, as in the Nick sequence, illustrates not so much Hemingway's concern with one generic hero as his intense desire to explore the various psychological implications of the first, almost primal experiences with life. (p. 49)

[Both] war and bullfighting have always been recognized as the major metaphorical bases for much of Hemingway's fiction. Since both emphasize the importance of adjustment to death, this common denominator provides a view of the interworkings of Hemingway's artistry when it concerns itself with either bullfighting or war.

Philip Young, in his full-length study, attaches a personal significance to Hemingway's concern with the death theme. Young suggests in Freudian terms that Hemingway suffered from a traumatic neurosis incurred by a severe wound in the First World War. As a means of adjusting to the neurosis. Hemingway acts under a "repetition-compulsion," which is the need to repeat an experience over and over. Hemingway's fiction, Young suggests, may be like Freud's war patients' dreams, in which the dreamers obeyed the repetition-compulsion, contrary to Freud's own notion of wish-fulfillment and the pleasure principle. (pp. 102-03)

In another and more recent full-length study, John Killinger, though repeating Carlos Baker and Philip Young on Hemingway's concern with death, refers to the Hemingway hero as one who has the existentialist pose. (p. 103)

These and other commentaries indicate the importance of Hemingway's concern with death and violence. Whether his hero emerges with a healthy or sick mind, or whether he reflects an extreme individualism, can be judged only by examining the particular story in which he appears. What seems certain, however, is that Hemingway chose to focus upon these motifs as part of his attempt to explore the reactions of man under the pressures of the extreme in psychological and physical environment. (p. 104)

In the two stories entitled "Now I Lay Me" and "A Way You'll Never Be," Hemingway treats a young protagonist in the war. In the first the narrative identifies the character as "Nick," presumably Nick Adams. In the second he is identified as "Nick Adams," and most commentators consider that the same person is meant. (pp. 104-05)

In a somewhat different manner than in "Now I Lay Me," Hemingway in "A Way You'll Never Be" treats the compulsive tendencies of an obviously "sick" hero. Although the two stories employ as protagonists characters who have been wounded in war and suffer deep underlying traumata, and although both "dream" while awake, the major similarity exists in Hemingway's treatment of the motif of adjustment to death and the ramifications of that theme. The whole of the dramatic action in "Now I Lay Me" takes place while the central character lies in his bed afraid of losing his soul in sleep, and the ensuing account is one of a waking-dream state. In "A Way You'll Never Be" the dramatic action follows a literal journey through a land that is suggestive of the trauma the protagonist has suffered. What is more, the narrative method differs in that "Now I Lay Me" is told in the first person, with the narrator relating in a self-analytic fashion his journey through certain major life experiences; in the other, "A Way You'll Never Be," the point of view is a central intelligence which objectifies the experience in the description of external realities away from the "sick" mind of the hero. This use of point of view is extremely important to the thematic emphasis of the story, for the tale is of an individual who is poised on the borderline of sanity and insanity, reality and unreality, and, ultimately, life and death. The point of view thus supports the central emphasis of the story by depicting both the inner thoughts of the character and the real world about him.

The framework of the conflict evolves from Hemingway's execution of the form of the story and his employment of at least the surface outline of the conventional journey motif. When Nick Adams is introduced at the beginning of the story, he arrives upon a scene of death and desolation caused by the war. The central intelligence describes in a matter-of-fact fashion the horrors depicted in the aftermath of a battle scene. The long descriptions and the cataloguing of the dead soldiers' paraphernalia is similar to the extended portrait of a battlefield in "A Natural History of the Dead," but here the scene serves to establish an important detail of setting which becomes the substructure of the whole story. The world to which Nick Adams has returned is the world of the dead. What follows the initial description of the land of the dead is a picture of a reality that is just as grotesque as this initial scene.

The central focus of the plot concerns Nick's visit to a battalion encamped along the bank of a river. The commander is an old acquaintance with whom Nick has endured many bitterly difficult war experiences. Nick has apparently just been released from a hospital after suffering a head-wound which has left him, as he puts it, "nutty." (pp. 114-16)

As he becomes further involved in the action, it becomes evident that this is a journey of return for him. The places he passes, the landmarks he observes, and the meeting with his former soldier-comrade are all part of a world Nick has formerly been a part of in an intimate fashion. That he no longer belongs is apparent for many reasons, and his friend, Para, directly tells him to go back. In his response. Nick reveals his need to re-establish contact with the familiar in order to regain his former identity. (p. 116)

Nick's periods of mental disorientation alternate with periods of complete rationality. When he has less lucid moments the innerworkings of his mind and his need to reconcile past trauma become evident, for his lapses function as an unconscious desire to create order out of his chaotic experiences….

["A Way You'll Never Be"] is directly associated with Nick's need to reconcile the hurts suffered in his war experiences with his personal plight in the present. Hemingway graphically illustrates the extent to which the character has approached complete and final disorientation by the use of a triadic image [of a house, a stable, and a river in a dream]…. (p. 117)

Nick's journey back into the recesses of his mind as a result of wounds suffered in the war is directed toward a clarification of the processes of life and death and the role the individual must play. In many ways he is a kind of Lazarus who has returned. What marks him as different from the biblical character is that in his journey Nick has lost rather than gained reconciliation. Death, insanity, and complete dissociation are still close at hand, as evidenced in his "dream" of the house, stable, and canal. Both house and stable are given a yellow color in the shifting emphasis of the repeated image, and the river runs "stiller" and "wider," depending upon how close he is to a state of utter detachment from reality. These are comforting and alluring manifestations of the death state conjured up by Nick's unconscious, and they suggest the pull toward total irrationality. For him they are directly ambivalent in their connotations. He recognizes they are "what he needed," and still they frighten him. At one point they frighten him "especially when the boat lay there quietly in the willows on the canal."… This fear signals a very close proximity to total regression into the death-state, and the classical association with the river Styx and the boat provided for passage into the realm of death is evident.

Hemingway capsules the meaning of the images in a final dream sequence when the one-for-one relationship of the trauma Nick has sublimated into the triadic image is revealed: "He shut his eyes, and in place of the man with the beard who looked at him over the sights of the rifle, quite calmly before squeezing off, the white flash and the clublike impact, on his knees, hot-sweet choking, coughing it onto the rock while they went past him, he saw a long, yellow house with a low stable and the river much wider than it was and stiller."… The direct identification of the recurring image with death as the result of a particular wound brings the thematic emphasis of the story into direct focus. Having made the journey of return to the scenes of his initial trauma, Nick can now make the association demanded by the dreams. Thus fortified, he is equipped to leave this symbolic realm of death and return to other pursuits…. He has no function or purpose there any longer, for, literally, it is "a way he'll never be" again. He has reconciled himself to the knowledge of death, and any further return would be a useless repetition. He directly states his own positive step toward reconcilement to the Captain before he leaves: "'You don't need to worry,' Nick said. 'I'm all right now for quite a while. I had one then but it was easy. They're getting much better. I can tell when I'm going to have one because I talk so much'."… (pp. 118-20)

As Nick goes back, the central intelligence projects his thoughts, and all the images are peaceful and pleasant. The canal image is again mentioned, but in this context the victory over the forces it represents is apparent: "In the afternoon the road would be shady once he had passed the canal."… It also becomes evident at the conclusion that this is a new Nick, in the sense that he not only has overcome the possibility of slipping completely into the realm of regressive insanity but also that he has progressed beyond the stage of romantic notions concerning war. Passing a certain road in his projection of the return trip, he recalls: "It was on that stretch that, marching, they had once passed the Terza Savoia cavalry regiment riding in the snow with their lances. The horses' breath made plumes in the cold air. No, that was somewhere else. Where was that? 'I'd better get to that damned bicycle' Nick said to himself. 'I don't want to lose the way to Fornaci'."… The emphatic rejection of the romantic in war concretely illustrates the change in Nick's personality. Although he still drifts from rationality, he does have control. He has essentially reconciled himself to his trauma by this return journey. (p. 120)

War suggests in all these stories a process of dehumanization. The mode of survival, the real hope for man, always emanates from within individuals, and the response to be valid must be individual. A man's "road of trials" which he must travel throughout life is thus symbolized by the war-metaphor. Whether or not the particular protagonist is cognizant of the implications of his own isolated situation always depends upon his own strength of character. Few men are able to restore or find their own humanity under such stress. Hemingway does not aim to reveal man's continual victory over the forces represented by war, and neither does he aim to show man's continual defeat. These stories are portraits of man as an individual in conflict with overwhelming forces, and the reactions are those of man as a human being, not as a romantic caricature. (pp. 136-37)