Hemingway's books may seem to lack entirely that most primary group to which every individual belongs, at least initially, the family.

However, with the posthumous publication of Islands in the Stream and The Nick Adams Stories, the importance of the family to Hemingway becomes increasingly clear. In Islands in the Stream, Thomas Hudson's loss of his sons in part causes his final deep despair. Placing the Nick Adams stories in chronological sequence, as the recent volume does, also highlights how so many of them deal, at least obliquely, with Nick's relationship with and attitude toward family and marriage.

As a child Nick is never closely tied to anyone for a long period of time. In the previously published stories, we see at best an ambivalent picture of Dr. Adams in "Indian Camp," although the newly published fragment, "Three Shots," emphasizes Dr. Adams' sympathy for Nick's fear of the woods. Other stories, especially "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife" and "Ten Indians," suggest the inadequacy of both Nick's parents, particularly when one compares the coldness and constraint of the relationship between Nick and his father in the latter story to the warm, relaxed atmosphere surrounding the Garners, a true family unit. It is surely no accident that, in the stories of Nick's childhood, Hemingway never presents father, mother, and son all together at one time.

The inclusion in the posthumous volume of "The Last Good Country" is particularly relevant to the family theme. Certainly the most important addition in this story is Nick's sister, who plays a central role. With their father absent and mother untrustworthy, Littless and Nick "loved each other and they did not love the others. They always thought of everyone else in the family as the others." The type of family life they have experienced is suggested by Littless' comment, "'I'll go back whenever you tell me to. But I won't have fights. Haven't we seen enough fights in families'."… The close brother-sister relationship, despite the disparity in their ages, is extremely important to both of them, for in effect they constitute a family of two who must be self-sufficient. His sister's presence prevents the loneliness Nick fears if he is forced to flee by himself, and he is very solicitous of her welfare throughout. The hint of something unnatural in their relationship is a striking and unsettling element. Nick thinks: "He loved his sister very much and she loved him too much. But, he thought, I guess those things straighten out. At least I hope so."… This uneasiness is augmented by their fear of being caught, but in contrast to their apprehension is the sincere love and devotion they feel for one another. In the light of the strikingly inadequate family experiences Nick has had heretofore, this brother-sister relationship demonstrates the potential support close family relationships can provide.

The stories of Nick's maturity shift in emphasis to his attitude toward marriage and possible voluntary association in a family unit he can himself originate. Leslie Fiedler feels Hemingway treats the whole idea of marriage unfavorably: "In Hemingway the rejection of the sentimental happy ending of marriage involves the acceptance of the sentimental happy beginning of innocent and inconsequential sex, camouflages the rejection of maturity and of fatherhood itself" [see CLC, Vol. 1]. Some of the Nick Adams stories appear to reject marriage and fatherhood, especially "Now I Lay Me," "In Another Country" and "Cross-Country Snow." But Fiedler errs in identifying Nick's opinions with Hemingway's. In particular the additional material in this volume and the chronological ordering of all the stories suggest that Nick's attitude is not constant but changes in the course of his career. Thus Nick's determination not to marry in "Now I Lay Me" can be seen as his extreme reaction to the tension in his parents' relationship. In the same light the major's extreme stance against marriage in "In Another Country" shows that his marriage must have been the most positive influence in his life.

When Nick returns from the war, he continues to avoid marriage and women. In "The End of Something" he rejects close ties with women in favor of male comradeship. In a newly published story, "Summer People," Nick definitely does not shun association with women; in fact he welcomes and needs Kate's company. But he remains determined not to marry, here because he wants to preserve the freedom he needs to be a writer. Getting married would permit another to make demands on him which might prevent his artistic fulfillment.

Of course Nick does marry, though his wife is only a shadowy presence in the later stories. Certainly he is the first to admit that marriage has meant the end of particular aspects of his life. In "On Writing" he realizes that "when he married he lost Bill Smith, Odgar, the Ghee, all the old gang…. He lost them because he admitted by marrying that something was more important than the fishing."… Yet Nick does not resent this loss. In fact he is able to remember with amusement "the horror he used to have of people getting married. It was funny. Probably it was because he had always been with older people, nonmarrying people."… [By] the time Nick has been married for some time, his previous adolescent attitude toward marriage has been replaced by a more mature acceptance of the institution and his need for it.

"Fathers and Sons," the final story both in the volume of Hemingway's collected stories and The Nick Adams Stories, shifts the focus back to Nick's relationship with his father and his own son. Nick, through the presence of his son, can forgive his father's failures, recognize his own share of the blame for those failures and reaffirm a love of and appreciation for him. Nick's son, who wants to visit the tomb of his grandfather, senses and communicates to his father a relationship spanning three generations.

Thus in the Nick Adams stories Hemingway clearly deals with the role the family should play in relation to the individual. Nick learns as he matures that individuals, in the face of a chaotic and brutal world, must band together for protection and emotional comfort. Family relationships can be the source of great pain, as Nick well knows, but through them the individual can prevent isolation and despair. (pp. 303-05)