In Our Time

Beginning on page 97 of A Hero of Our Time, a June 5th diary entry marks one of the sections in the chapter, “Princess Mary.” Throughout the novel, more information is uncovered about Pechorin and how he views himself in his society. This diary reveals much of his character especially well because in “Princess Mary” as a whole, it is written from Pechorin’s point-of-view. Within this singular diary entry, several clues are revealed to take apart Pechorin for who he really is. First, at an earlier point in the novel, Pechorin writes that he feels Grushnitsky was trying to write himself as the main character of a story. However, within this chapter, readers can see that Pechorin is doing the same thing in his own life. He writes, “Can it really…

George Sand’s Indiana and Mikhail Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time interrogate the conflict between individual and collective identity in the nineteenth century through presenting the individual as a site of ambiguity and hybridity that disrupts the supposed coherence and homogeneity of the collective identities cultivated by national and colonial power relations. Collective identity attempts to bound and border individuals within binary categories, presenting groups defined by national, ethnic,…

Reading Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time can be slightly confusing because of the sudden story endings and seemingly choppy and incoherent story line, but linking the stories is the underline appears of war like images. Sometimes these war like images appear in day to day life events. One of these day to day war like images appears in The Battler where readers learn the story of Ad Frances. Ad was once a professional fighter, but he is now very disfigured and presumably lives out near the train…

In the essay “Our Time” the author, John Edgar Wideman is trying to show that there is more in the world than what people see through their own perspective. The essay conveys to us that we should take in account of other people’s problems rather than being selfish and worrying about our own hardships. Not to bring about confusion by forgetting our own problems and focus on others, but to be more selfless and help others in worse situations than yourself such as how Robby sees his whole world…

“A Drama of Our Time”, by Fernando Sorrentino uses settings and tone, in the story making the situation humorous. The author uses literary settings to demonstrate the locations the characters are in. By telling the reader where the settings is, they can imagine how the scenes looks like. For example, the author states “The breezes of spring came wafting down Matienzo Street in Las Canitas around 11:00 o’ clock on a Thursday…” (2-3), letting the reader paint a picture to understand the setting…

Ernest Hemingway’s collection of short stories, In Our Time, contains many symbols and topics about the future, and more specifically about how events don’t always go as planned. Many of those symbols are expressed in the short stories “Indian Camp,” “The Three Day Blow,” and “Big Two-Hearted River: Part 1.” People may have a plan for their future, but they can never know exactly what’s going to happen is a big theme that is expressed throughout Hemingway’s collection. One of the first…

declines the prompt and would rather keep his life simple and not be involved. Throughout this story the setting remains the same but you get a general understanding of what it was like overseas. As you read the story you may find yourself responding in your head to some of the events as you read. For example, “By the time Krebs returned to his hometown in Oklahoma the greeting of heroes was over. He came back much too late. The men in town who had been drafted had all be welcomed elaborately on…

“Big Two Hearted River: Part 1,” a chapters in Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time, reads like a third-person narrative of a young man’s camping trip in the wilderness. However, through close examination of the details in the story, it slowly comes to light that the events that transpire in the young man’s excursions are somewhat related to his experiences in war. Hemingway’s account observes how war changes an individual as they return home, thus leaving them unsettled. Nick, our protagonist, isn’t…

Hemingway’s usage of rivers as a symbol of time occurs in the stories “Big Two Hearted River,” and “Hills Like White Elephants.” “Big Two Hearted River” is a story about Nick Adams and his postwar life. The story is centered in the small burned down town of Seney and Nick is trying to get away and relieve his mind of his always constant memories. In “Big Two Hearted River” the river functions as a symbol of time because the trout, which represent Nick’s thoughts, are trying hard to swim steady…

Big Two-Hearted River In Ernest Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River” Nick returned from to the war only to head back to his old favorite fishing spot. Even though Nick has not been around this place in a while and knows the town in the distance, burnt down, he still gets that feeling that he is home despite the idea that even his hometown seemed destroyed by the war. Hemingway states, “He felt he had left everything behind, the need for thinking, the need to write, other needs, it was all back…