Fathers and Sons

“Fathers and Sons” by Ernest Hemmingway really got me thinking about father-son relationships and how we define them. The story is basically Nick Adams coming home to the place he grew up with his son sitting next to him asleep in the car. After a while, Nick starts looking at the corn fields and thinking about his father. We are then treated to a variety of stories about his father that help us to understand who he is. I think that the most important story Nick recalls about his father is the one in which Nick shoots a black squirrel and his father gives him a lesson in things of a sexual nature, namely masturbation and having sex with prostitutes. He tells Nick that terrible things will happen to him if he does those things, such as blindness, death, or venereal diseases. From this we can see that the father has straight-laced morals, or at least pretends to around his son in the effort to make Nick a better person than he was. I thought this was an odd exchange and it revealed more about Nick and his father than first meets the eye.
As Nick drives down the familiar roads, he realizes that everything is different, and in turn, that he has changed as well. I thought the way Nick describes the forest as a “virgin forest” was alluding to his own experiences when he was younger. After remembering the forest, he recalls hunting with his Indian friend Billy and having sex with Billy’s sister, Trudy. I think Trudy wants more out of this merely physical relationship than Nick does. At one point when he is hunting, she puts her hand in his pocket to “explore.” It seems like she always wants him, while it doesn’t really matter either way to Nick. After they have sex, Trudy is preoccupied with the thought of whether Nick and she “made a baby this time.” She seems emotionally attached to Nick, while he is withdrawn. After she asks this, the story states “Something inside Nick had gone a long way away.” He is very put off from her and he is just using her for sex. When the group is off hunting the black squirrels, Billy tells Nick that his older brother Eddie wants Nick’s sister Dorothy. Nick gets extremely upset, or at least pretends to be, shooting off a round with his shotgun. This is ironic, because Nick is sleeping with Trudy, and Billy knows it. In my opinion, he is testing Nick to see what he would do if someone was violating his sister. He decides to go for the shock factor, describing the brutal murder of the perpetrator of his kin. This scares both Billy and Trudy, and strikes both with fear for their brother and for themselves. Trudy eventually calms Nick down, by offering him sex, and Nick gets exactly what he wants. Because of this power to intimidate and get what he wants, he thinks of himself as a man now.
Another important point in the story that struck me was when Nick’s son wakes up and asks about the Indians and his grandfather. Nick wonders how he can explain how he used an Indian girl for sex and how he can only remember her physical characteristics to his son. He realizes that he cannot tell his son without painting himself in a bad light, so he does not tell him about the Indians. Nick’s son wonders why they never visit his grandfather in his tomb, and vows that he will visit Nick in his grave when he dies. I think this defines the relationship between Nick and his son. The son wants to be close to his father and obviously loves and trusts him. Nick remembers how his father was cruel and punishing and how he was scared of him. By remembering this, Nick wants to and decides to be a better father to his son than his father was to him.