The Nick Adams Stories: The End of Something

Ernest Hemingway's string of events featured in "The End of Something" will be foreshadowed, with focus primarily on the relationship between Nick Adams and his love, Marjorie. There are many facets of "The End of Something" which may be easily seen as foreshadowing. They are most commonly found when investigating the opposition of Nick's fear of commitment and Marjorie's desperate love. I will describe those events of the story which are easily predictable, and those which may not be so easy to foresee. The story begins with two teenagers, alone on a quiet afternoon, fishing a spring lake. After discovering each other's true personalities and the clashes that ensue from their differences, "The End of Something" fatefully ends with the final separation of Nick and Marjorie.

We observe a somewhat dreary day in a damp Horton's Bay. In the opening paragraph, we can almost smell the lumber.

NICK SKINNER

Nick

Ernest Hemingway's house- Key West, FL

Vivid imagery cascades through the senses - the smell of moist pine and damp spring air. However, the descriptions of scenery are so sneakily added in by Hemingway to suggest detriment in the future of our two star lovers, Nick and Marjorie. Therein lies a message in Hemingway's descriptions when he writes, "Then one year there were no more logs to make lumber... All the piles of lumber were carried away..." (Hemingway 200). The tall schooners headed back out to sea after the fortune of a few prosperous times, carrying away years of Hortons Bay tradition under a tight canvas. Also, the fact that "Ten years later there was nothing of the mill except the broken white limestone..." (Hemingway 200) suggests predictable broken emotions between Nick and Marjorie. As the day turns darker, we see how nature's effects such as the rise and fall of the moon reflect negatively onto...