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John McDaiel
Adam Diehl
HUMN 2010
08 February 2024
Nick Adams and His Heart Breaks
In The Nick Adam Stories Nick has many heartbreaks happen to him and traumatizing
events during his life. From being just a kid and going through relationship heartbreaks to
growing up and going to war and witnessing death and other terrible tragedies, he has been
through a lot. But I would like to just talk about how he remembers friends that he used to have.
When Nick goes camping along the Two-Hearted River he remembers a man named Hopkins
that he “once argued about everything with” (pg. 185-186). Nick remembers Hopkins while he
was making coffee because he realized he was doing it Hopkins’s way. Nick thinks back on how
he and Bill and Hopkins were younger and how Hopkins got a telegram that told him he was
now rich. Hopkins “gave away his .22 caliber Colt automatic pistol to Nick [and] he gave his
camera to Bill.” as a way to remember him and promised them he would get a yacht and take
them with him. Nick never heard from Hopkins after this again and this is a point I would like to
highlight because it brings up an issue with Nick being able to trust.
Nick was promised by Hopkins that he would do these things but he never hears from
him again. This affects Nick because he is not able to confidently make a promise to anyone
anymore. When Nick is talking to George in Cross-Country Snow George says, “I wish we could
make a promise about it.” to which Nick replies, “There isn’t any good in promising.” I believe
that Nick says that because he remembers a time when Hopkins made a promise to him and he
was heartbroken when Hopkins never lived up to that promise, so Nick thinks that there is no
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good in promising something when there is not a fact that it will be upheld. This point brings
such significant sorrow to Nick because he feels like so much has happened in his life that there
is no guarantee of anything. Nick has seen death and other tragedies of war and that can
definitely affect one's mind to a point of not being able to trust anything or anyone anymore. And
when he has a friend tell him that he will do these things for him and then they do not it just adds
onto everything he has had to go through in his life and the depression he has had to deal with.
The depression that Nick suffers with throughout the story makes everything he does that much
harder because not only is he going through hardships but he has this heavy weight of depression
on his back and not being able to talk about these things he suffers with just makes it worse. Nick
holding all this weight of his problems inside only makes it worse for him and harder for him to
trust other people and open up to others as well.
I believe that Nick suffers from heavy depression through these stories that we have read
and that is the main contributing factor to why everything is difficult for him. It is hard for Nick
to trust anyone because he has had promises broken before and not only that but he has gone
through so much in his life that he just does not want to open up to anyone about anything. This
is why Nick escapes into the woods at the end of the stories. He escapes because he can finally
be alone and at peace with everything that has happened to him.
