Bria Faison

Professor Diehl

Human 2010

Feb 26 2021

A heartbreak that is shown throughout the Nick Adams story is the reoccurring

heartbreak of not Nick being complete and whole with himself. Throughout the book Nick seems

very disappointed I himself, the people who raised him, and his choices. Nick’s feeling of being

incomplete affected the way he viewed himself and other people. When Nick was younger, he

was complete because there was nothing that would make him feel like he was not complete.

This heartbreak brings him sorrow because it affects his fay to day life. In Now Lay me,

you can see that Nick has no control over himself. During this story, Nick is suffering from

insomnia and post-traumatic stress disorder from his time in the war. While suffering from

insomnia, Nick craves control. The control that Nick craves over his thoughts and acts while he

is trying to sleep is the same control he has when he is fishing. When Nick is fishing, he feels

like it is the only time he has control over himself and everything he is doing because it gives

him a sense of person and belonging. The control that he craves is blocked because Nick is still

suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from the war. Another example of this heartbreak

bringing Nick sorrow is in the Big-Hearted River. This brings sorrow because Nick is at his

breaking point. He no longer has control over himself and feels like he has to disconnect from

society in order to restore peace to his mind and self. At this point in Nick’s life, everything is a

wreck except fishing. The town that Nick goes fishing near is a rundown and broken which

represents how he feels on the inside. After the war and everything that Nick has gone through

the decides to go fishing in order to get back the life he once had before of feeling complete.
 The effect of Nick not being complete with himself affects his relationships with

everyone he has come across. In the story, Now Lay Me, Nick starts to analyze every relationship

that. He has had and tries to determine what went wrong within these different instances. He tries

to live these relationships out through his mind so that he does not have to face reality about

what really happened. This is also shown when Nick is talking to his friend John pushing him to

get married, and Nick wanted to change the subject because it reminded him of his mother. Nick

never had a close relationship to his mother because he was drawn to his father more. This shows

that Nick’s lack of feeling complete affects his relationships in his life.

In Nick’s heartbreak has affected his outlook on life because he feels like nothing is ever

going to make him feel complete, and the only time he is complete is when he is fishing. Nick’s

outlook on life is that everything and everyone is a mess. In order to get away from this mess is

to go off and fight in the war which eventually comes back to bite him. Nick running away from

his issues affects the way he has a look on life after the war. His outlet on life that led him to the

war was that he had no control over himself. Nick wanted to join the war because he felt like it

would bring him peace because his life was such a mess.

Nick’s understanding of self is that he has no self-control. Throughout the book, Nick

does not really have a sense of self. As he gets older, he starts to realize that he is incomplete in

aspects of his life especially mentally. As time goes on, Nick returns from the war to try to gain

and restore his sense of self that he had when he was younger and lost as he got older. To get this

understating of health again, Nick isolates himself in order to grab a hold of himself and gain

control over his life and thought again. Nick eventually restores this peace with himself once he

goes fishing and isolates himself.