After Nick sets up camp in the woods, he crawls into his tent and takes stock of his needs. At this point, the narrator uses a hyperbole to capture Nick’s hunger level:
Nick was hungry. He did not believe he had ever been hungrier. He opened and emptied a can of pork and beans and a can of spaghetti into the frying pan […] He started a fire with some chunks of pine he got with the ax from a stump. Over the fire he stuck a wire grill, pushing the four legs down into the ground with his boot. Nick put the frying pan on the grill over the flames. He was hungrier.
The hyperbole here—in which the narrator states that Nick “did not believe he had ever been hungrier”—is clearly an exaggeration. This becomes apparent when, at the end of the passage, the narrator states, “He was hungrier.” (And, later, after Nick eats, the narrator makes the exaggeration even more apparent when they say, “He had been that hungry before, but had not been able to satisfy it.”)
The hyperbole here communicates that Nick is comfortable pushing himself to extremes of physical suffering. This is significant as, throughout the story, Nick relishes physical discomfort in order to distract himself from his emotional pain, specifically memories of serving in World War I. Though Nick doesn’t seem particularly joyful in this moment, he is able to focus on something other than his memories and is therefore not in a state of distress.
As Nick is sitting by the river while camping alone in the woods, he notices a swamp farther down the river. The narrator uses a hyperbole to capture the density of the swamp, as seen in the following passage:
Ahead the river narrowed and went into a swamp. The river became smooth and deep and the swamp looked solid with cedar trees, their trunks close together, their branches solid. It would not be possible to walk through a swamp like that. The branches grew so low. You would have to keep almost level with the ground to move at all […]
He wished he had brought something to read. He felt like reading. He did not feel like going on into the swamp.
The hyperbole here—in which the narrator describes the way the swamp “looked solid with cedar trees”—is clearly an exaggeration (as swamps are, by definition, not solid). This is Hemingway’s way of expressing how daunted Nick feels while looking at the swamp. While he seems to consider exploring it—imagining how he would have to move in order to traverse it—he also suddenly wishes that he “had brought something to read” because “he did not feel like going on into the swamp.”
The density—or “solidity”—of the swamp symbolizes the intensity of the traumatic memories that Nick has stored in his mind. He likes the river because it is predictable and makes him feel in control, while the swamp—like his memories—is outside of his control.
