The tone of “Big Two-Hearted River” is emotionally distant and removed. Despite the fact that the story centers on a man who has recently returned from serving in a violent and traumatic war, the narrator’s tone is neither compassionate nor distraught. At times, the narrator seems to occupy the space of distant, disinterested observer and, at others, seems to represent the emotionally repressed nature of Nick’s own psyche.
The final lines of the story demonstrate the consistency of the narrator’s tone—even in what is ostensibly the most “hopeful” moment in the story, the narrator’s tone is dispassionate:
Nick stood up on the log, holding his rod, the landing net hanging heavy, then stepped into the water and splashed ashore. He climbed the bank and cut up into the woods, toward the high ground. He was going back to camp. He looked back. The river just showed through the trees. There were plenty of days coming when he could fish the swamp.
Here the narrator disinterestedly reports on Nick’s actions, using no language that hints at what emotions readers should be feeling nor what Nick himself is feeling—he simply “stood up on the log” then “stepped into the water” before “climb[ing] the bank” and ultimately “going back to camp.” It is only near the end of the passage that readers get a sense that this is an important and hopeful moment, and that is only because of context clues, not the narrator's tone. Because readers know that the dark and dense swamp had scared Nick previously (perhaps representing the dark memories of war he keeps inside), they understand that his hope about being able to fish in the swamp in the coming days is a positive change for him. The sentence itself—“There were plenty of days coming when he could fish the swamp”—does not contain a particularly hopeful tone, yet readers leave with a sense of hope anyway.
