"Cross-Country Snow" by Ernest Hemingway: Freedom vs. Responsibility

The dichotomy between the skiing out of doors and the indoor atmosphere of the bar is a metaphor for the dichotomy of Nick’s freedom vs. his responsibilities in life.

            The description of Nick’s skiing experience is rapid and full of movement and purely physical. He jumps straight from the car and moves straight into skiing up and down a constantly “undulating” slope. The passage says that moving down the “mountainside plucked Nick’s mind out and left him only the wonderful flying, dropping sensation in his body.” This sentence implies that to enjoy himself Nick must to leave his thoughts behind and there must therefor be something weighing on his mind. Nick is also more daring in this state of freedom. He takes on pace that he knows is too fast, and when he wipes out he gets right back up and keeps skiing. When Nick is free from the responsibilities on his mind he is able to excel, and even take the lead by passing up his friend George and doing a ski technique that his friend cannot attempt. Aside from the narrative moving quickly, so does the syntax while Nick skis. Hemingway uses short, choppy clauses and sentences while Nick is in motion. Nick is also the sole focus of the writing while he skis down the slope.

            When the narrative setting switches to inside of the bar, the descriptions focus more on the other people in the room, and therefore the pressures of the outside world. The atmosphere of the room seems full and dark, almost as if the pressures of the world are pressing in on Nick, as opposed to the free, open feeling he experiences outside. The waitress that serves Nick and George is the embodiment of those responsibilities that Nick has been able to ignore up until this point in the story. Nick does not notice that she is pregnant at first, much like he did not notice his responsibilities until he was in the inn. She is also unpleasant to George, much like the realization that Nick is to become a father is an unpleasant realization for the two men. Nick and George fear that “maybe [they’ll] never go skiing again”, or in other words experience that freedom again, because of Nick’s new responsibility to his future wife and child. Nick is also uncertain that he and Helen will ever “go skiing together in the States.” He understands that life is about to change for him.

            Nick, however, reverts back to sense of denial at the closing of this story. Even though Nick comes to this realization that his life is about to change he goes back for one last ski, and seems glad that he and George “now… would have the run home together”, or one last exercise of freedom.