World Literature Collections 12: Across the River and into the Trees - BOOK V

Across the River and Into the Trees is a novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, published by Charles Scribner's Sons in September 1950, first serialized in Cosmopolitan magazine. The title is derived from the last words of Confederate General Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson. The novel opens on the last day of Colonel Richard Cantwell's life. He is duck hunting in Trieste, Italy, his thoughts presented in a protracted flashback, with Cantwell thinking about a young Venetian woman, Renata, and about his experiences during World War II. Not long before writing the novel during a trip to Italy, Hemingway met young Adriana Ivancich, with whom he became infatuated; he used her as the model for the female character in the novel. The novel's central theme is death, and, more importantly, how death is faced. One biographer and critic sees a parallel between Hemingway's Across the River and Into the Trees and Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. The novel is built upon successive layers of symbolism, as in his other writing, Hemingway employs here his distinctive spare style (the iceberg theory), where the substance lies below the surface of the plot.