Cycles of Violence in The Battler Ernest Hemingway's "The Battler" provides a continuing account of the dangerous and violent life of Nick Adams. The earlier stories collected in "The Short Stories" edition of Hemingway's work document some of the tribulations of Nick Adams, one of Hemingway's protagonists. As it turns out, Nick was tormented by moments of pure humility, terror, and unchanging violence. In Hemingway's short story "Indian Camp," Nick is a young boy who witnesses a terribly difficult birth by a Native American woman, all the while enduring the arrogance of his surgeon father, who is contextually insensitive to Nick's innocence. Once the birth is finished, the woman's husband is found with his throat freshly cut, once again viewed by young Nick. In "The End of Something," another story from the same collection, an older Nick Adams breaks off a listless relationship with Marjorie, his girlfriend. Nick reveals his disgust at engaging with Marjorie during a fishing trip, and the closeness of the two on the boat coupled with either of them's inability to escape the immediate situation results in moments of tense humiliation for both. Indeed, the scene reeks of subdued violence. In the case of "The Battler", the violence is not as heavily toned down. Nick is traveling on a train, probably as a tramp, and is knocked off his transport with a blow to the head by a "filthy bastard of a brakeman". (p. 129) This is not a narrated situation, but the reader is made aware of Nick's predicament after the fact as Nick finds himself watching the "wagon disappear from sight around the bend" and "touch(ing) the bump above his eye." (p. 129) He finds himself with scratched hands and the skin on his knees b...... middle of paper ......he will not escape his fate: he is a living punching bag, and Nick, in the in her timely fashion, she not only witnessed another violent episode in this man's life, but took part in its occurrence. The two come together in this dangerous moment. In a foreboding moment, Nick's future teeters on the possibility of a life like Ad's. Before dinner, Ad and Bugs had speculated, "He says he's never been crazy, Bugs." "He's got a lot to look forward to," Bugs had said softly. (p. 133) Nick's scars and bruises are, at this time in his life, just more easily hidden than Ad's. Too late, though: Ad and Bugs have seen his potential to become "crazy", and even a "fighter", even though he knows that, as in Ad's case, yours is rarely the winning team. Bibliography Hemingway, Ernest: The Short Stories. Simon and Schuster, New York, First Scribner paperback fiction edition, 1995