This chapter comprises a sort of mid-book idyll. The author offers it to us by way of contrast to the Paris scenes that went before. In this novel, Pamplona will serve as a kind of anti-Paris, semi-rural and organic where the City of Light is urban and decadent. The woods outside Burguete where Jake and Bill fish for trout are even more different from Paris, and the sense of tranquility that the fishing trip creates in them and us could not be more different from the freneticism of the novel's opening chapters.
Hemingway makes explicit here the themes of irony and pity: the irony of Jake's situation (he is a kind of superman who nevertheless can't perform the most basic of manly activities) as well as the pity we feel for him. The writer does so in an extended section, rich with dialogue, that is meant to be funny but has not dated well. The joking between Jake and Bill, over breakfast and later at lunch, is certainly believable as such, but it's difficult for a contemporary audience to follow, because the references to Frankie Fritsch and so forth have grown obscure with the passage of time. (The reference to Bryan's death tells us exactly when these scenes are occurring: 1925.) Do note, however, that Jake's physical condition is alluded to — and quickly backed away from. ("I'd a hell of a lot rather not talk about it" could be the motto of Hemingway's stoic take on the world, and Jake's, too.) The writer has established, however, that Jake's condition is not simple impotence and that it was caused by an accident.
