In Another Country | Themes

In Another Country Themes

"In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it anymore." So begins Ernest Hemingway's short story, "In Another Country." The war he refers to is World War I; the setting is Milan, away from the scene of the fighting. The narrator is a young American man who is in the hospital to receive physical rehabilitation for the leg wounds he received while at the front. Sitting next to him is an Italian major, a champion fencer before the war, whose hand has been wounded and with whom the narrator speaks about life. At the story's end, having learned of his wife's death of pneumonia, the major must face the future knowing the machines cannot cure him of this different kind of injury.

Dignity and the Human Condition

In the story, the young narrator has faced death and survived. This is also true of the Italian officers who, like...
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