Hemingway, Ernest. "In Another Country".

Summary

- set in a Milan hospital at the time of WW I

- the first person narrator describes the situation shared by him and his fellow-patients

- the crippled patients daily attend the hospital to do exercises on machines which are intended to make their arms and legs useful again

- their approach to the procedure is polite and interested, but none of them believes in getting well again

- all the crippled get the same medals

- as officers and Americans, the narrator and his fellows are disliked in the city

- the narrator presents his notion that a man, if he is to lose everything, must not place himself in the position to lose that (e.g. to marry after the war)

- then he confesses he has just lost his wife

Analysis

- the painful reality of the war and its long-lasting consequences

- the difficulty of being a man and the terrible effects of the war also on masculinity

- the motif of loss (of one's arm or leg, of one's wife, etc.)