In Another Country

"In Another Country" is a short story by American author Ernest Hemingway, written between September and November 1926 and first published in the April 1927 issue of Scribner's Magazine.^[1] It was later included in his 1927 short story collection Men Without Women.^[2] Set in a military hospital in Milan, Italy, during World War I, the narrative follows an unnamed American narrator and other wounded soldiers as they undergo experimental physical therapy using machines designed to restore mobility to their injured limbs.^[2]^[1] The story depicts the daily routines of the soldiers, who bond over their shared experiences of war and recovery while feeling like outsiders in the Italian city, especially during the cold fall season when the war's presence lingers in the background.^[3] A central figure is the Italian major, a skilled fencer who has permanently lost the use of his hand; he interacts with the narrator, teaching him Italian phrases and revealing the profound grief over his young wife's recent death from pneumonia, underscoring the inescapable nature of loss even beyond the battlefield.^[2] The therapy machines, symbolizing modern progress, ultimately prove ineffective for many of the men, highlighting the futility of their efforts to return to their pre-war lives.^[3] Hemingway drew from his own experiences as an ambulance driver in Italy during World War I, where he was wounded by mortar fire in 1918, to craft the story's authentic portrayal of physical and emotional trauma.^[1] Key themes include the isolation of expatriates and veterans, the psychological scars of war, resilience in the face of irreversible injury, and the tension between hope for healing and the reality of death.^[2] The work exemplifies Hemingway's concise prose style and his "iceberg theory," in which surface-level details imply deeper emotional undercurrents, contributing to its enduring place in American literature.^[4]

Background and Publication

Publication History

"In Another Country" first appeared in the April 1927 issue of Scribner's Magazine, a leading American literary periodical edited by Maxwell Perkins, where it was presented as a standalone short story without additional editorial commentary beyond standard formatting for the magazine's fiction section.^[5]^[6] The story was subsequently included in Hemingway's second collection of short fiction, Men Without Women, published by Charles Scribner's Sons in October 1927, which compiled fourteen stories including this one and marked a significant milestone in Hemingway's early career with the publisher.^[5] Key reprints of "In Another Country" appeared in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1938), a volume that gathered nearly all of Hemingway's short fiction up to that point alongside his play The Fifth Column, and later in comprehensive editions such as The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigía Edition (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1987), which preserved the text in its original form across multiple printings.^[7]^[8]

Historical and Autobiographical Context

Ernest Hemingway volunteered as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross in Italy during World War I, arriving in the country in June 1918 to support the Italian front. On July 8, 1918, while delivering supplies near Fossalta di Piave, he was severely wounded by an Austrian mortar shell that exploded nearby, embedding shrapnel in his legs and causing significant injury to his right foot and knee. He was awarded the Italian Silver Medal of Military Valor for attempting to carry a wounded comrade to safety amid the blast. Following the incident, Hemingway was transported to the American Red Cross Hospital in Milan, where he spent several months recovering under medical treatment that included physical therapy and surgeries. During his hospitalization in Milan, Hemingway interacted closely with Italian soldiers and officers who were also receiving care for war wounds, gaining insights into their experiences of combat and recovery. These encounters exposed him to the physical and psychological impacts of the conflict on Italian troops, including the use of early electrotherapy machines for rehabilitation, which shaped the autobiographical elements of his writing about the period. Hemingway's time in Italy, marked by both the immediacy of frontline service and the isolation of hospital life, provided a foundational backdrop for his depictions of war's aftermath in his fiction. In the early 1920s, Hemingway returned to Italy multiple times as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, revisiting sites like Milan and the Piave River front to report on the nation's postwar reconstruction amid economic hardship and political upheaval. These trips allowed him to observe Italy's slow recovery from the war, including the challenges faced by veterans reintegrating into society and the growing influence of fascism under Benito Mussolini's rise in 1922. The American expatriate community in Europe, of which Hemingway was a prominent member based primarily in Paris, extended to Italy through journalistic and literary circles, fostering his engagement with themes of displacement in a changing continent. The story "In Another Country" embodies the "Lost Generation" ethos central to Hemingway's early oeuvre, reflecting the disillusionment and rootlessness of postwar youth who felt alienated from prewar ideals. Coined by Gertrude Stein and famously adopted by Hemingway as an epigraph in his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, the term described the cohort of writers and veterans, including Hemingway, who grappled with the war's existential fallout while living abroad. This context of expatriation and veteran estrangement, drawn from Hemingway's Italian sojourns, underscores the narrative's exploration of life in a foreign land scarred by conflict.

Synopsis

Setting and Characters

The story "In Another Country" is set in Milan, Italy, in the fall and winter immediately following the armistice that ended Italy's involvement in World War I in November 1918.^[3] The primary locations include an old, beautiful hospital entered through a gated courtyard—where wounded soldiers undergo experimental physical therapy with machines in new brick pavilions—and the nearby Café Cova adjacent to the Scala opera house, a warm, smoky gathering spot for the characters.^[3] The narrative emphasizes the cold weather, with wind blowing from the mountains, early darkness, and snow powdering the fur on foxes in shop windows, contributing to an atmosphere of urban anonymity amid crowded sidewalks and wine shops in the communist quarter.^[3] The unnamed narrator is a young American soldier wounded in the knee during the war, resulting in a leg that drops straight without a calf muscle; he is a former football player receiving therapy and holds medals awarded simply for being an American fighter.^[3] The major is an older Italian army officer and pre-war fencing champion—once the greatest fencer in Italy—with a war injury that has shrunk his right hand to the size of a baby's; he undergoes daily therapy but remains disciplined and straight-backed in posture.^[3] The three Italian officers, all around the narrator's age and decorated for valor, represent varying degrees of military distinction and intended post-war careers: a tall, pale lieutenant of the elite Arditi shock troops who earned three medals and plans to become a lawyer; a machine-gunner wounded four times who received a silver medal and aspires to be a painter; and a serious youth with one medal who had always intended to pursue a military career.^[3] Among the minor characters, the major's wife is a young woman he married only after being invalided out of the war due to his injury, highlighting his personal loss.^[3] The machine-gunner's wife, from a wealthy background, consults specialists for his facial reconstruction and sends him a photograph of herself dressed in a kimono with her hair styled in a Japanese manner.^[3] A separate boy patient, from an old family and a military academy graduate, appears briefly as one wounded in his first hour of battle, having lost his nose and with his face severely damaged, with plans for plastic surgery.^[3]

Plot Summary

The story is set in Milan during the fall of World War I, where the narrator, an American soldier wounded by machine-gun fire, undergoes daily physical therapy at a military hospital to recover the use of his knee. He joins other injured soldiers, including three young Italian officers who received medals for acts of bravery in combat—one an aspiring lawyer, another a painter, and the third intending a military career—and a major, a former fencing champion whose right hand has been paralyzed by a war injury. The group uses experimental machines imported from America and Germany, intended to restore muscle function through electrical stimulation and mechanical exercises, though the major remains skeptical of their efficacy, stating that they "will not work" for his injury.^[9] After their sessions, the soldiers walk together to a nearby café by the Cova, where they share aperitifs and discuss their war experiences, the significance of their medals, and personal aspirations. The narrator notes that his own medals, awarded simply for being wounded, feel less authentic compared to the Italians' citations for heroism, marking him as an outsider despite their camaraderie. The major, stoic and precise in his demeanor, often leads conversations on topics like hunting big game and maintains a rigorous routine, teaching the narrator proper Italian grammar during their time at the café. The doctor at the hospital encourages optimism, showing charts of successful recoveries, but the major dismisses such hopes, emphasizing the irreversible nature of their wounds.^[9] One afternoon, an orderly informs the narrator that the major's young wife has suddenly died of pneumonia, despite the major's careful protections against illness during her visits to the hospital. The major misses the next therapy session and returns the following day wearing a black band on his sleeve, his face etched with profound grief. During their Italian lesson at the café, the major abruptly breaks down in tears, his hands trembling as he grips the table, revealing the depth of his vulnerability beneath his composed facade.^[9] In reflection, the narrator observes the isolation of their group amid the city's routines, feeling detached from the Italians' shared cultural bonds even as they treat him kindly. He contemplates the shared yet distinct burdens of war, concluding that, despite surface similarities in their injuries and medals, "we were in another country."^[9]

Themes and Analysis

Major Themes

One of the central themes in Ernest Hemingway's "In Another Country" is expatriation and alienation, which manifests through the American narrator's emotional and cultural detachment from the Italian soldiers undergoing therapy in Milan. The narrator perceives himself as an outsider, separated not only by nationality but also by the nature of his war experiences, as the Italians view his wound—sustained in combat but less valorous in their eyes—as warranting a "fake" medal, underscoring his isolation in a foreign environment. This sense of disconnection is heightened by the crowds' disdain for the wounded soldiers, who are treated as incomprehensible strangers, reinforcing the expatriate's psychological exile.^[10]^[11] The futility of war and the hollowness of heroism form another key motif, illustrated by the contrast between the Italians' authentic medals for bravery and the narrator's honorary one for athletic prowess, which exposes the arbitrary nature of wartime honors and the war's meaningless toll on human lives. The soldiers' shattered aspirations—aspiring lawyer and painter whose dreams are disrupted by war, exemplified by their girlfriends leaving them—highlight how war disrupts personal dreams without offering redemption, while the ineffective therapy machines symbolize the broader impotence of post-war recovery efforts. This theme critiques the illusion of heroic glory, as the characters grapple with permanent disabilities that render their sacrifices futile.^[10]^[12] Stoicism versus vulnerability emerges prominently through the figure of the major, who embodies emotional repression as a survival mechanism, maintaining a controlled demeanor during therapy despite his hand's irreversible damage from the war. However, the major's facade cracks upon learning of his young wife's sudden death from pneumonia, leading to an outburst of grief that reveals the limits of stoic endurance against personal tragedy. This rupture critiques the repression of vulnerability, showing how war-hardened stoicism fails to shield against life's intimate losses, transforming the major into a figure of profound human fragility.^[10]^[12] The theme of death and its inevitability permeates the narrative, linking the hospital's clinical routine to the inescapability of mortality, as seen in the major's wife's unforeseen illness that defies medical intervention and underscores war's chaos extending into civilian life. The proximity of funerals to the therapy sessions evokes death's constant shadow, while the major's resigned acceptance of his loss illustrates life's unpredictability, where even disciplined individuals cannot evade sudden bereavement. This motif emphasizes the randomness of death, contrasting the controlled battlefield with the uncontrollable fragility of existence.^[10]^[12]

Narrative Style and Techniques

Hemingway employs his signature iceberg theory in "In Another Country," where much of the emotional and psychological depth remains submerged beneath a surface of sparse, objective description. As Hemingway himself articulated in Death in the Afternoon, the theory posits that "if a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader... will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of the movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water."^[13] In the story, this manifests through understated depictions of the characters' injuries, such as the narrator's hand wound and the major's hand paralysis, which imply profound isolation and loss without explicit emotional exposition, allowing readers to infer the unspoken trauma of war.^[14] Scholar Alex Pennisi notes that this omissive technique in Men Without Women, the collection containing the story, relies on indirect dialogue and sparse prose to evoke deeper resonance, aligning the narrative with Hemingway's broader stylistic principles.^[15] The first-person narration, delivered through the perspective of an unnamed American soldier, fosters a sense of detachment and irony, underscoring the narrator's alienation in a foreign land. This observational voice limits insights to the present moment, avoiding backstory or future speculation, which heightens the emotional distance from the events described, such as the mechanical therapy sessions.^[14] By confining the viewpoint to the narrator's immediate perceptions, the technique reveals subtle ironies, like the contrast between the Italians' decorated heroism and the American's volunteer status, without overt judgment.^[16] This approach not only immerses readers in the narrator's skeptical worldview but also mirrors the story's exploration of disconnection.^[14] Hemingway's minimalist prose, characterized by short sentences and economical details, evokes the monotony and futility of the characters' routines, as seen in the repetitive descriptions of the hospital machines "going up and down with their steel handles."^[14] This sparseness strips away adornment, focusing on concrete actions to convey underlying despair without verbosity. Complementing this is the use of naturalistic dialogue, which serves as a primary vehicle for character revelation rather than direct exposition; for instance, the Italian officers' boasts about their medals and the major's terse exchange about love expose vulnerabilities through subtext and repetition.^[14] Literary critic Robert Paul Lamb highlights how such dialogue in the story captures the halting rhythm of real speech, using understatement to imply emotional undercurrents that align with Hemingway's innovative approach to conversational realism.^[17]

Reception and Legacy

Initial Critical Response

Upon its publication in the April 1927 issue of Scribner's Magazine, "In Another Country" received immediate acclaim for its understated portrayal of war's aftermath. F. Scott Fitzgerald, in a letter to Hemingway shortly after reading the story, described the opening paragraph as "one of the most beautiful prose I have ever read," highlighting its evocative simplicity in capturing the isolation of wounded soldiers in Milan.^[2] The story's inclusion in the October 1927 collection Men Without Women amplified its reception, with contemporary critics praising Hemingway's concise style and unflinching realism in depicting the physical and emotional toll of World War I. A review in The New York Times lauded the volume as evidence of Hemingway's mastery in the short story form, noting how stories like "In Another Country" conveyed the stark authenticity of battlefield experiences through sparse, precise language that avoided sentimentality.^[18] This approach to war realism distinguished the narrative from more ornate contemporary war literature, emphasizing the quiet despair of recovery and camaraderie among expatriates. Early critiques from literary figures such as Gertrude Stein underscored the innovative emotional restraint in Hemingway's prose, which she viewed as a strength that amplified underlying intensity. In a review of his work around this period, Stein advised Hemingway to "eschew the hotter emotions and the more turgid vision," favoring instead "intelligence and a great deal of emotion with a restraint that makes the emotion more effective," a technique evident in the story's subtle exploration of alienation.^[19] Comparisons to other tales in Men Without Women positioned "In Another Country" as a standout for its expatriate focus amid the collection's diverse subjects, including bullfighting and boxing. The New York Times review highlighted this variety, observing that while many stories centered on masculine pursuits, the war-themed expatriate narrative offered a poignant contrast, deepening the anthology's thematic cohesion through its introspective lens on displacement.^[18] The story contributed significantly to the collection's commercial success, which saw an initial print run of approximately 7,600 copies and four additional printings within the first year, reflecting strong reader interest in Hemingway's emerging voice.

Modern Interpretations

Following World War II, scholars increasingly interpreted "In Another Country" as a poignant expression of anti-war sentiment, highlighting the story's depiction of isolation, futile recovery, and the psychological scars of combat within Hemingway's broader exploration of human resilience amid destruction. Carlos Baker, in his seminal 1952 study, linked the narrative to Hemingway's oeuvre by emphasizing how the American narrator's alienation in Milan mirrors the author's own wartime experiences, underscoring themes of disconnection and the illusion of progress in therapy machines as metaphors for war's enduring trauma. This reading gained traction in the 1950s and 1960s, as post-war critics viewed the story's understated despair as a critique of militarism, contrasting the characters' shared yet solitary suffering across nationalities.^[20] In the 1980s and 1990s, feminist critiques focused on the marginalization of female figures, particularly the major's deceased wife, who serves as an absent symbol of emotional vulnerability in an otherwise male-dominated world of war and stoicism. Scholars like those in Milan Dhakal's 2013 thesis "Marginalization of Women in Hemingway's Short Stories" argued that the wife's off-page death reinforces Hemingway's pattern of reducing women to catalysts for male grief, thereby critiquing the narrative's reinforcement of patriarchal norms where female agency is erased to heighten masculine loss. This perspective highlighted how the major's grief humanizes him but ultimately subordinates the wife's existence to his emotional arc, prompting debates on gender dynamics in Hemingway's "Men Without Women" collection.^[21] By the 2000s, postcolonial scholarship examined the cultural clashes between the American narrator and Italian characters, interpreting the Milan setting as a site of imperial tension during World War I, where American exceptionalism encounters Italian resilience. Essays in "Hemingway and Italy: Twenty-First-Century Perspectives" analyzed the interactions—such as the major's fencing prowess versus the narrator's medal—as subtle negotiations of national identity and otherness, reflecting broader U.S.-European power dynamics in the post-war era. These readings positioned the story as an early example of Hemingway's engagement with cross-cultural alienation, beyond mere autobiography. In the 21st century, "In Another Country" has been widely incorporated into academic curricula and adapted for educational media, solidifying its place in literary studies. It appears in anthologies like the Norton Anthology of American Literature, used in university courses to illustrate modernist themes of war and exile. Audio adaptations, such as recordings in the Ernest Hemingway Audio Collection narrated by Stacy Keach, have made the story accessible for classroom discussions and public broadcasts, enhancing its enduring pedagogical value.