Themes
"In Another Country" by Ernest Hemingway
Impact of war on soldiers’ lives:
The major theme of the story is the impact of war on the soldiers’ lives. The narrator said about the war, “we did not go to it anymore". He meant to say that the war had become a part of their personality and they did not need to go to it anymore. The boy with a damaged nose had to leave his country because of his ugly nose. That disfigured nose had become a permanent part of his personality and he could not forget the war. The war had given them such physical and psychological wounds that could not be healed.
The second important theme is the focus of the writer on the useless efforts of the modern society to cure the soldiers’ wounds. The soldiers need psychological and emotional support rather than the senseless machines which were being tested on them. They were sent to Italy for their treatment where the people did not like them. There they felt lonely and depressed.
Unreliability of the modern world is a minor theme. Most of the things in that modern world were unreliable like the medals and the machines. The narrator won his medals without showing any bravery in the war and the machines that were to make "so much difference” did not make any difference at all. The Major's life was spared in the war but his young wife died unexpectedly. Even the death in that society was uncertain. The wounded soldiers did not take part in the war anymore but the war could not be erased from their memories. Even the boy's nose was unreal. The whole society is unreal.
