In Another Country

Soldiers not only suffer in the battlefield. Veterans often need long term care owing to the physical
and psychological impacts of war. A good example of this, is the narrator in Ernest Hemingway’s story
“In   Another Country” . He tells us not so much about the war itself but the aftermath. About what it has
done to his whole being. Living with its memory, the memory that made him so afraid because of the
damage that it caused   him. So damaged, that it scares him too much to even think about going back
into the war. Scared that instead of maybe being much stronger the next time he returns to the
front, he will just be much weaker and may just end up being damaged even more.
Throughout the story the narrator shows us every aspect of his memories, every battle that he’s going
through. How he’s trying to get out of the war that others, who have not experienced the actual battle
do not have access to. How he manage to deal with it and live with it with his dignity, still intact.
The narrator talks about his physical battle, “My knee did not bend and the leg dropped straight from
the knee to the ankle without a calf, and the machine was to bend the knee and make it move as in
riding a tricycle. But it did not bend yet, and instead the machine lurched when it came to the bending
part.” He faces this battle and tries to do something about it, by going to the hospital every afternoon
meeting with the doctor hopeful that the machines will help heal his injury, “Beyond the old hospital
were the new brick pavilions, and there we met every afternoon and were all very polite and interested
in what was the matter, and sat in the machines that were to make so much difference.”   The idea is
that the machine will help heal the body and make so much difference. Ironic it seems, when he was a
soldier in an industrial war, machines helps destruction. In contrast to machines as a weapon for war
and machines in the hospital as a way to heal. This sad...