First Person Narration In In Another Country By Ernest Hemingway

First Person Narrator Analysis In copious novels, poems and biographies, war relentlessly preys on hope, innocence and humanity, abandoning the wreck full of bewilderment and anguish. In the short novel In Another Country, Ernest Hemingway employs first person narration to illustrate the detachment and loneliness of the wounded soldier through the transition from emotionless, declarative narrations to a subtle disclose of longing for acceptance, revealing the destruction of war through consequential hostility, emptiness and emotional incapability. The American soldier starts the narration with lengthy, detailed description on a cold fall and choices of routines to the hospital, on which a woman sells warm chestnuts (Hemingway 1). The vivid …show more content…
By distinguishing himself from the brave Italians, the narrator describes himself that he is not a hawk (Hemingway 2), signifying his relatively docile character and lack of belligerence as a fighter. Also, the Italian grammar symbolizes the military discipline that the narrator struggles with, adding onto the conclusion that he does not belong to the army and the country drafts people with no intention to fight. The narrator is unable to experience the dreadfulness of the Italian major because numerous death has drained his sensitivity to death and the state of living alone in a foreign country points out the estrangement or absence of his family. In the end, the narrator repeats that the major “only looked out of the window” (Hemingway 4). The repetition of his illustration not only demonstrates the bewilderment of the major, but also the shallowness of observation the narrator perceives. The indifferent tone portrayed by the declarative sentences suggests that a young man from war is so weary that he sees actions without emotion. In contrast with Belayff in A Trifle from Real Life, who is physically an adult but possesses naivety of children, the incongruent age and mentality of the narrator can be summarized as they “are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men” (Remarque).
The title “in another country” not only indicates that the narrator is an outsider to the devastated Italy, but also symbolizes that any nation impacted by the contagious war would suffer from the same dysfunction happened in Italy. It ironically illustrates that countries, as the reason of the war, do not benefit from the loss of hope and the previously patriotic motivations crumbles in front of ruthless