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In "In Another Country," how is the narrator isolated and different from the young Italian officers, the civilians of Milan, and the major at the...

The narrator in Hemingway's short story "In Another Country" is recuperating in the Italian city of Milan after being wounded during World War I. The story may be somewhat autobiographical as Hemingway was wounded on the Italian front in 1918 while driving an ambulance for the Red Cross. Hemingway received his wounds while handing out chocolates to Italian soldiers at the front. While he considers the young Italian officers his friends, the narrator says,



I was never really one of them after they had read the citations, because it had been different with them and they had done very different things to get their medals.



The suggestion is that the Italians won their medals through bravery and combat while the narrator received his because he was an American. He readily admits that he may never have been able to do the things which the Italians did to get their medals:



I knew that I would have never done such things, and I was very much afraid to die and wondering how I would be when I went back to the front again.



The narrator is isolated from the Italian civilians because the area of Milan which the men walk through is the "communist quarter." The narrator reports that the people hated them and would yell, "A basso gli ufficiali!" James R. Mellow, in his biography, Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences, translates this as "Down with Officers" and notes that it was a popular antiwar taunt. The working class citizens were very much against the war (Russia pulled out of the war in 1917 after the communist revolution).


While also friendly with the major, the narrator's circumstances differ when he tells him that he hopes to be married soon. The major launches into a rant, which he will apologize for later, about how a man should not marry:



"The more of a fool you are," he said. "A man must not marry."



A little later the narrator discovers the major's wife has just died from pneumonia at a very young age. It is ironic because the major made it through the war with only a wound while his wife is taken from him seemingly before her time.

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