A Very Short Story

The soldier is a complex and dynamic character. He is introduced as a wounded soldier with an unspecified injury; he is in the hospital to heal from physical wounds but is intent of maintaining a certain level of control. For example, when he undergoes surgery and experiences the effects of the anesthesia, he “hold[s] tight on to himself so he would not blab anything during the silly, talky time” (Paragraph 2). He is caring and attentive toward Luz, even while he is injured, and helps takes the temperatures of other patients so that Luz doesn’t have to get up from bed.

The soldier’s desire to please Luz and provide for her echoes throughout the first two thirds of the story. The soldier places his ambition to marry Luz above everything else; when he returns to America he agrees with her that “he would not drink, and he did not want to see his friends or anyone in the States. Only to get a job and be married” (Paragraph 4). As such, Ernest Hemingway initially presents the soldier as a romantic and idealistic young man, and at first, the love he shares with Luz is redemptive and healing; his time at the hospital serves to improve both his physical and emotional wellbeing.

The ability to solidify his relationship with Luz, however, is beyond the soldier’s direct control. He desperately wants to marry her, but his rush to do so before going back to the front is logistically impossible. The physical distance the couple endures when the soldier is sent back to the front symbolizes the emotional distance that grows between them during this time. Hemingway portrays their emotional distance as one of The Effects of War on Relationships.

After the soldier and Luz are reunited, the couple quarrels on the train to Milan, and the soldier suffers a sickness that figures as a second type of injury. Though they kiss goodbye in Milan, they “were not finished with the quarrel. He felt sick about saying good-bye like that” (Paragraph 5). Hemingway engages poetic traditions surrounding “lovesickness,” as the soldier’s second illness takes on both a physical and emotional dimension.

After he returns to America, the soldier is “cured” of his naïve idealism when Luz rejects him for a major back in Italy, but his continued lovesickness leads him to the sort of destructive behavior alluded to by Luz’s earlier prohibition of his drinking. He becomes sick with gonorrhea after a meaningless sexual encounter, suggesting that his idealistic view of love has been destroyed. His illness serves as a metaphor for the emotional pain that he experiences, and reflects the consequences of his misplaced trust and naivete. The soldier’s transformation underscores Hemingway’s larger thematic concerns about the nature of Love and Loss and Coming of Age—as well as the disillusionment that often accompanies them.