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Analysis Of Nick Adams 'Short Story' In Another Country

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that it prevents his soul from slipping out (Tanner 1964: 20). Boker points out that he uses those enjoyable memories because they are emotionally neutral. They can help him to forfend the sorrow after losing many things during the war. She also adds that this particu-lar short story is “a parable (…) about the desperate need to master the contents of the con-scious mind so that loss and grief are denied entry into this precariously and defensively controlled domain of the psyche” (1996: 197). In this story Nick is wounded, which makes another parallel with Hemingway, who was convalescing in hospital in Milan. Although the protagonist is injured physically, he is more damaged mentally – he has to struggle with emotional trauma and shell-shock which resulted in insomnia. Some interpretations of Nick Adams’ short stories put forward a thesis that the protagonist has much in common with the Fisher King from Arthurian Legends. The theme was firstly used by Jessie L. Weston in her From Ritual to Romance in 1920, and later on by T. S. Eliot in the poem Waste Land. The legend of the Fisher King describes him as wounded in legs or groin. He became impotent and unable to rule his kingdom, which has collapsed by turning into barren, …show more content…

The protagonist is unnamed but it can be assumed that, similarly to the previous short story, it is Nick Adams. He was an ambulance corps member in Milan during the First World War. The occupation of the protagonist, his wounded knee, and the setting of the plot creates the impression that the short story is closely linked to “Now I Lay Me.” According to Philip Young, those two were originally two parts of a single unit. They deal with the psychological and physical effects of Nick 's injuries (1972: 13). Boker, however, points also that it is a short story about a man who tries to protect himself from the grief of loss, by all means (1996:

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