A Very Short Story by Ernest Hemingway deals with a short-lived and fleeting relationship between an American soldier and an Italian nurse who were brought together by war and separated by war and geography.
Hemingway is renowned for the simple, succinct style of writing that can be observed in short stories and novels alike. His style is primarily due to his belief that the themes and layers of a text should not be overt and should be implicit. This is also reflected in “A Very Short Story”.
Hemingway’s well-known works include “Men Without Women”, “The Killers”, “Farewell to Arms”, and “Snows of Kilimanjaro” . He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. He
A VERY SHORT STORY | SUMMARY
The story begins with the depictions of the friendship and the relationship between Liz and the unnamed soldier. Of that time when he was taken to the roof to look at the town outside the hospital, and the “about friend or enema” joke that they laughed at when Liz was preparing him for the surgery. He had to make sure not to blabber out anything under anaesthesia talk, for which he steeled his will. When he could walk on crutches, he went around taking the temperatures of the patients so that Liz could rest on his bed. They wanted to marry each other before he left for the front, but in their hearts, they felt that they already had, since neither had their birth certificate, and due to the lack of time for banns, marriage was not an option. She wrote many letters to him, letters of longing and pain, of “ how much she loved him and how it was impossible to get along without him and how terrible it was missing him at night”. But none of them reached him until the armistice. They come to an agreement to live together after he has secured a job. He visits her in her place, and they fight on the way back to the station about her not going to his place right away. They kiss goodbye without resolving their conflict.
After they separate, she falls in love with a Major stationed in the new hospital where she works and gets intimate with him. She writes to the soldier in America about what had happened, now realising that what she had for him was “a boy and girl love.” She was hoping to marry the major by spring, but that marriage never happened, and a reply never came to the letter she sent to America. The unnamed soldier contracts gonorrhoea from a salesgirl after making out with her in a taxi.
A VERY SHORT STORY | ANALYSIS
The story chronicles the fleeting relationship between the two main characters. The beginning of the story sets the foundation for the relationship to follow. When it tells about the character being taken to the roof and later spending his time with the nurse while the rest have fun and drink alcohol on the balcony. We see them spend moments of closeness as he was being prepared for the surgery. These moments make clear to the reader that the relationship between them is not professional and that there is an aspect of tenderness within it. His checking the temperatures of the other patients and allowing her to rest, even as he can’t freely walk, demonstrates the type of relationship they share. This also raises questions about Liz and her feelings for him when she lets her patient, who has just undergone surgery and is unable to walk, share her workload by going around and checking the patients’ temperatures. Later when they decide to marry, the conditions that would be enforced on him too to a huge degree unreasonable “It was understood 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.” he was willing to accept these conditions to be with her, this speaks to the feelings he had for her ad the sacrifices he was willing to make for her. It is told to us that she had written many letters to him while he was at war about how much she missed him. Later, after she gets involved with a major who is much more financially stable and, above all, physically available, she writes to the soldier that their feelings for each other were just a “boy and girl affair,” clearly diminishing the value of his feelings for her. The relationship now might have been more unfavourable for her after she opened a hospital in Pordenone. It is easy to come to a conclusion about how her feelings might have been dampened by distance, time, and above all, lack of communication. It might also have been pragmatic of her to choose the General with more stability than the unnamed soldier. Additionally, the General could have been from Italy, and the nurse had later opened a hospital in Pordenone, making it more convenient for her to be with him. But the marriage never happened.
From the general’s perspective, the nurse too would have been an unfavourable choice, maybe it would be him marrying below his station when he can choose brides who are from a wealthier family using his position in the army, making what transpired between the nurse and the General yet another “boy and girl affair”. Here, “boy and girl affair” might be taken to mean a relationship founded on fondness and mutual affection but lacking the ‘substance’ and stability to last long. The “boy and girl affair” is a relationship between two individuals who have not put much thought into what it means to live together; they love cutting across lines of class and nations, as affection is not bound by such concepts.
Her letters telling him how their love was immature and she was planning to marry someone else broke the soldier internally; his pain is depicted using the matter-of-fact presentation of him catching an STI from a salesgirl. This description lacks the warmth that was ambient in the description of his relationship with Liz, here there is no love or affection that could be discerned but just the act of sex it can even be argued that there is an acute lack of affection and love in what had happened as can be understood when the Hemmingway chooses to tell readers what happened by just telling the readers that he contracted gonorrhoea. This also suggests that the soldier has lost all hope and belief in the concept of love after his breakup with Liz.
A VERY SHORT STORY | TITLE
“A Very Short Story” is a fitting name for the text in many ways. Firstly, at face value, the story it tells is very short with just 663 words. Beyond that, the ‘very short story’ is also a reference to the relationship between Liz and the soldier; their relationship effectively lasts not much longer than the time he was hospitalized. After he was discharged and sent to war, there was no communication between the lovers for a long time, and the letters reached the soldier only after the war had ended. After that, though their relationship picked up again, they are separated by an ocean that impedes effective communication between them. This is followed by the nurse getting into a relationship with a General, putting an end to her previous relationship.
LITERARY DEVICES AND TECHNIQUES
The story is written in the third person, the narrator is omniscient, though it refrains from looking into the minds of the characters too much, content to tell the readers just the major incidents. The story follows the Theory of Omission or the Iceberg Theory, and only contains elements necessary for the storytelling. Most of the ideas and implications of the incidents are implicit and only reveal themselves upon careful consideration. The language is simple without adornments in the classic Hemingway style. It can also be noted that the only named character in the story is Liz, the nurse. It is because the rest of the characters are more or less fungible to another key character. Liz is special to the soldier and thus is a named character; he is heartbroken after their breakup. From the perspective from which the story is told, the soldier is replaceable to the nurse, who relegated all that transpired between them as a childish affair. The General need not be named as he is treated as a stock character that the nurse is attracted to, leading to her breakup with the unnamed soldier; he quickly abandons her after using the nurse for his selfish pleasure, thus forgoing the right to be named in the story. The girl the soldier has an affair with is named and is relegated to a passing reference, showing the nature of her relationship with the soldier.
