The officers randomly executed deserting soldiers, shooting into the fleeing masses, although in the face of their own certain death they themselves joined the retreating horde. The ballet skirts and pompoms refer to the uniforms of Greek soldiers, lying dead on the ground as the Turkish forces advanced. The fact one instance involves friendly fire underlines the pointlessness of this loss. The horror of the scenes drove grown, worldly men to cry like children. Helen, a good woman, loves and cares for her husband, but he cannot accept and reciprocate her love freely due to his sense of financial-and, as such, masculine-inadequacy.ĭeath returns to the story, this time in the faceless, massive losses of war. Gender roles and expectations were restrictive and inflexible, causing pain where there could be love. Although Hemingway does not directly argue this point, his characters’ relationship reflects the perspective of the wider society from which Hemingway wrote. Just as Harry’s cruel words say more about him than Helen, his insecurity says more about the social framework of the time than his own mental strength. The strength of his cruelty to Helen reflects the depth of his inner anguish at his inability to provide for himself. This causes him embarrassment, which he deflects into contempt directed at Helen, whom he characterizes as the source of his shame. The social norms of the time stipulated Harry ought to provide for his wife, but the opposite is true in this relationship. Harry does not love his wife but has used her for her money. Harry speaks with familiarity of Schrunz, in the tiny European principality of Liechtenstein, and the variety of his travels demonstrate his diverse life experiences-experiences that Harry never got around to writing about. The Gauertal valley lies in Austria, where the war still loomed over Harry's life, as a deserting soldier wanders across his peaceful mountainside hermitage. Harry overheard his fateful miscalculation of the safety of the mountain passage while riding the Orient Express, a glamorous railway that traveled across Europe, showing he lived in close proximity to key decision-makers at the time. After the war and the changing of borders as agreed upon in the Armistice, Fridtjof Nansen was a key figure in the movement of peoples across these new borders. Thrace is an area in Europe that is now spilt between Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey. In the first of many series of flashbacks, Harry recalls memories relating to his experiences around World War I, which took place from 1912-14.
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