27 pages • 54 minutes read
Ernest HemingwayA Very Short Story
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1924A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Love and Loss
“A Very Short Story” revolves around the theme of love and loss as it explores the lives of two lovers: an American soldier and a nurse, Luz, during World War I. The story depicts the initial passionate love between the two characters and their eventual separation. Throughout the story, Ernest Hemingway explores the complex nature of love and the painful experience of losing it.
At the beginning of the story, Luz and the soldier are deeply in love. Hemingway describes Luz as “cool and fresh in the hot night” (Paragraph 1), using sensory language to reflect the intensity of their passion, which is gradually lost as the story progresses. The couple plans to get married and “felt as though they were married, but they wanted everyone to know about it, and to make it so they could not lose it” (Paragraph 3). Both characters believe that validating their relationship through marriage and making it public knowledge will make their love permanent. However, their separation during the war leads to a gradual breakdown of their connection and creates a sense of loss that pervades the story.
After the soldier is sent back to the front, the couple’s communication becomes limited, and the letters that Luz writes to the soldier are not received until after the armistice. The letters are filled with expressions of love and longing, but the delay in their arrival highlights the distance that has grown between the two characters.
The theme of loss is further emphasized by the soldier’s return to the United States. He leaves Luz behind, hoping that she will join him once he is settled and has a job, but their argument on the train to Milan highlights the fractures that have appeared in their relationship. Hemingway paints a pessimistic view of love and loss as an inevitable cycle: Luz rejects the soldier in order to pursue a relationship with the major, who subsequently disappoints Luz by not marrying her.
The theme of love and loss is also present in the soldier’s physical losses: The story begins in a hospital as he awaits surgery to repair an injury from the front and ends as he contracts gonorrhea from a salesgirl. Though Luz’s love helps the soldier to recover from his first physical injury, his second physical loss of health, when he contracts a sexually transmitted disease, is a direct result of the loss of their relationship: After being deprived of Luz’s love, he seeks distraction and comfort in casual sexual encounters. The loss of love therefore establishes the potential for further personal misfortune.
The Effect of War on Relationships
The effect of war on relationships is a central theme of “A Very Short Story.” Hemingway underscores the idea that wartime creates opportunities for unlikely relationships to develop: The soldier and Luz would never have met if it had not been for the war. Their wartime romance, which is created seemingly at random and in the context of life-and-death, and the staff’s laissez-faire attitude toward the affair, shows the indulgence granted to the beauty of love in the context of the brutality of war.
Moreover, the war adds an external element of heightened drama to the lovers’ relationship. While the war rages, so does their love; the possibility that they will not survive the war adds a sense of urgency and greater intensity to their passion.
However, as the story unfolds, their romance is beset by challenges caused by the shifting circumstances of the war. First, the soldier must return to the front, which increases the physical and emotional distance between them. Second, the signing of the armistice marks the initial cooling of the soldier and Luz’s relationship; the new peace between the opposing forces parallels a personal disengagement between the couple. Following the armistice, the soldier receives Luz’s passionate letters all at once, but this outpouring of emotion ironically comes the beginning of the end of their relationship.
Ultimately, it is the remnants of war that damage the soldier and Luz’s relationship beyond repair. Another army man, an Italian major of the elite fighting regiment of the arditi, seduces Luz. The soldier is effectively “outranked,” and Luz makes her preference for the major clear, swiftly breaking off relations with soldier. The random, destructive nature of war has destroyed the beautiful thing it once created.
The major makes a power play for Luz and claims her without difficulty or challenge. However, he also disregards her when he wants, not fulfilling her anticipation of marriage. As Europe lies in ruins following the end of World War I, Luz is also left to pick herself up following the breakdown of two wartime relationships. Likewise, back in America, the soldier struggles with the end of his relationship with Luz, making risky choices to distract himself from his grief, such as casual sex in a taxicab. Though the end of the war is a joyous occasion for millions of people, Hemingway highlights complexity of romantic relationships that developed during wartime, as well as the consequences of those relationships ending.
Coming of Age
Coming of age is another prevalent theme in “A Very Short Story,” which has semi-autobiographical undertones: Hemingway was only 18 years old when he served in World War I and subsequently fell in love with Agnes von Kurowsky, a nurse seven years his senior, as he recovered from serious leg injuries in an army hospital. Agnes broke things off with Hemingway when she became involved with an Italian officer, similarly to how Luz breaks up with the soldier when she falls in love with the Italian major. The end of Luz and the soldier’s relationship is largely a result of Luz’s shift from the wide-eyed optimism of young love, unencumbered by outside events or complications, to a more critical, adult viewpoint. The soldier also navigates the complexities of love and heartbreak, moving from the innocence and idealism of youth to the realities of adulthood.
As the story begins, the soldier is forced to face his own vulnerability and mortality after being injured; his unblemished, youthful body has been marred by the war. But his resulting recovery in the hospital allows love to blossom, and he begins to feel as though he and Luz “were married, but they wanted everyone to know about it, and to make it so they could not lose it” (Paragraph 3). This quotation shows the soldier’s naivety, while also demonstrating his determination to have a serious relationship and his desire for commitment and stability—a reflection of his growing maturity and emotional development. The return to war is a sobering reality for the solider, and he loses his previous carefree idealism of his relationship with Luz. There are now conditions on the relationship; for example, he must have a stable job before Luz will agree to come to America with him, and he must curb his drinking.
Both Luz and the soldier mark their entry into maturity after they separate from each other. In the dreary town of Pordonone, a major in the arditi seduces Luz. The fact that this man is a major implies that he is a full-grown and battle-tested man, rather than a boyish soldier. After Luz consummates her relationship with the major, the narrator notes that she “had never known Italians before, and finally wrote to the States that theirs had only been a boy and girl affair” (Paragraph 5).
Luz is impressed by the major, and the narrator insinuates that something about him being Italian makes him a more attractive option. There are cultural characterizations at play here; America was still considered a relatively new global power in Hemingway’s time, while European nations, such as Italy, were regarded as the “old powers.” Luz also believes that her relationship with the Italian is more mature than the comparatively adolescent affair she had with the soldier. Ultimately, Luz retains some immature traits: She quickly falls in love with the arditi major and assumes he will marry her. Luz is left disappointed when the marriage doesn’t materialize.
Back in America, the soldier is left to deal with his own disappointment, distracting himself with risky sexual encounters. By the end of the story, both Luz and the soldier have no choice but to face the harsh realities of life, as the inane suffering of war and the senseless vicissitudes of love prove to be inescapable. Through the characters’ experiences with love and war, Hemingway depicts the transition from youth to adulthood, with all its complexities and challenges.
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