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31 pages 1 hour read

In Another Country

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1925

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Essay Topics

1.

The title “In Another Country” implies that people and events have undergone dramatic change. Discuss how each character has changed recently and how each is dealing with that change.

2.

Hemingway took his title from the play A Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe. In one scene of the play, a monk asks a sinner about his sin, and the man replies that it had occurred in another country. Write a short essay about sin in Hemingway’s story. Does the narrator suggest that his or another character’s actions are sinful? How so?

3.

Hemingway is often described as writing in a simple, clear, and direct style. Investigate this by comparing two passages of the story. Look at the first paragraph. How many words are used? How many letters are in each word on average? How many are one-syllable long, or two, or three, and so on? How many sentences make up the paragraph? How long are the sentences? Then do the same analysis on Important Quote 11. Describe how Hemingway’s writing in the two passages is different and how the effects on the reader are different.

4.

Hemingway writes most of the story as a narrative, but in certain sections, he changes to dialogue. What is special about the information he gives through dialogue? Explain the distinctions you see between his two techniques.

5.

“In Another Country” often gives only the “tip of the iceberg” and lets readers fill in the part below the surface. Hemingway wrote another war-related story titled “A Very Short Story,” which uses the same technique. Write an essay explaining how he puts the technique to different uses in the two stories. (Find the story on Pages 141-142 of the same collection used for this guide: The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1938.)

6.

The narrator believes that he and the youngest officer are not “hawks,” while the other three are definitely “hunting hawks.” Do you agree those two characters are different from the other three? How do the differences intersect with the story’s theme of masculinity?

7.

Although most of the story is about men in war, women are mentioned in four places: selling hot chestnuts on a bridge, coupled with men on the streets as the officers walk to the nightclub, at the nightclub tables, and as the marriage partner of the major. How do these passages shape the themes of the story? How would the story’s meaning be different if these passages were omitted?

8.

The story ends with the major declaring no man should get married because he puts himself in danger of losing too much—more even than what he might lose in war. Do you agree with the major? Do you believe Hemingway himself even agreed with the major, or do you think the author was just upset about his own impending divorce at the time?

9.

What did you like best about “In Another Country,” and what did you like least, or not like at all? Could Hemingway have included anything else, or cut out anything, to make it better?

10.

Hemingway wrote this story in 1927 when he was in his late twenties. In 1942, he edited an anthology titled Men at War. The collection features 82 pieces about war from antiquity to 1942. Read his Introduction and consider whether he still seems to agree with what he wrote as a young man in “In Another Country.”

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