A Very Short Story

Ernest Hemingway’s “A Very Short Story” portrays Love and Loss in the setting of Italy during World War I. Hemingway’s spare, direct prose style and emphasis on existential themes are hallmarks of modernist literature and of the style and tone of Lost Generation art. The story explores themes of love, betrayal, and The Effect of War on Relationships, and is set initially in an army hospital, which serves as a symbol of the emotional trauma and devastation that the war causes the characters. It is a place where lives are saved but relationships are doomed. Issues of time, space, and the war itself work to destroy the intimacy and healing represented in the first part of the story, replacing them with a destructive sense of melancholy, despair, and loneliness.

One of the major themes of the story is The Effect of War on Relationships. The war both brings the soldier and Luz together and plays a key role in pulling them apart. The soldier’s return to the front creates distance between them and prevents them from communicating with each other; the soldier receives 15 letters from Luz at once after the armistice and organizes them by date to reconstruct the time they lost. Even in the sacred space of the Duomo, the Paduan cathedral where Luz and the soldier go to pray, their plans to wed are inhibited by practical concerns and paperwork, such as not having enough time to get banns and the fact that they do not have birth certificates. Ultimately, the brutal force of war is mimicked by the painful end of their relationship. Luz helps the soldier heal from the physical wounds he suffers in the war but inflicts emotional wounds by abruptly rejecting him.

Hemingway’s writing style is characterized by its simplicity and concision, which in this story convey a sense of detachment and emotional distance that adds to its melancholic mood. The tone is one of resignation and acceptance, as the soldier comes to terms with the fact that he has lost Luz to the war and to another man. What began as a passionate affair shifts to somber distance as the story progresses. This change is marked initially by the “dim and quiet” (Paragraph 3) Duomo in which the couple prays as the soldier readies himself to return to the front. Once Luz returns to Pordonone, it is clear that the relationship is nearing an end. This loss is reflected once more in the gloomy and lonely setting of the place: “[I]t was lonely and rainy there […] living in the muddy, rainy town in the winter” (Paragraph 6).

Throughout the story, Hemingway uses sparse, direct language to convey the characters’ emotions. The theme of Love and Loss is developed through this style, which does not linger on describing the characters’ feelings but unveils their desires and motivations by depicting their actions and behavior. For example, in the early days of their relationship, once the soldier can use crutches, he “take[s] the temperatures so Luz would not have to get up from the bed” (Paragraph 2). The soldier’s attempts to try and help Luz, even as he is injured and still recuperating, reflect his care and consideration for her. There are also times when Hemingway’s lack of detail produces an uneasy mood, such as when the couple argues on the train from Padua to Milan: “When they had to say good-bye, in the station at Milan, they kissed good-bye, but were not finished with the quarrel. He felt sick about saying good-bye like that” (Paragraph 4). By omitting the details of their conversation and why exactly the soldier feels sick, Hemingway increases the narrative tension and uncertainty surrounding the pair’s future. The lack of detail also reflects the characters’ inability to grasp the gravitas of the situation and articulate their sense of loss.

As the couple’s means of communication breaks down, the distance between them—both real and emotional—increases as well. When the soldier first leaves to go to the front, their direct communication is replaced by a one-sided correspondence from Luz, which, while desperate and touching in its declaration of love, only reaches the soldier once the war is over. Their next major encounter is an argument over Luz moving immediately to America, the intensity of which leaves the soldier “sick.” Finally, Luz delivers but one letter—rather than 15—to confess her affair with another man, whom she plans to marry.

The story also interrogates the characters’ personal motivations and changing attitudes. While Luz is presented as a strong and caring woman, she is also driven by her desire for financial security: She refuses to quit her own career to move to America until the soldier has found a job. Her independence is brief, however, as she is accedes to the major’s overtures in Pordonone. Hemingway presents Luz as passively accepting the major’s advances though the matter-of-fact declaration of the sexual act: “The major of the battalion made love to Luz” (Paragraph 6). Luz quickly makes plans to wed the major in the spring, seeing this relationship as more viable both financially and romantically. In her letter breaking things off with the soldier, Luz lists several platitudes: “She loved him as always […] She knew it was for the best” (Paragraph 5). Luz’s explanation lacks originality and emotional depth, raising questions about how authentic her previous feelings for the soldier were. Luz sees her relationship with the major as mature and as a sign she is Coming of Age, while she refers to her affair with the soldier as “a boy and girl affair” (Paragraph 5). Luz’s wedding to the major never materializes, and Luz suffers a wound of her own; her emotional hurt mirrors the physical injury of the soldier at the start of the story. The major’s implied rejection of Luz also draws parallels with her own rejection of the soldier, imbuing the story with a pessimistic view of Love and Loss as a painful cycle, where the former is always followed by the latter.

In the same way that Luz initially breaks gender stereotypes, so does the soldier. Although as a soldier he is expected to be brave and strong, he is portrayed as vulnerable—physically and emotionally injured—and dependent on Luz, thus challenging traditional notions of masculinity. Like Luz, he gives in to the temptation of sex that is highly proximate, having a meaningless but injurious sexual encounter with an unnamed salesgirl at the end of the story.

As it typical of Hemingway’s style, there is much under the surface that is never directly expressed but rather inferred. When Luz realizes that her marriage to the major will not go ahead, she writes to the soldier but “never got an answer to the letter” (Paragraph 6). Hemingway chooses not to disclose the content of Luz’s message, leaving it up to the reader to imagine the letter’s purpose. However, the suggestion that Luz seemed to expect a reply leaves open the possibility that she was trying to romantically reconnect with the soldier but was ignored.