64 pages • 2 hours read
Ernest HemingwayA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Book 1, Chapters 1-3
Book 1, Chapters 4-6
Book 1, Chapters 7-9
Book 1, Chapters 10-12
Book 2, Chapters 13-15
Book 2, Chapters 16-18
Book 2, Chapters 19-21
Book 2, Chapters 22-24
Book 3, Chapters 25-27
Book 3, Chapters 28-30
Book 3, Chapters 31-32
Book 4, Chapters 33-35
Book 4, Chapters 36-37
Book 5, Chapters 38-41
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
“The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.”
In the opening chapter, Hemingway describes how the marching soldiers create dust that rises and envelops the entire landscape. Everything is covered in dust, including the tree trunks. Hemingway uses the word “and” seven times in this one sentence. He refuses to use subordinate clauses, which would end up emphasizing certain details and de-emphasizing other details. Instead, his reliance on the word “and” flattens the language so that everything becomes equal. The dust on the trees is just as important as the soldiers marching onward, and one gets the sense that this dust will linger and last longer than some of the soldiers. In fact, it will not go away, and when the rains come, it will be transformed into mud.
“People lived on it and there were hospitals and cafes and artillery up side streets and two bawdy house, one for troops and one for officers, and with the end of the summer, the cool nights, the fighting in the mountains beyond the town, the shell-marked iron of the railway bridge, the smashed tunnel by the river where the fighting had been, the trees around the square and the long avenue of trees that led to the square; these with there being girls in the town, the King passing in his motor car, sometimes now seeing his face and little long necked body and gray beard like a goat’s chin tuft; all these with the sudden interiors of houses that had lost a wall through shelling, with plaster and rubble in their gardens and sometimes in the street, and the whole thing going well on the Carso made the fall very different from the last fall when we had been in the country.”
Chapter 2 takes place a year later, and the Italian victories against the Austrians have made this year much better than the dismal scene in Chapter 1, when 7,000 men died from cholera alone. However, despite the victories, the markings of war are everywhere, as architecture bears the scars of wars, such as the “shell-marked” bridge and the missing walls of homes, and the military has taken over the “very nice” town (Gorizia). Hemingway’s flattened
By Ernest Hemingway
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
Ernest Hemingway
Across the River and into the Trees
Ernest Hemingway
A Day's Wait
Ernest Hemingway
A Moveable Feast
Ernest Hemingway
A Very Short Story
Ernest Hemingway
Big Two-Hearted River
Ernest Hemingway
Cat in the Rain
Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway
Green Hills of Africa
Ernest Hemingway
Hills Like White Elephants
Ernest Hemingway
In Another Country
Ernest Hemingway
Indian Camp
Ernest Hemingway
In Our Time
Ernest Hemingway
Old Man at the Bridge
Ernest Hemingway
Soldier's Home
Ernest Hemingway
Solider's Home
Ernest Hemingway
Ten Indians
Ernest Hemingway
The Garden of Eden
Ernest Hemingway
The Killers
Ernest Hemingway
The Nick Adams Stories
Ernest Hemingway
American Literature
View Collection
Banned Books Week
View Collection
Historical Fiction
View Collection
Memorial Day Reads
View Collection
Military Reads
View Collection
Modernism
View Collection
Nobel Laureates in Literature
View Collection
Romance
View Collection
Summer Reading
View Collection
The Lost Generation
View Collection