MARK TWAIN

(Samuel Langhorn Clemens)

(1853-1910)

Samuel Langhorn Clements took his pen name, "Mark Twain", from the signal for safe water
(two panthoms-3,7 metres) he heard as boy on riverboats on the Mississippi River, which flowed
past his boyhood home, Hanibal, Missouri. M.Twain's masterpieces: The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn (1885), and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) were based on his boyhood
experiences and Hanibal settings, and he produced, in the eyes of many later writers, the first truly
American literature by creating characters who speak an American vernacular, a mix of the
English spoken by various white classes, African-American dialects spoken by blacks and many
whites, the language of pretentious or pious easterners and élite, and the language of a frontier
spoken by roughnecks, children, Indians and slaves. Mark Twain also brought all of American
experience, in all its contradictions and complexity, into satirical and humorous novels, essays,
travel narratives and autobiographical forms.

After the death of his father when Twain was 11, his formal education ended. He was apprenticed
to a printer, and the printshop and newspaper office provided him with an education and literature
training, as it had done for many authors sinc e the day of Benjamin Franklin. His newspaper
work brought him, at age of 18, to Philadelphia, New York, and Washington, and the letters he
published about these travels commenced his career as a travel writer with a keen eye for
American life. These were exciting and trouble years in American history, with a burgeoning
boom and burst economy, creating an American dream of individual opportunity for success and
some events as new waves of immigrants, westward expansion, an imperialistic conquest of
Mexico in 1848, the California gold rush in 1849, and

1
of course the corrosive and decisive facts of slavery challenged ingenuity was probed in the
fantasy "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court' (1889). For the rest of his career, Mark
Twain would periodically revisit the themes of the spiritual emptiness of American economic
life, and he created bitter yet satiric commentaries on American imperialism and its 1889 war of
conquest. "Following the Equator" (1897) presenting Twain's critique of American imperialism,
and his "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" (1901) and "A War Prayer" (1905) are dark
ruminations on the corruption of American innocence. Mark Twain turned to domestic issues of
the 1890s in "Pudd'n head Wison" (1894), especially the scientific racism used to justify the
segregation of African Americans into second -class citizenship enforced by lynching and
economic exploitation. Some of the later works, written in the voice of Satan, were withheld by
Twain from publishing, since they cut so hard against his public image as a member of genteel
society, a businessman and a humorist. Tragedies in Twain’s life, including the death of his
daughter and the failure of his business enterprises contributed to this growing skepticism and
determinism. Despite these undercurrents, he is best remembered for those which balance
American optimism and innocence with a realistic description of darker facets of American life.
As a writer, Mark Twain's genius was in capturing the American vernacular, and to do so, he
returned to the scenes of his youth memories which seemed to liberate his imagination to provide
a mirror of antebellum society in which to reflect the face of America in the 1780s and 1880s.

Tom Sawyer was written as a "boy book" in response to the success of Thomas Bailey Aldrich's
The Story of a Bad Boy (1869), but it also appeals to adult readers for its idyllic recollections of
antebellum life set against the violence and hypocrisy of adults. We see Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn,
Becky Thatcher and other children play out their romantic fantasies based on European novels;
game of treasure hunting which turn deadly real when they witness a murder and overhear plots
of robbery and murder. In this book, children's innocence triumphs and is rewarded with gold,
even as Tom Sawyer learns how to manipulate society to his advantage by playing the role of the
innocent, respectable, hardworking American boy we see in the chapters on his fence painting
and his first love. Tom Sawyer introduces Huck Finn, explores the racism which betrays African-
Americans at the end of the period of Reconstruction (1965-1877). Huck runs away from his
abusive, alcoholic and fiercely anti government father, travelling down the Mississippi on a raft.
He is joined by Jim, who is running away from his owner. Their freedom on the raft, even as they
drift ever deeper into

2
the slave states, is punctuated by Huck's struggle with his racist attitudes which threaten to blind
him to Jim's humanity, and by contact with people along the river, a veritable cross section of
American life. It has been suggested that Huck's language, and thus Twain's style, was based on
black speech, and despite the problematic presentation of Jim, black writers as well as white
continue to find inspiration in this example of the creation of a truly American interracial literary
discourse.
Mark Twain was born and died in the years in which Halley's comet appeared, a seeming omen to
Twain and to his readers of the ways in which his life and writings span an era of American life.
Twain travelled from a frontier society in the West to an urbanized and industrialized life, even as
America emerged from an agricultural past, through the cauldron of the Civil war, and into an
industrial and imperialist century. In his works, Americans read their past, and perhaps, the
darkness and the light of their future.

Introduction to "Tom Sawyer" and Huckleberry Finn"

The two books Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn combine reflections of Hannibal in Twain's
youth, the spell of a great river, and the intangible quality of an art that relies on simplicity for its
greatest effect. On one level, the nostalgic account of childhood, on another, the social and moral
record and judgement of an epoch in American history, the two books have attained the position
of classic in the world literature. Tom Sawyer is the story of a boy's adventures in a small town on
the banks of the Mississippi over a hundred years ago. Tom, the cheerful, adventurous character
of the novel, is a boy of typical boyishness, self-indulgent, generous, given to romantic dreaming,
mischievous and kind. He feeds on detective and adventurous stories and strives to translate what
he reads into the real world around him.

BY MARK TWAIN
 (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)

PREFACE

Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two were experiences of
my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine. Huck Finn is drawn from life;
Tom Sawyer also, but not from an individual—he is a combination of the characteristics of three
boys whom I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of architecture.

The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and slaves in the West
at the period of this story—that is to say, thirty or forty years ago.

Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not
be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly
remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked,
and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in.

THE AUTHOR.

HARTFORD, 1876.

Strong temptations – Strategic movements – The innocents beguiled

SATURDAY morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming
with life. There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young the music issued at the lips.
There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom and the
fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond the village and above it, was green
with vegetation and it lay just far enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful,
and inviting.

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He
surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit.
Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.
Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost plank; repeated the operation; did it
again; compared the insignificant whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent of
unwhitewashed fence, and sat down on a tree-box discouraged. Jim came skipping out at the gate
with a tin pail, and singing Buffalo Gals. Bringing water from the town pump had always been
hateful work in Tom's eyes, before, but now it did not strike him so. He remembered that there
was company at the pump. White, mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there waiting
their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarrelling, fighting, skylarking. And he remembered that
although the pump was only a hundred and fifty yards off, Jim never got back with a bucket of
water under an hour—and even then somebody generally had to go after him. Tom said:

"Say, Jim, I'll fetch the water if you'll whitewash some."

Jim shook his head and said:

"Can't, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she tole me I got to go an' git dis water an' not stop foolin' roun'
wid anybody. She say she spec' Mars Tom gwine to ax me to whitewash, an' so she tole me go
'long an' 'tend to my own business—she 'lowed SHE'D 'tend to de whitewashin'."

5
"Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim. That's the way she always talks. Gimme the bucket—
I won't be gone only a minute. SHE won't ever know."

"Oh, I dasn't, Mars Tom. Ole missis she'd take an' tar de head off'n me. 'Deed she would."

"SHE! She never licks anybody—whacks 'em over the head with her thimble—and who cares
for that, I'd like to know. She talks awful, but talk don't hurt—anyways it don't if she don't cry.
Jim, I'll give you a marvel. I'll give you a white alley!"

Jim began to waver.

"White alley, Jim! And it's a bully taw."

"My! Dat's a mighty gay marvel, I tell you! But Mars Tom I's powerful 'fraid ole missis

—" "And besides, if you will I'll show you my sore toe."

Jim was only human—this attraction was too much for him. He put down his pail, took the
white alley, and bent over the toe with absorbing interest while the bandage was being unwound.
In another moment he was flying down the street with his pail and a tingling rear, Tom was
whitewashing with vigor, and Aunt Polly was retiring from the field with a slipper in her hand
and triumph in her eye.

But Tom's energy did not last. He began to

think of the fun he had planned for this day, and
his sorrows multiplied. Soon the free boys would
come tripping along on all sorts of delicious
expeditions, and they would make a world of fun
of him for having to work—the very thought of it
burnt him like fire. He got out his worldly wealth
and examined it—bits of toys, marbles, and trash;
enough to buy an exchange of WORK, maybe,
but not half enough to buy so much as half an
hour of pure freedom. So he returned his
straitened means to his pocket, and gave up the idea of trying to buy the boys. At this dark and
hopeless moment an inspiration burst upon him! Nothing less than a great, magnificent
inspiration.

6
He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. Ben Rogers hove in sight presently—the
very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been dreading. Ben's gait was the hop-skip-and jump
—proof enough that his heart was light and his anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and
giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deep-toned ding-dong-dong, ding-
dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat. As he drew near, he slackened speed, took the
middle of the street, leaned far over to starboard and rounded to ponderously and with laborious
pomp and circumstance—for he was personating the Big Missouri, and considered himself to be
drawing nine feet of water. He was boat and captain and engine-bells combined, so he had to
imagine himself standing on his own hurricane-deck giving the orders and executing them:

"Stop her, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling!" The headway ran almost out, and he drew up slowly toward
the sidewalk.

"Ship up to back! Ting-a-ling-ling!" His arms straightened and stiffened down his sides.

"Set her back on the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow! ch-chow-wow! Chow!" His right
hand, mean-time, describing stately circles—for it was representing a forty-foot wheel.
 "Let her go back on the labboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ch-chow-chow!" The left hand
began to describe circles.

"Stop the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Stop the labboard! Come ahead on the stabboard! Stop
her! Let your outside turn over slow! Ting-a-ling- ling! Chow-ow-ow! Get out that head-line!
LIVELY now! Come—out with your spring-line—what're you about there! Take a turn round
that stump with the bight of it! Stand by that stage, now—let her go! Done with the engines, sir!
Ting-a-ling-ling! SH'T! S'H'T! SH'T!" (trying the gauge-cocks).

Tom went on whitewashing—paid no attention to the steamboat. Ben stared a moment and
then said: "Hi-YI! YOU'RE up a stump, ain't you!"

No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the

eye of an artist, then he gave his brush another gentle
sweep and surveyed the result, as before. Ben ranged
up alongside of him. Tom's mouth watered for the
apple, but he stuck to his work. Ben said:

"Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?"

7
Tom wheeled suddenly and said:

"Why, it's you, Ben! I warn't noticing."

"Say—I'm going in a-swimming, I am. Don't you wish you could? But of course you'd druther
WORK—wouldn't you? Course you would!"

Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said:

"What do you call work?"

"Why, ain't THAT work?"

Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly:

"Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. All I know, is, it suits Tom

Sawyer." "Oh come, now, you don't mean to let on that you LIKE it?"

The brush continued to move.

"Like it? Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a
fence every day?"

That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily
back and forth—stepped back to note the effect—added a touch here and there—criticised the
effect again—Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more
absorbed. Presently he said:

"Say, Tom, let ME whitewash a little."

Tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind:

"No—no—I reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly's awful particular about
this fence—right here on the street, you know—but if it was the back fence I wouldn't mind and
SHE wouldn't. Yes, she's awful particular about this fence; it's got to be done very careful; I
reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it's got to be
done."

"No—is that so? Oh come, now—lemme just try. Only just a little—I'd let YOU, if you was
me, Tom."

8
"Ben, I'd like to, honest injun; but Aunt Polly—well, Jim wanted to do it, but she wouldn't let
him; Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn't let Sid. Now don't you see how I'm fixed? If you was
to tackle this fence and anything was to happen to it—"

"Oh, shucks, I'll be just as careful. Now lemme try. Say—I'll give you the core of my

apple." "Well, here—No, Ben, now don't. I'm afeard—"

"I'll give you ALL of it!"

Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. And while the late
steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade
close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents.
There was no lack of material; boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but
remained to whitewash. By the time Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy
Fisher for a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat
and a string to swing it with—and so on, and so on, hour after hour. And when the middle of the
afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling
in wealth. He had besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a jews-harp, a
piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a
fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six fire
crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass door-knob, a dog-collar—but no dog—the handle of
a knife, four pieces of orange-peel, and a dilapidated old window sash.

He had had a nice, good, idle

time all the while—plenty of
company—and the fence had
three coats of whitewash on it!
If he hadn't run out of
whitewash he would have
bankrupted every boy in the
village.

Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great
law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a
thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise
9
philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of
whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to
do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a
tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are
wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on
a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they
were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.

The boy mused awhile over the substantial change which had taken place in his worldly
circumstances, and then wended toward headquarters to report.

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

1. What is your impression of Tom Sawyer in this chapter?

2. How is Tom’s low spirit made clear in the extract?

3. In what way does Tom succeed in making the other boys work for him and getting profit from
it?

4. Comment on the ‘great law of human action’ discovered by Tom on that Saturday.
 10
EARNEST HEMINGWAY

(1899 -1961)

Earnest Hemingway was born in Oakpark, a small town in the state of Illinois. As a boy he was
often taken on frequent hunting and fishing trips by his father to Michigan, the locale of many of
his stories, and where he soon got acquainted with the life of the Indians and such virtues as
courage and endurance, which were later revealed in his fiction.

After high school Hemingway worked as a newspaper reporter and then joined a volunteer
ambulance unit to take part in Word War I. After the war he came home a hero. He lived for
several years in Paris after that. He joined a group of expatriated American writers who
considered themselves a lost generation. In Paris he published "Three Stories and Ten Poems"
(1923) and "In Our Time" (1924) in which his own experiences of life are revealed, and which
brought him fame immediately. In 1926, the year he left Paris, he published "The Sun Also Rises"
that reflects the bitter feelings and the disillusionment of the so-called lost generation and their
escape in violent diversions they could think of. The year 1929 was marked by the publishing of
his famous novel "A Farewell to Amts" that stresses the necessity to attain moral courage to live
and face the social chaos. From 1928 to 1938 the writer lived in Florida. He traveled a lot to
France and Spain. His two volumes of short stories were produced during this period: "Men
Without Woman" (1927) and "Winner Take Nothing" (1933). "Death in the Afternoon" (1932) and
"Green Hills of Africa" (1935) that respectively describe bullfighting in Spain and big-game
fighting in Africa. Belonging also to the most prominent short stories of his are "The Short Happy
Life of Francis Macabre" (1936) and "The Snow of Kilimanjaro" (1936).

11
Hemingway's social novel "To Have and Have Not" (1937) illustrates the antagonism between the
rich and the poor. "The Fifth Column" (1937) was written in the same line that denounces the
fascist regime in Spain. In 1940, he completed the novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls". It tells the
story of a young American teacher who thinks it is his duty to fight against the fascist regime in
Spain and becomes a friend of the Spanish partisans in the devotion of his own life to the cause of
freedom.

During World War II he was a correspondent in the East, and then in 1942 - 1944, he helped to
maintain the antisubmarine cordon in American and Cuban waters.

In the 40s and 50s Hemingway published little. In 1950 came his novel "Across the River and
into the Trees" related to World War I. His tale "The Old Man and the Sea" was finished in 1952.
For this story he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. This is the story of an old Cuban fisherman,
Santiago. He lives in a small hut by the seaside on the outskirts of La Havana. He is an poor old
man, skin and bone. After a long day fishing he can't catch a single fish. The other fishermen look
at him, tease him and laugh at him. However, he does not lose his heart, but he is firm in his
belief that one day he will have a big catch, big enough to match his former fame when he was
still young. And that day comes. He is at sea when it is still very early and waits till midday when
he manages to catch a big fish. It is a huge marline. The fish is so strong that it takes him three
days to struggle with it. He manages to kill it at last. The fish is longer than his skiff and is about
seven tons. He feels very pleased with himself. But as soon as he is about to relax after very hard
days, sharks sense the smell of blood and begin to attack the fish. He exhausts himself fighting
with the sharks, he kills many of them and saves the fish, but now only a bare skeleton. He is
tired but feels ever better. He does not consider himself defeated. He says "Man is not made for
defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated." The tale is a hymn to human courage and
endurance.

Hemingway is known to have left some works unfinished. Among them are "Dangerous
Summer" (1960) and "Islands in the Stream" (1970).

In 1954 Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. In his speech of acceptance read
by the American ambassador in Stockholm, Hemingway summed his philosophy outlook. He
wrote: "...Things may not be immediately discernible what a man writes, and in this he is
sometimes fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy
that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten." Hemingway is a democrat and humanist. He has
devoted his whole life to the struggle against fascism and wars. Seeing the horrors and sufferings
caused by the wars to the common people, he wrote in his "Man at War", a collection of war
stories

12
(1942), that it (World War I) had been ."the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that
has ever taken on Earth". He took part in World War I, the Spanish Civil War and World War II
in order to see the real nature of wars. He believed that all those who "stand to profit by war and
who help to provoke war should be shot on the first day it starts." Hemingway was one of the first
to learn against the fatal danger of fascism. For him fascism means war first of all. He said:
"There is only one form of government that cannot produce good writers, and that system is
fascism. For fascism is a lie told by bullies. A writer who will not lie cannot live and work under
fascism."

Hemingway considered arts and literature as having an important role in the world. He highly
appreciated the role of the writers. In comparing a writer to a well he stressed the knowledge, the
experience, the talent, the conscience and the discipline of the writer. He said that all these taken
together were to "prevent faking". As for the importance of truth in fiction he wrote, "A writer's
problem does not change. He himself changes and the world he lives in, changes but his problems
remain the same. It is always how to write truly and, having found what is true, to project it in
such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it", and "a writer's job
is to tell the truth." Hemingway's style of writing is striking. His sentences are short, his words
are simple. Yet they are often filled with emotion. A careful reading can show us furthermore that
he is a master of the pause. That is, if we look closely, we see how the action of his stories
continues during the silences, during the time his characters say nothing. This action is often full
of meaning. There are times when the most powerful effect comes from restraint. Such times
occur in Hemingway's fiction. He perfected the art of conveying emotions with few words.
Hemingway is a classicist in his restraint and understatement. He believes that the strongest effect
comes with an economy of means.

The language of Hemingway's work is bare simplicity; it is in keeping with the characters he
wanted to portray. It is surprising how he reveals the inner world of his personages in short
dialogues and colloquial phrases. Plain words in simple declarative sentences bring out the
sensations of the central characters and at the same time make the reader participate in the events
of the story.

Hemingway's style of writing follows the "theory of an iceberg" which means that the writer may
omit things that he knows he is writing about, and that if he writes truly the reader will have a
feeling of those things as strongly as the writer has tasted them. "The dignity of the movement of
an iceberg is due to only one eighth of it being above the water", he wrote.

13
 A Farewell to Arms (1929)

"A Farewell To Arms" is an anti – war novel in

which Hemingway
wanted to make the reader see war as a merciless
massacre of men
and woman and the senseless destruction of the
values created. It is
the story of an American lieutenant, Frederic
Henry, who serves in
an Italian ambulance corps during World War I. The novel falls into
five parts, each describes a different phase in Henry's adventures.
He falls in love with Catherine Barkley, a volunteer nurse from Great Britain. When he is
wounded she nurses him at the hospital. His convalescence is over, he returns to the front and
finds himself in an disorganized retreat. He deserts during the mass retreat, rejoining the girl he
loves, and they escape to Switzerland in a small boat over the lake of Maggiore. Their idyll
comes to an end when she dies in child - birth.

The plot is revealed in the famous concise Hemingway style where many detailed descriptions of
characters are omitted leaving room for full description of events. The reader is expected to follow
the events carefully and imagine the details for himself. Each personage is sketched with colourful
strokes using the-least number of words possible. It is the dialogues that disclose the characters in
full so that they can bee seen eventually in retrospect. "A Farewell To Arms " is often referred to
by literary critics as "a masterpiece of imaginative omissions"

The story is told in the first person, by Frederic Henry, the hero of the novel. The narration is the
mixture of feelings both sweet and bitter, the bitter feeling caused by the war and the sweet
feeling brought about by his love for the woman who bears his child. Frederic Henry is a former
student of architecture. He has dropped his studies and volunteered as an ambulance driver.
Frederic Henry is depicted here as one of the many who were made to believe when the war
broke out that their participation in the war was patriotism” and that their sacrifice was not in
vain". Soon, however, sufferings and misfortunes sobered the young generation. They came to
realize the aimlessness and the senselessness of their fighting and questioned themselves what
and whose interest they were fighting for. Henry, too, becomes to be aware of the terrible
difference between words and deeds.

14
Catherine Barkley, the girl Henry loves, goes to the front with her fiancé. She nurses the silly
idea that one day the boy might come to the hospital where she works with a saber cut, or a
bandage round his head, or a shot through the shoulder. But he never does. He is killed. She says
to Henry; "He didn't have the saber cut. They blew him all to bits." The couple is called by
Hemingway his Romeo and Juliet. They are happy. But in the sea of trouble, they are alone and
their happiness cannot last long.

A certain mood felt in the novel which later to become Hemingway's chief lyric motif: that is a
moral advantage in defeat. Man may be trampled by war, man may die, but the proud spirit of
man cannot be conquered. Hemingway's heroes do not panic in the face of disaster.

"A Farewell To Arms" is still read and admired by many generations to come.

The following chapter describes the first meeting of Frederic Henry with Catherine Barkley, to
whom he is introduced by an Italian, Rinaldi.

CHAPTER 4

The battery in the next garden woke me in the morning and I saw the sun coming through the
window and got out of the bed. I went to the window and looked out. The gravel paths were
moist and the grass was wet with dew. The battery fired twice and the air came each time like a
blow and shook the window and made the front of my pajamas flap. I could not see the guns but
they were evidently firing directly over us. It was a nuisance to have them there but it was a
comfort that they were no bigger. As I looked out at the garden I heard a motor truck starting on
the road. I dressed, went downstairs, had some coffee in the kitchen and went out to the garage.
Ten cars were lined up side by side under the long shed. They were top-heavy, blunt-nosed
ambulances, painted grey and built like moving vans. The mechanics were working on one out in
the yard. Three others were up in the mountains at dressing stations.

"Do they ever shell that battery?" I asked one of the mechanics.

"No, Signor Tenente'. It is protected by the little hill."

"How's every thing?"

"Not so bad. This machine is no good but the others march." He stopped working and smiled.
"Were you on permission ?"

15
"Yes."
He wiped his hands on his jumper and grinned. "You have a good time?" The others all grinned
too.

"Fine," I said. "What's the matter with this machine?"

"It's no good. One thing after another."

"What's the matter now?"

"New rings."

I left them working, the car looking disgraced and empty with the engine open and parts spread
on the work-bench, and went in under the shed and looked at each of the other cars. They were
moderately clean, a few freshly washed, others dusty. I looked at the tyres carefully, looking for
cuts and stone bruises. Everything seemed in good condition. It evidently made no difference
whether I was there to look after things or not. I had imagined that the condition of the cars,
whether or not things were obtainable, the smooth functioning of the business of removing the
wounded and sick from the dressing stations, hauling them back from the mountains to the
clearing station and then distributing them to the hospitals named on their papers, depended to a
considerable extent on myself. Evidently it did not matter whether I was there or not.

"Has there been any trouble getting parts?" I asked the sergeant mechanic.

"No, Signor Tenente."

"Where is the gasoline park now?"

"At the same place."

"Good," I said and went back to the house and drank another bowl of coffee at the mess table. The
coffee was a pale gray and sweet with condensed milk. Outside the window it was a lovely spring
morning. There was that beginning of a feeling of dryness in the nose that meant the day would be
hot later on. That day I visited the posts in the mountains and was back in town late in the
afternoon.

The whole thing seemed to run better while I was away. The offensive was going to start again I
heard. The division for which we worked were to attack at a place up the river and the major told
me that I would see about the posts for during the attack. The attack would cross the river up
above the narrow gorge and spread up the hillside. The posts for the cars would have to be as
near the

16
river as they could get and keep covered. They would, of course, be selected by the infantry but
we were supposed to work it out. It was one of those things that gave you a false feeling of
soldiering.

I was very dusty and dirty and went up to my room to wash. Rinaldi was sitting on the bed with a
copy of Hugo's English grammar. He was dressed, wore his black boots, and his hair shone.

"Splendid," he said when he saw me. "You will come with me to see Miss Barkley."

"No." .

Yes. You will please come and make a good impression on her.

"All right. Wait till I get cleaned up"

"Wash up and come as you are"

I washed, brushed my hair and we started

"Wait a minute," Rinaldi said. "Perhaps we should have a drink." He opened his trunk and took
out a bottle.

"Not Strega," I said.

"No, Grappa."

"All right."

He poured two glasses and we touched them, first fingers extended. The grappa was very

strong. "Another?"

"All right." I said. We drank the second grappa, Rinaldi put away the bottle and we went down
the stairs. It was hot walking through the town but the sun was starting to go down and it was
very pleasant. The British hospital was a big villa built by Germans before the war. Miss Barkley
was in the garden. Another nurse was with her. We saw their white uniforms through the trees
and walked
toward them, Rinaldi saluted. I saluted too but more moderately.

"How do you do?" Miss Barkley said. "You are not an Italian, are you?"

"Oh, no."

Rinaldi was talking with the other nurse. They were laughing.

"What an odd thing - to be in the Italian army."

"It's not really the army. It's only the ambulance."

17
"It's very odd though. Why did you do it?"

"I don't know," I said. "There isn't always an explanation for everything."

"Oh, isn't there? I was brought up to think there was".

"That's awfully nice."

"Do we have to go on and talk this way?"

"No," I said.

"That's a relief. Isn't it?"

"What is the stick?" I asked. Miss Barkley was quite tall. She wore what seemed to me to be a
nurse's uniform, was blond and had a tawny skin and gray eyes. I thought she was very beautiful.
She was carrying a thin rattan stick like a toy ridding - crop, bound in leather.

"It belonged to a boy who was killed last year."

"I'm awfully sorry."

"He was a very nice boy. He was going to marry me and he was killed in the

Somme." "It was a ghastly show"

"Were you there?"

"No."

"I've heard about it," she said. "There's not really any war of that sort down here. They sent me
the little stick. His mother sent it to me. They returned it with his things."

"Had you been engaged long?"

"Eight years. We grew up together."

"And why didn't you marry?"

"I don't know," she said. "I was a fool not to. I could have given him that anyway. But I thought it
would be bad for him."

"I see".

"Have you ever loved any one?"

"No," I said.

18
We sat down on a bench and I looked at her.
"You have beautiful hair", I said.

"Do you like it?"

"Very much."

"I was going to cut it all off when he died."

"I wanted to do something for him. You see I didn't care about the other thing and he could have
had it all. He could have had any thing he wanted if I would have known. I would have married
him or anything. I know all about it now. But then he wanted to go to war and I didn't know."

I did not say any thing.

"I didn't know about any thing then. I thought it would be worse for him. I thought perhaps he
couldn't stand it and then of course he was killed and that was the end of it."

"I don't know."

"Oh, yes," she said. "That's the end of it."

We looked at Rinaldi talking with the other nurse.

What is her name?"

"Ferguson. Helen Ferguson. Your friend is a doctor, isn't he?"

"Yes, he's very good."

"That's splendid. You rarely find any one any good this close to the front. This is close

to the front, isn't it?"

"Quite."

"It's a silly front," she said. "But it's very beautiful. Are they going to have an offensive?"

"Yes." "Then we'll have to work. There's no work now."

"Have you done nursing long?"

"Since the end of `fifteen. I started when he did. I remember having a silly idea he might come to
the hospital where I was. With a sabre cut, I suppose, and a bandage around his head. Or shot
through the shoulder. Some thing picturesque."

"This is the picturesque front," I said.

19
"Yes," she said. "People can't realize what France is like. If they did, it couldn't all go on. He
didn't have a sabre cut. They blew him all to bits."
I didn't say any thing.

"Do you suppose it will always go on?"

"What's to stop it?"

"It will crack somewhere."

"We'll crack. We'll crack in France. They can't go on doing things like the Somme and not

crack." "They won't crack here," I said

"You think not?"

"No, they did very well last Summer."

"They may crack," she said. "Anybody may crack."

"The Germans, too."

"No," she said. "I think not."

We went over toward Rinaldi and Miss Ferguson. "You love Italy?" Rinaldi asked

Miss Ferguson in English. "Quite well."

"No understand," Rinaldi shook his head. "A bbastanz bene," I translated. He shook his

head. "That is not good. You love England?"

"Not too well. I'm Scotch, you see."

Rinaldi looked at me blankly.

"She's Scotch, so she loves Scotland better than England," I said in Italian.

"But Scotland is England." I translated this for Miss Ferguson.

"Pas encore," said Miss Ferguson.

"Not really?"

"Never. We do not like the English."

"Not like the English? Not like Miss Barkley?"

"Oh, that's different.. You mustn't take everything so literally."

20
After a while we said good-night and left. Walking home Rinaldi said, "Miss Barkley prefers you
to me. That is very clear. But the little Scotch one is very nice."

"Very," I said. I had not noticed her. "You like her?"

"No," said Rinaldi.

Notes

1. Tenente (Italian): lieutenant

2. to be on permission: to be on leave

3. Somme: river in France, field of the battle

4. pas encore: no more

. QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

1. How did the World Wars and Civil War in Spain affect Hemingway as a humanist and a
writer?

2. Give a short account of the novel "A Farewell to Arms"

3. Characterise the hero and heroine of the novel.

4. What are the characters' attitudes towards wars?

5. Prove that Henry has a great sense of duty.

6. What are the features of the language used by the characters in the conversation at the end of
the chapter?

7. What is the famous concise in Hemingway's style?

21