In another country” by Ernest Hamingway. “Was the major brave? Why do you think so?

“In another country” takes place in the post-war period, though soldiers in the story say the war hasn’t actually ended for them. War itself brings out different views, interpretations and understandings. Some people deem it the most terrible evil in the world, some say that it is “necessary evil”, some say it is an integral part of human life and sometimes the only way of regulating global affairs. To put in in a simple way war has those who command and those who fight. And those who fight change forever, value life the most and know what a genuine fear is. One of these men is the major in the story whom the war got through terrible things. One of his hands withered as a result of being on war and his young wife died. His inability to resign with his wife’s death led him to emotional outbursts and tears, the things a strong soldier wouldn’t allow for himself. And yet that was not a psychic breakdown or an exposure to fear. He might not have believed in courage and bravery and saw a common sense in closing off those dear and close to him from the horrors of war, but he, may be even deliberately and without realizing it, demonstrated great courage to the soldiers, to the narrator and to the reader by distancing himself from his young bride for the time of war (condemning himself to temporary solitude and depriving himself of happiness) and marring her only after being decommissioned. His views that a man must go to war only after finding and taking with himself something he can not loose and expose to danger make him truly a brave man.