Toward a better understanding of Nicholas Adams in Hemingway's "A Way You'll Never Be".

Knodt, Ellen Andrews

Although Ernest Hemingway chose "A Way You'll Never Be" as one of the stories that he "liked the best," the judgment of both the story and its protagonist, Nicholas Adams, has widely varied since the story was published in 1933. Examining the history of the Italian front in World War I as well as investigating current literary, biographical, and scientific information provides new insights into Nick Adams's character and leads to a fuller understanding of his experience on his return to Fossalta di Piave and in turn an increased appreciation for the story.

KEY WORDS: World War I, Bicycles, Wounding, Trauma "After You, Baroness!"

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Ernest Hemingway selected "A Way You'll Never Be" as one of seven stories that he "liked the best" (CSS 3), but reviewers and critics from 1933 on have often disagreed with his judgment. Sample critical opinion includes T. S. Matthews's 1933 review in The New Republic characterizing Winner Take Nothing (1933), the volume containing "A Way You'll Never Be," as Hemingway's "oversimplified bachelor values of wartime"(24). In the 1960s, Earl Rovit finds that "obvious hysteria ... fails to create a meaningful tension" (qtd. in R Smith 274), and Arthur Waldhorn concludes that "A Way You'll Never Be" is "technically one of Hemingway's weakest stories" (64). On the other hand, James Nagel (1989) calls the story "one of [Hemingway's] finest" (Hemingway in Love and War 265), and Paul Smith (1989) concludes that the "critical history of A Way You'll Never Be,'... is something of an embarrassment ....[the story] deserves a place among Hemingway's major stories. One of his most original, even daring fictions, its challenge has yet to be met" (275).

Recent scholarship has revived interest in "A Way You'll Never Be," particularly examining the character of Nick Adams, but critics' opinions of Nick Adams also vary widely and have lead to inaccurate judgments of the story. (1) This examination of the historical record of the World War I Italian front on the Piave River (the setting of the story), as well as literary, biographical, and scientific information that has come to light recently provides new perspectives on understanding Nick Adams's character and in turn on interpretations of the story.

The historical context of the Italian front on the Piave River in World War I helps readers understand the appearance of Nicholas Adams and his mission as the story opens. Without such knowledge, readers may not be able to follow the subtle depiction of Nick's mental condition until his fragile hold on rationality dissolves in a burst of stream-of-conscious dialogue and thoughts out of which he suddenly realizes the key to his nightmare images. The first paragraph of "A Way You'll Never Be" plunges the reader into a narrative of what has happened on a recent battlefield and introduces Nick as an objective observer coming upon the scene after the attack: "The attack had gone across the field, been held up by machine-gun fire from the sunken road and ... Nicholas Adams saw what had happened by the position of the dead" (CSS 306). As the story begins, readers don't know why Nick is on a battlefield or who he is. The believability of Nicks character and the validity of his observations are crucial to a reader's interpretation of him. But the fact that Nick is riding a bicycle while making his battlefield observations has led to an inaccurate assessment of his character: "As the story opens, he is riding--incongruously, absurdly--a bicycle across the scene of recent battle.... [and Nick m]ost of all wants to prove his personal worth, his manhood" (Flora, "Nick Adams in Italy" 191). Juxtaposing these two statements characterizes Nick as juvenile--a kid riding his bike where he really has no business being. Such an image then can affect readers' understanding of Nick from the very beginning of the story. If Nick is not seen as a serious observer in the opening paragraphs, readers may dismiss many of his more complicated and confusing statements later.

Though seemingly incongruous with the devastation of a battlefield, bicycles were well-established vehicles of wartime by World War I. Jim Fitzpatrick's extensive examination The Bicycle in Wartime (1998) details the advantages of "mounted infantry" proving "its worth in warfare during the Boer War of 1899-1902" (2). Fitzpatrick notes, "In World War I bicycles were used in immense numbers" and that in spite of technological advances, continued to be used in wars from World War II in Germany and the Far East to wars against the French and Americans in Vietnam (2). The advantage of bicycles in combat was their speed (over marching by foot), ease of use (especially once the folding bicycle was invented), and no need for provisions as required for horses (Fitzpatrick).

In 1918 Italy, bicycles were common at the front and indeed were even used by combat troops. Battalions of marksmen called Bersaglieri with distinctive plumes of feathers on combat helmets fought in June 1918 on the Piave (Hemingway's and Nick's front). According to British historian G. M. Trevelyan, "The Bersaglieri ciclisti were hurried up on their 'push bikes' along the lanes to the threatened spot time after time, and never in vain" (212-13). Fitzpatrick remarks that the Bersaglieri were "rugged, heavy mountaineers, solidly built and strong ... since they had to be able to carry both their field pack and 35-pound folding Bianchi machines over rough ground and steep slopes.... In 1918, fast-riding Bersaglieri units were among the first to re-occupy Venetia as the Austro-Hungarians evacuated it" (104).

The Hemingway Room at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library recently displayed a Bersaglieri medal from Hemingway's World War I collection, and Hemingway himself bicycled to the front with his supplies of cigarettes, chocolate, and postcards for the troops (Baker 44). Steven Florczyk's 2013 study of Hemingway's service in The Red Cross mentions his riding a bicycle to the front lines, accompanied by a photo of young Hemingway on his bike from the Hemingway Collection in the JFK Library. Florczyk explains that Nick's "route [in "A Way You'll Never Be"] is virtually identical to that which Ernest would have taken from Fornaci through Fossalta di Piave to the frontlines" and that "Nick's observations on the aftermath of battle parallel what Hemingway could have witnessed along the same journey" (113). The historical and biographical record supports Nick's travel by bicycle to the front lines and gives credence to his observations.

Though readers do not yet know the reason for Nick's journey to the battle area, looking carefully at Nick's observations may provide clues to understanding his situation. That is, what he observes reveals his own state of mind; the "initial scene is therefore an objective correlative of Nick's own inner state" (Lamb 160). Nick observes the battleground carefully and clinically, extensively cataloging the bodies' positions and the debris of battle. Tellingly, the third-person narration from Nicholas Adams's perspective uses the word "scattered" four times in less than two pages to describe the "papers," "letters," the other "material," the pistol "shells," and the "propaganda postcards" that he observes on the battlefield still strewn with the dead bodies of the Austrians and Italians, "swollen ... all alike regardless of nationality" (CSS 306-07). Hemingway's use of "scattered" sets up Nick's own scattered consciousness as the story progresses. Nick's later thoughts clarify this connection between his observations and his mental state: "That was why he noticed everything in such detail to keep it all straight so he would know just where he was ..." (CSS 311). Nick's observations in the beginning of the story are a way for him to focus his attention when his mind, as readers notice later, is often as scattered as the battlefield debris.

It becomes evident that Nick has not been in this area for some time (but readers are not yet told why): "It was all very lush and over-green since he had seen it last. .." (CSS 307). Florczyk notes that this observation too "coincides with aspects of the battle zone during June of 1918" (113) and again establishes Nick's credibility as an observer. Soon, however, Nick's battlefield observations are interrupted by "a young second lieutenant with a stubble of beard and red-rimmed, very blood-shot eyes" who points a "pistol at him" (CSS 307). Nick's poised and assertive treatment of the threatening lieutenant establishes a sense of authority, rather than youthful inadequacy. (2) Nick recalls that as he "had left the edge of the town three shrapnel had burst high and to the right" (CSS 308), denoting an active battle zone, and that "the face of this officer looked like the face of a man during a bombardment" (CSS 308), a man on edge. He makes Nick "very nervous" with his pistol and his threat ("If I thought you were a spy I would shoot you now"), but Nick tells him "to put it away" and talks him down with his connection to Captain (now acting Major) Paravicini, "Come on ... Let us go to the battalion" (CSS 308). Nick's careful descriptions of the battle scene and his deflection of the lieutenant's threat at the beginning of the story help to establish him as a trustworthy character.

When Paravicini greets him, readers first become aware that Nick's return to the front is under unusual circumstances, which requires another explanation of the historical context of the story:

"Hello.... I didn't know you. What are you doing in that uniform?"

"They've put me in it," ...

"Are you attached to the regiment?"

"No, I am supposed to move around and let them see the uniform."

"How odd."

"If they see one American uniform that is supposed to make them believe others are coming." (CSS 308)

Several readers cite this exchange as evidence that "the official reason for Nick's daylight visit to the front lines simply doesn't hold up under inspection" (Johnston 430). Kenneth Johnston assumes that when Nick answers Paravicini's question that the "they" refers to the "doctors assigned to Nick's case" (430). Johnston further concludes from this that Nick's visit is "therapeutic ... to boost Nick's morale" (430). Paul Quick too characterizes Nick's mission as "specious" and "questionable" (31) as does Joseph DeFalco (119) because Nick is not wearing the usual uniform and has no supplies.

Though the reason for his mission does seem "odd," as Paravicini says, there is no evidence of doctors' decisions determining his mission. In Hemingway's earlier pencil manuscript (Folder 746a, JFK), which is a different version of the story, Nick's mission is the same, to show the American uniform, but Nick in the earlier manuscript has not been wounded, so no doctors would have been involved. Nick is simply returning with the mission to show the American uniform. In both the earlier and the later published versions, Nick feels embarrassed showing up in the unusual uniform and without supplies:

"But how will they know it is an American uniform?"

"You will tell them."

"Oh. Yes, I see. I will send a corporal with you to show you about and you will make a tour of the lines." ...

"I'm supposed to have my pockets full of cigarettes and postal cards and such things.... I should have a musette full of chocolate.

These I should distribute with a kind word and a pat on the back.

But there weren't any cigarettes and postcards and no chocolate.

So they said to circulate around anyway."

"I'm sure your appearance will be very heartening to the troops."

"I wish you wouldn't." Nick said. "I feel badly enough about it as it is." (CSS 308-09)

Though the dialogue between the two seems jocular and sarcastic with Paravicini's dry wit underscoring the absurdity of Nick's orders, Nick's embarrassment over his mission would hardly be therapeutic for him. So what is the historical context for Nick's appearing at the front in an American uniform which apparently no one has seen before?

As "odd" as it seems (to use Paravicini's apt characterization), Americans did conduct elaborate and absurd-sounding "shows" of the uniform in July 1918 in the same area and time as Hemingway's and Nick's volunteer service. Official accounts of the U.S. Army in Italy report such a mission for the 332nd Infantry Regiment, 83rd Division: In order "to build up Italian morale ... the regiment ... moved to Treviso, behind the Piave River Front [and] ... staged a series of marches in which each battalion, with different articles of uniform and equipment, left the city by a separate road, circulated in daylight hours in exposed positions for both the Italians and Austrians to see, and returned after nightfall to its station in Treviso in as inconspicuous a manner as possible" (American Armies 430).

Though it is unknown if Red Cross volunteers were tasked with such "shows" of American uniforms, they were, according to Florczyk, supposed to serve "as American representatives ... in terms of boosting morale" (65). Florczyk also documents that provisions for the troops were in short supply during the June and July 1918 offensive (67). Nick's comments as he leaves Fossalta at the end of the story reinforce the fact that he was sent on a real mission (though his choice of location was personal): Paravicini tells Nick, "I think it would be better if you didn't come up to the line until you had those supplies," and Nick responds, "I know it's silly ... It wasn't my idea. I heard the brigade was here so I thought I would see you or someone else I knew. I could have gone to Zenzon or to San Dona" ... (CSS 313). Given all the evidence, it is more reasonable to conclude that Nick's mission is just what he says it is, and believing this is important to an interpretation of Nick's character as a serious person on an actual, even if "odd," mission.

Aside from the historical context of Nick's purpose for his journey to Fossalta, readers' assessments of Nick's character also hinge on their understanding of his physical and mental condition, which up to this point in the story has only been suggested by the use of the word "scattered." As Nick and Paravicini's conversation turns from his mission, their dialogue provides more information about Nick's past service with the brigade, specifically about his reputation in combat attacks. As the two reminisce about past attacks, they talk about drinking grappa, and Paravicini says:

"You know I never knew you were drunk until you started talking coming back in the camions."

"I was stinking in every attack."

"I can't do it. I took it in the first show, the very first show, and it only made me very upset and then frightfully thirsty."

"You don't need it."

"You're much braver in an attack than I am." (CSS 309; my emphasis)

Nick disagrees with Paravicini and says, "No, I know how I am and I prefer to get stinking. I'm not ashamed of it." But a few lines later Nick shows that perhaps he is ashamed of feeling fear and says, "Let's not talk about how I am" (CSS 309).

With his remark about Nick's bravery, Paravicini tells readers that whatever the fears that induce Nick to fortify himself with grappa, he is no coward. That distinction is also made in the earlier pencil manuscript (Folder 746a, p. 23-24, JFK) which shows Nick exposing himself to mortar fire in a bombardment. The distinction between feeling fear during the attacks and not being a coward in action helps readers make sense of Nick's later stream-of-consciousness episodes as he tries to nap in the dugout. Some critics (3) have equated fear with cowardice, but separating the emotion of fear from any subsequent act of cowardice is an important distinction in evaluating Nick's character. As Nick lies down on Para's bunk, he recalls helping Para calm down some recruits who succumbed to "hysterics during the bombardment before the attack" (CSS 310). Nick recalls his own fear, "wearing his own chin strap tight across his mouth to keep his lips quiet" (CSS 310), but the implication is that he carried out Para's orders and therefore did not allow his fear to make him a coward.

The way Nick and Paravicini speak to each other also plays a role in understanding Nick's character. Para and Nick use British expressions ("stinking" for "drunk," "frightfully thirsty," and "bloody" as an expletive later), leaving some critics to characterize Nick as a poseur: "In this story punctuated with ironies and oddness, the Italian Paravicini speaks a British idiom, and Nick himself often affects British speech. His is not the language of a young man from the American Midwest" (Flora, "Nick Adams in Italy," 195). The Italian Paravicini likely learned his English from British speakers either in school or during the war. British ambulance units were in Italy as early as 1915, and British and French troops came to Italy after Caporetto and were there in 1918 when Hemingway served in the Red Cross (Trevelyan 212-13). Also my own work on letters from American "doughboys" found that many adopted British expressions in their letters home (Knodt). Comments on Nick's speech may seem trivial, but if his image is that of a person dressed in a makeshift uniform, visiting the front lines on no official mission, behaving cowardly in combat, and speaking in an affected way, he becomes a foolish, even reprehensible, figure. On the other hand, if readers believe that Nick is a keen observer, on an official mission, worthy of Paravicini's respect for his bravery in attacks, then readers may realize that his later irrational outbursts and rambling stream-of-conscious thoughts may signal Nick's serious damage from his brain injury and raise tensions about his ability to recover.

Several critics have questioned the nature of Nick's physical and mental condition, and much of their discussion conflates Nick's condition with that of Ernest Hemingway's following his wounding near Fossalta in 1918. Understandably, the general similarity of circumstances invites comparison between the condition of the author and the character. Some readers seem to be reacting negatively to Phillip Young's traumatic wound theory. As Jackson Benson explains, Young's theory of "the trauma of the author's wounding during World War I and its inexorable repetition for the author, expressed in the ordeal of one central character after another has been more influential than any other perspective on the Hemingway canon" (350). Benson concludes that "Hemingway underwent trauma when he was wounded, but it does not seem to have been as deep or as long-lasting in its effects as the trauma that his characters undergo.... Indeed, he seems to have had rather a good time in the hospital after the severe pain was over and to some extent regretted having to leave" (351). William Adair cites Benson, Michael Reynolds, Kenneth Lynn, and Paul Smith as evidence for "[t]he general opinion now is that Hemingway did not suffer a traumatic wound." And he asserts, "Nor is there any good reason or story-explaining necessity to think that Nick has been traumatically wounded" (586).

Evidence both from Hemingway's biography and Nick's experience as narrated in "A Way You'll Never Be," as well as recent scientific information, calls into question these conclusions. Michael Reynolds reports that on Hemingway's return from war he read about "shell shock" or "neurasthesia" in his father's medical journals, but Reynolds says that Hemingway denied much impact, "Maybe he had neurasthesia [sic].... But the more Hemingway read, the less he thought he had it. If he did, he did not have it bad, except a little maybe in the night" (47). Hemingway's early self-diagnosis concludes that he had shell-shock "a little" and classically "in the night." However, in a 1929 letter to Owen Wister, Hemingway acknowledges that he suffered a concussion and its effects: "In 19191 had ... after effects of concussion of brain couldn't sleep, etc." (Letters vol. 3, 537-38), which directly indicates effects of a brain trauma. Recent medical information corroborates what Hemingway felt and knew through his experience: "People with PTSD [Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, what shell-shock now is called] tend to relive their trauma when they try to sleep, which keeps their brains in a heightened state of alertness" (Brody D5). Neuroscientists studying concussions, especially those caused by blast waves, have been surprised by the damage to the brain, resulting in Traumatic Brain Injury and PTSD, even if no visible wound results (Alexander).

Perhaps an unpublished Hemingway story written (presumably in 1918 but undated) on American Red Cross stationery with Milano listed as the location (Folder 604, JFK) may reveal the author's view of the trauma a character named Nick (not named Adams here) has undergone. The manuscript "Nick lay in bed in the hospital" shows a wounded Nick who takes a bottle of "bichloride" from his bedside table and "shove[s] it under the bed clothes" (II). A nurse (addressed as "Sister") misses the bottle of "bichloride" and returns to Nick's room and asks him if he knows where it is. Nick lies and says that he doesn't. He then takes out two medals--one silver, one bronze (III)--and reads the citations. They cite Nick's bravery by fighting with a wounded left arm, receiving two more wounds by machine gun fire, and one more in the legs by a trench mortar (III). The story fragment ends: "Nick folded the paper and smiled a crooked smile, 'That counterfeit dollar represents my legs, and that tin cross is my left arm.' 'I had a rendezvous with Death'--but Death broke the date and now it's all over. God double crossed me."

Here is young Ernest Hemingway recovering from leg wounds, writing about a Nick who has hidden a bottle of "bichloride"---no purpose specifically mentioned. But mercury bichloride, an antiseptic no longer in use because of toxic mercury poisoning, if ingested could be fatal. Putting together the remark at the end of the fragment and the hiding of poison, it appears that this Nick is contemplating suicide and may suggest the trauma suffered by the later Nick in "A Way You'll Never Be."

A 1959 unpublished recollection of Hemingway's 1918 wounding and what he calls "damage" links directly to "A Way You'll Never Be":

It is very bad for writers to be hit on the head too much. Sometimes you lose months when you should have and perhaps would have worked well but sometimes a long time after the memory of the sensory distortions of these woundings will produce a story which, while not justifying the temporary cerebral damage, will palliate it. "A Way You'll Never Be" was written at Key West, Florida, some fifteen years after the damage it depicts, both to a man, a village and a countryside, had occurred." ("The Art of the Short Story" qtd. in Flora Ernest Hemingway 138-39)

Hemingway's remark about the "sensory distortions" that a head wound may produce is especially relevant to Nick's story and consistent with recent scientific discoveries.

In "A Way You'll Never Be," Nick's trauma symptoms are gradually revealed, first as he talks with Paravicini and then as Nick lies down on Para's bunk. After their conversation about drinking before attacks, Para asks Nick, "How are you really," and Nick says, "I'm fine. I'm perfectly all right" (CSS 309). Paravicini is skeptical and repeats, "No, I mean really," and Nick replies, "I'm all right. I can't sleep without a light of some sort. That's all I have now" (CSS 309).

Paravicini then asserts that Nick's head wound "should have been trepanned" (CSS 310), i.e. opening holes or spaces in the skull to allow space for brain swelling. Nick says, "Well, they thought it was better to have it absorb, and that's what I got. What's the matter? I don't seem crazy to you, do I?" and further remarks, "It's a hell of a nuisance once they've had you certified as nutty" (CSS 310). This dialogue is the first time in the story that readers know what has happened to Nick, that he had been wounded, though readers may have sensed the reason why he has been away from the battalion. The discussion of his head wound and possible aftereffects immediately precedes the first of the stream-of-consciousness associations as Nick, following Para's suggestion, lies down on Para's bunk. These associations mix events in attacks with events in Paris before the war. As Ronald Smith examines Nick's symptoms, he compares them with the American Psychiatric Association's list of symptoms for PTSD and concludes that Nick exhibits all seven criteria for PTSD (45). The criteria are abbreviated here: "exposed to a traumatic event ... event is persistently reexperienced ... [as] images ..., hallucinations, ... flashbacks; inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma; difficulty falling or staying asleep, irritability or outbursts of anger; duration more than one month; impairment of social, occupational ... functioning" (R. Smith 47-48).

In his first attempt to nap, after Nick remembers helping Para with the new recruits despite his own fear (mentioned above), he has several other memories related to previous attacks, including his conviction that the battle may be futile because the soldiers "could not hold it [their military objective] when they took it" (CSS 310). Relevant to Nick's conversation with Para about drinking is Nick's memory of an attack when he was not drunk (that might have been even more disturbing to the young volunteer): "Making it cold, no time to get it ... making it cold up that slope the only time he hadn't done it stinking" (CSS 310). That incident leads to a memory of a horror experienced by wounded soldiers [and perhaps by Nick as a Red Cross volunteer] when the "teleferica [cable car used in mountain fighting] house burned ... and some of the wounded got down four days later and some did not get down, but we went up and we went back and we came down--we always came down" (CSS 310). Nick links the going up and down with taxi rides in Paris and other earlier memories (4) but soon focuses on "outside of Fossalta there was a low house painted yellow with willows all around it and a low stable and there was a canal, and he had been there a thousand times and never seen it, but it was there every night as plain as the hill, only it frightened him ... especially when the boat lay there quietly in the willows on the canal ..." (CSS 310-11).

The image of the yellow house occasions much comment since it features prominently in both of the sequences when Nick attempts to nap in Paravicinis battalion dugout and in what Frank Scafella rightly calls the "climax" of the story (182). First, the color yellow is assumed by many to connote cowardice: "the dreaded house, pointedly yellow, suggests ... cowardice" (Flora, "Nick Adams in Italy" 196, see also Johnston, Quick, Scafella). Though certainly the yellow house in Nicks nightmares frightens him (mentioned four times in two pages), Nick says pointedly that the image of "a house and a long stable and a canal" leaves him "soaking wet, more frightened than he had ever been in a bombardment" (CSS 311; my emphasis). As stated above, separating fear from cowardice is, I think, crucial to understanding the psychic trauma that Nick has been undergoing prior to this visit to Fossalta and to understanding the discovery he makes the second time he lies down on Paravicinis bunk in the dugout.

Other evidence internal and external to the story may suggest that yellow may just be a color--not necessarily synonymous with cowardice. The first mention of yellow in the text is that the holes made in houses in Fossalta are "some of them yellow-edged from the mustard gas" (CSS 307). And then the narrative reports Paravicinis smile "showing yellowed teeth" (CSS 309). Neither of these color references carry an association with cowardice. Carlos Baker notes that in his visit to Fossalta in 1965, an old citizen guiding him remarked that a low yellow house behind the dike had been there since 1918 (Life 648). (Of course, the old citizen may have been asked about yellow houses repeatedly by Hemingway searchers over the years, but just perhaps a yellow house is an actual yellow house.) Hemingway himself switched the color when he has Colonel Cantwell in Across the River and Into the Trees describe the same area (but not where he was wounded): "the swift flowing canal ... and the thick hedge beyond [where] he saw a low red farmhouse with a big barn" (23; my emphasis).

The yellow house plainly mystifies Nick as it also frightens him because "he had been there a thousand times and never seen it" (CSS 310). When he sits up from his first attempt to nap, he tries to make sense of this image:

He never dreamed about the front anymore but what frightened him so that he could not get rid of it was that long yellow house and the different width of the river. Now he was back here at the river, he had gone through the same town, and there was no house. Nor was the river that way. Then where did he go each night and what was the peril, and why would he wake, soaking wet, more frightened than he had ever been in a bombardment, because of a house and a long stable and a canal? (CSS 311)

For someone "certified as nutty," finding out that his nightmare image has no basis in reality has to be deeply disturbing.

Nicks subsequent conversation with "the adjutant, the signalers, and the two runners" (CSS 311) is nearly as disjointed as his naptime stream-of-consciousness. His description of the Americans who will follow him is significant because they will be all that he presumably feels he isn't: "Americans twice as large as myself, healthy, with clean hearts, sleep at night, never been wounded, never been blown up, never had their heads caved in, never been scared, don't drink.... (CSS 311; my emphasis). Between bouts of irrationality ("He felt it coming on now" CSS 311), Nick has flashes of rational behavior as when he belatedly realizes that the adjutant is a war veteran of an earlier battle and "puts out his hand," saying "It's quite something to have met you"(CSS 312).

But Nick's visit is going badly. His talk about the coming Americans in their brown uniforms "swarming like locusts" and then giving a lecture on using locusts as bait for fishing alarms the adjutant (CSS 312). Florczyk, in his study of Hemingway's service with the Red Cross, provides an illuminating historical connection about an idea of a "grasshopper bomb" to destroy enemy crops that appeared in the ambulance Section One newspaper (115). However, as Florczyk notes, Hemingway's fishing experience, familiar to readers of other stories, is most likely the source of Nick's analogy between the numbers of Americans headed to war and the locusts. The discussion of the numbers of American soldiers coming is part of Nick's mission to boost the morale of the Italian troops who need support. But Nick shows his loss of control again by getting distracted by his analogy between the brown uniforms the American soldiers will be wearing and the brown color of the locusts. He continues to refer to his uniform (also brown) as he discusses the use of the locusts for fishing, and then veers even more off-key as he parodies the small arms instructions soldiers receive, substituting the way one should catch the locusts with nets (CSS 312-13). This long passage is another stream-of-conscious one, this time while he is fully awake and talking to the adjutant. Readers, like the adjutant, sense that Nick is disturbed and not in control of his thoughts.

After the adjutant sends a runner to summon Paravicini, Para tells Nick that he must leave and not return without supplies (CSS 312-13). After mentioning three times that Nick felt himself losing control ("[h]e felt it coming on again. ... trying to hold it in.... could not stop it now"), Nick angrily insults his friend ("You can read and write, can't you"), but agrees to leave "in a little while" (CSS 313-14). In the above passages, Hemingway captures several of the symptoms of PTSD previously discussed: Nick recalls an event "persistently reexperienced ... [as] images ..., hallucinations, ... flashbacks"; he shows "irritability or outbursts of anger"; and he exhibits an obvious "impairment of social, occupational ... functioning" (R. Smith 47-48). Current scientific understanding of the effects of brain trauma and subsequent development of PTSD allows readers to have a clearer understanding of Nick's behavior, which Hemingway knew from his and others' experiences.

As Nick lies down once again, he has the revelation that solves the mystery of the yellow house and is the climax of the story--even if Nick does not acknowledge it to himself:

He shut his eyes, and in the place of the man with the beard who looked at him over the sights of the rifle, quite calmly before squeezing off, the white flash and clublike impact, on his knees, hot-sweet choking, coughing it onto the rock while they went past him, he saw a long, yellow house with a low stable and the river much wider than it was and stiller. (CSS 314)

Nick's memory had merged the image of the soldier who shot him with an image of the landscape that has frightened him, perhaps the "sensory distortion" that Hemingway described above as a consequence of a head wound, and a masterful literary depiction of the documented effects of brain trauma. Finally, at the end of his return to the front, the two images separate into the man that shot him and the landscape he has been seeing in his nightmares. Though Scafella views Nick as "cowardly" in the face of his own death, he recognizes the moment as a major breakthrough for Nick: "this time, for the first time, he has the house, in place of the Austrian soldier" (182-83). The separation of the two images marks the climax of the story because immediately upon recognizing the conjunction of the yellow house with the Austrian soldier, Nick announces, "Christ ... I might as well go" (CSS 314). Nick's behavior after this epiphany suggests a positive outcome for him as his previous confusion now abates. Nick now calmly discusses plans for returning with supplies; "If any supplies have come I'll bring them down tonight" (CSS 314). He reassures Paravicini that his spells have subsided; "I'm all right now for quite awhile. I had one then but it was easy. They're getting much better" (CSS 314). Nick rejects any help returning to Fornaci: "I'll send a runner with you," offers Paravicini. "I'd rather you didn't. I know the way," says Nick, who repeats after a second offer, "No, ... As a mark of confidence" (CSS 314). DeFalco agrees that Nick's discovery has enabled him now to move forward (119-20). As Nick leaves the front, the images are pleasant in contrast to his entrance into town: "the road would be shady once he had passed the canal ... and there were trees on both sides that had not been shelled at all" (CSS 314). The image of a nature that has not been disturbed by battle is reassuring compared to the images of the battlefield strewn with decaying bodies and the scattered debris of death that opened the story. This positive image may indicate that Nick's return to the scene of his wounding at Fossalta will have lasting positive effects on Nick's state of mind.

Though readers still may wonder about Nick's state of mind as his last words spoken to himself are "I don't want to lose the way to Fornaci" (CSS 315), William Boelhower, in his discussion of cycling and motion in Hemingway's fiction, views Nick's pedaling back to Fornaci under his own power as evidence that Nick is "able to force himself forward. Figuratively and literally, the bicycle allows him to move on ..." (65). Furthermore, Nick's acknowledgement as he leaves Fossalta that his memory of seeing a horse "cavalry regiment riding in the snow" did not happen in this place (CSS 314-15) may be a mark of improving sanity. For a man who earlier had to notice "everything in such detail to keep it all straight so he would know just where he was, ..." (CSS 311), he now appears to know where he is.

So why did Hemingway select the story as one of his favorites? And why should readers accept his judgment and perhaps see Nick in a different light than as he has often been portrayed, as callow and cowardly? Hemingway tried to write versions of this story for many years. In addition to the complete but quite different 746a manuscript dated to the 1920s (P. Smith 270), there are four other false starts in the Hemingway manuscripts collection (Folder 814, JFK). A.E. Hotchner reports that Hemingway said, "I had tried to write it in the Twenties, but had failed several times. I had given up on it but one day here [in Key West], fifteen years after those things happened to me in a trench dugout outside Fornaci, it suddenly came out focused and complete" (162-63). The 1933 publication of "A Way. You'll Never Be" is the last Nick Adams war story, marking perhaps Hemingway's final triumph of re-creating Nick Adams's experience that he had written versions of in "The Big Two-Hearted River" (1924), "Now I Lay Me" (1926), and possibly "In Another Country" (1926) (without Nick's name). Perhaps it took Hemingway that long to be able to put Nick back on the Italian battlefield where they both had been wounded. The story takes risks with its exposure of Nick as a vulnerable character, admitting his fears, being labeled "nutty," still suffering from the effects of a head wound. Its long stream-of-consciousness passages of confusing images and juxtaposed associations are difficult to decipher without research. But in "A Way You'll Never Be" with its submerged historical and literary background, Hemingway creates in Nick Adams a sensitive portrait of a brave volunteer, struggling to regain his equilibrium after the physical and psychological effects of war trauma.

Ellen Andrews Knodt

The Pennsylvania State University, Abington

NOTES

(1.) Nick is seen variously as a young man needing to prove his personal worth, his manhood (Flora, "Nick Adams in Italy" 191); a volunteer on a questionable mission (Johnston 431 and Quick 30); a person not having been "traumatically wounded"(Adair 586) or a person coming to grips with his cowardice "in the face of his own death" (Scafella 183). See also Howard L. Hannum and Margot Sempreora for a discussion of Nick's mental condition and an association with his childhood trauma, Hannum dating the trauma from the Caesarian in "Indian Camp" and Sempreora from the burning of Nick's fathers artifacts in "Now 1 Lay Me." In addition to Ronald Smith's extensive discussion of Nick Adams's symptoms of PTSD with reference to the 1994 American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-1V), Charles Coleman Jr. Ph.D. published PTSD and Hemingway's "A Way You'll Never Be," a PTSD Press Monograph in 2014. Both of these latter sources find convincing evidence of Nick's suffering from PTSD but differ in their interpretations of several incidents in the story.

(2.) See Paul Quick for a discussion of this scene as an example of Nick's searching for his identity.

(3.) See Johnston, Quick, Flora, "Nick Adams in Italy" 196, and Scafella, 183.

(4.) See Joseph Flora's explanation of Nick's Paris references in Hemingway's Nick Adams, 130-32.

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