Respone to Hemingway Post

Throughout his short story "In Another Country" Ernest Hemingway repeatedly brings up the machines and experiences him Whoa--don't assume the narrator/protagonist is Hemingway and the people he was with in the hospital had with the machines. Personally I think that the machines are a symbol for war in this particular work. This has potential as a thesis. I believe this because of multiple reasons. First off, doing a reading based on Hemingway's background, he went to war and was injured very early on in the war. He criticized war from that point on and really became one of the liberal artists that were extremely prevalent in this era. Hemingway wrote this short story as a criticism of war and how people mindlessly follow what their leaders tell them and go to war, not because they want to, and not because they believe in what the war is being fought over, but just because they are told to go to war. Interesting biographical element here. You could certainly use this to foreground your argument. Secondly, as I have already stated, the people who are using the machines in the short story don't believe the machines work, they don't know what the machines are doing, they are just using the machines because the doctor tells them too. You would need specific textual evidence that supports this claim that the soldiers who follow the doctor are the equivalent of soldiers following orders. Also, with this being a short story based on WWI, there weren't any wars of the magnitude of WWI that had occurred prior to WWI. It is highly likely that the machines are a symbol for not only war, but WWI because, as Hemingway repeats throughout the story, there were pictures that were supposed to be of hands that had been completely restored by the machines, although that did not follow what the doctor had told them which was that they were the first people to use the machines. This is very similar to what the world leaders were saying going into WWI. They were saying that WWI would be the war to end all wars and that after WWI the world would be at peace, but they had not evidence to base those claims on because like the men using the machines, WWI was the first time that the nearly the entire world would be engulfed in war. Like the fake pictures hanging above the machines and the doctors claims, the evidence the world leaders during WWI were using was false and unconvincing, although people still went to war. Hemingway and his friends used the machines because they were told to, and not because they thought the machines would work like people went to war in WWI because they were told to, not because they actually believed it would be the war to end all wars. Interesting conclusion. The key to proving this will be strong, convincing textual evidence. You'll need to find language from the story that supports your interpretation of the machines as a metaphor for war. Last year I had a student argue something similar about Old Man and the Sea. I'll show you her essay, if you're interested; you'd need the same kind of convincing support that she offered.