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Matthew Tate

Professor Diehl

2024-SP-HUMN-2010-A Human Experience

9 Feb. 2024

Analog Project #1

Nick Adams chooses heartbreak when he joins the war. In the story “Now I Lay Me” we

learn how Nick Adam had chosen to join World War I with Italy and went through significant

sorrow because of it. This heartbreak affected not only his life but his relationships and his

understanding of self throughout the stories.

By going to the war his life had taken a turn for the worse as his physical and mental

health suffered. Hemingway shows this in this particular scene. “Oh, absolutely, 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 scarred, don’t drink, faithful to the

girls they left behind them, many of them never had crabs, wonderful chaps, you’ll see.” in this

scene he is trying to convince the soldiers that the Americans are better than him because he does

not look like a healthy soldier so he has to convince the others by telling them what the

Americans are like. The reason he isn’t like the Americans he is describing is mostly because of

the war. Nick has a leg injury from being shot, and he can’t sleep at night due to shell shock, he

has been blown up hence the shell shock, and he has had his head caved in and was still suffering

from the injury when giving the quote, he is scarred of being blown up from how long he's been

in the war, he does drink and does so every time he goes into battle and all of this is all because

he joined the war and the reason the Americans that he is talking about aren’t like that is because

they hadn’t been in the war until then.

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By going into the war Nick had gone away from his friends and family and everybody he

once knew with the only thing left of them were memories. Nick explains how his hometown is

important to him during "The Three-Day Blow" when Nick says “Still he could always go into

town Saturday night. It was a good thing to have in reserve.” in this scene Nick explains how

despite all that has happened to him he could still go out into town and try to get back with

Majorie but instead in the very next story, we learn that he gives up the chance of going back

because he enlisted in the war. Which means that he has entirely given up on the town between

the two stories. When he does go into the war he is unable to sleep and goes through certain

methods to relax his mind “But some nights I could not fish, and on those nights I was cold-

awake and said my prayers over and over and tried to pray for all the people I have ever known.”

with this scene it shows how he care for the people he once knew and is praying for them as a

way to relax and try to sleep. The story then goes into how he thinks back on his memories as a

way to relax, the story says he either goes from the war to his first memories or his first

memories up to the war meaning the war was too painful of an experience to think about and he

would rather think of his past relationships and experiences.

Nick went through hard times when he was in the war even both in and between the

stories and because of experiencing the brutality of war, his outlook on life changed for the

worse. When Nick is talking to George he says “”There isn't any good in promising.” He said””

the quote is from “Cross-Country Snow” which is the first story of Nick being back from the war

so when he says that there's no good in promising he means that he has either been betrayed

before like when he got threatened by his own allies to leave the bunker or else they will break

his nose or shoot him and his allies. or he has betrayed other people like lying to his friends
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about his health and his view on marriage. This betrayal would mean that even if they did

promise it wouldn’t be any good.

Throughout the stories, his understanding of self, his relationships, and his life had all

suffered because of his heartbreaking choice of going to war. His physical/mental health had no

doubt worsened, he had left all his friends and family that he had ever known behind, and his

perspective had changed to where he no longer has any faith in any promises that could be made.

Nick Adams has had multiple heartbreaks throughout his story but him joining the war could be

the most devastating of all of them.

Work Cited
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Hemingway, Ernest. The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway.

New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1966.