The End of Men by Hanna Rosin

Have we seen the end of the “age of testosterone”? Will women be the dominating sex in the future? Do women do better in this sort of economy we are having today? And finally, is the era of male dominance gone? “For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But what if equality isn’t the end point? (3-4)” The article by Hanna Rosin, The End of Men (2010), deals with themes like equality between men and women, feminism and identity.

In another country – Ernst Hemingway

A Con-war story

Summery:

‘‘In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it anymore.’’ So begins Ernest Hemingway’s short story, ‘‘In Another Country.’’ The war he refers to is World War I; the setting is Milan, away from the scene of the fighting. The narrator describes the city he passes on his way to the hospital to receive physical rehabilitation for the leg wounds he received while at the front. Though the narrator remains unnamed, scholars generally agree the young man is Hemingway’s alter ego, Nick Adams.

At the hospital, the narrator, a young man, sits at a machine designed to aid his damaged knee. Next to him is an Italian major, a champion fencer before the war, whose hand has been wounded. The doctor shows the major a photograph of a hand that has been restored by the machine the major is using. The photo, however, does not increase the major’s confidence in the machine.

Three Milanese soldiers, the same age as the narrator, are then introduced. The four boys hang out together at a place called Cafe Cova following their therapy. As they walk through the city’s Communist quarter, they are criticized for being officers with medals. A fifth boy, who lost his nose an hour after his first battle, sometimes joins them. He wears a black handkerchief strategically placed across his face and has no medals.

One of the boys who has three medals has

lived a very long time with death and was a little detached. We were all a little detached, and there was nothing that held us together except that we met every afternoon at the hospital. Although, we walked to the Cova through the… »

Noter til soldiers home – Hemingway

Krebs: He is emotionally detached, and very mentally tormented by his experiences in the war. He feels like he is living in another world than anybody else.

 

The relationship is like In Another Country. The war has made him shy and detached to the girls next door. He does not want to commit to anyone, because he does not want to lose anyone. War has changed him.

 

His sister, Helen Krebs, tells him that she will be pitching in an indoor baseball game that day. She asks if he’ll come. Their mother shoos her away and tells Krebs that he should think about finding a job.

His mother is very religious, and she wants to pray for Krebs and Krebs to pray with her. He does so even though he is not emotionally involved.

They are very appreciative of his efforts in the war and his sisters see him as a hero.

When he got back from the war he had changed, but unfortunately the small town society had not.

The title could be interpreted as quiet ironic since what Krebs returns to is not really his home anymore.

He puts on a facade when he tells stories from the war so that people will listen to him.

Is this a typical story by Hemingway? No, this