Machines Symbol Analysis

“In Another Country” takes place during World War I in Italy, where the narrator receives hospital treatment alongside other battle-scarred officers. The narrator describes how they are treated in machines “that were to make so much difference,” his ironic tone revealing the soldiers’ disbelief their injuries can ever be healed. Through their ineffective treatment, the machines represent early 20th-century society’s lack of appropriate methods to heal the officers’ war wounds, both physical and psychological. The machines fail to bend the narrator’s knee, for instance, and flap the major’s shrunken hand about almost comically. The wounded men’s lack of progress chips away at any latent faith in the machines to help them; the narrator notes, “There was a time when none of us believed in the machines, and one day the major said it was all nonsense.” Beyond being ineffective at treating physical injuries, the machines do nothing at all to address the officers’ emotional suffering. The doctor’s insistent faith in the power of the machines feels especially misguided given the soldiers’ clear psychological turmoil. They have become “detached” after experiencing the horrors of battle, and the narrator notes “there was nothing that held us together except that we met every afternoon at the hospital.” It is the communal activity and daily routine that keep the men going, rather than trust in the system, as embodied in the machines, to restore them.