A Very Short Story Flashcards
by Ernest Hemingway — tap or click to flip
Flashcard Review
Flashcards: A Very Short Story
Where do the soldier and Luz first fall in love?
At a hospital in Padua, Italy, where she is his nurse during his recovery from a wartime wound.
What do the soldier and Luz do before he returns to the front?
They go into the Duomo to pray and try to get married, but cannot because there is no time for the banns and neither has a birth certificate.
What agreement do they make after the armistice?
He will go to America first to find a job, and then Luz will come to New York to meet him so they can marry.
Why do they quarrel at the Milan train station?
Because Luz refuses to come to America with him immediately — she insists he find a job first, and they part without resolving the argument.
What does Luz write in her letter from Pordenone?
That their love was "only a boy and girl affair," she has fallen for an Italian major, and she expects to be married in the spring.
What happens to both characters in the final paragraph?
The major never marries Luz. The soldier contracts gonorrhea from a salesgirl in Chicago. Both are left degraded and alone.
How is Luz characterized in the early sections of the story?
As devoted and passionate — she stays on night duty for three months, writes love letters constantly, and feels it is "impossible to get along without him."
Who is Luz based on in real life?
Agnes von Kurowsky, an American Red Cross nurse who nursed the young Hemingway in Milan and later broke off their engagement.
How does the story demonstrate the fragility of wartime romance?
The intense, insular bond formed in the hospital cannot survive distance, time, and the ordinary pressures of peacetime life.
What does the final paragraph say about the nature of romantic idealism?
It punishes every sentimental expectation — the sacred romance degrades into a broken engagement and a venereal disease, rejecting any possibility of a happy ending.
What does the phrase "make it so they could not lose it" reveal?
Their desperate desire to formalize their love — and the tragic irony that no ceremony can protect what distance and human weakness will destroy.
How does Hemingway use compression as a literary device?
An entire love affair from first meeting to final degradation is told in about 1,000 words, with years of experience reduced to single sentences.
How does the tonal shift in the final paragraph function?
It pivots from romance to cynicism in three sentences, delivering emotional whiplash that demolishes the reader's investment in the love story.
Why is the title "A Very Short Story" ironic?
It understates the enormous emotional territory covered — a "very short" story that contains an entire relationship's arc from devotion to destruction.
What are "banns" as mentioned in the story?
A public announcement of an intended marriage, required by church law to be read on three successive Sundays before the wedding can take place.
What is an "armistice" in the context of the story?
The agreement that ended fighting in World War I on November 11, 1918 — after which the soldier returns to America.
What are "arditi" as mentioned in the story?
Elite Italian shock troops known for their bravery and aggression — a battalion is quartered in the town where Luz works after the war.
What does Luz mean by "only a boy and girl affair"?
She dismisses their wartime love as immature and insubstantial — a devastating reframing that reduces months of devotion to youthful infatuation.
Why is "He felt sick about saying good-bye like that" significant?
It is one of the only moments where the soldier's emotions are named directly — his nausea foreshadows the relationship's terminal diagnosis.