This early story in a sequence that features Nick Adams as the protagonist takes place in northern Italy during World War I. Nick Adams, like Hemingway, has been wounded and is convalescing at the hospital in Milan. Among the problems he encounters is his inability to sleep. He engages in all sorts of ploys to overcome this condition, but nothing he does helps him sleep. In his restless, wakeful state at night, Nick tosses and turns, mulling over many of life’s profoundest questions. He has been face-to-face with death. He gave up his youth in that moment when his life might have ended on a battlefield in an alien land. He is not sure that his sanity is fully intact.
