is also true of "In Another Country." At the end, the major sits immersed in grief over his wife's untimely death and the narrator contemplates the deceptive photographs of restored hands. It is left unresolved what the fate of any of the men will be, a reflection of the uncertainty of modern life.

There are a number of elements that we can point to characterize this story as an example of "modernism". Modernism is generally associated with ideas of subjective reality (or subjectivism) and deals also with the influx of mechanization into every day human life. 

In the story, the narrator has a different perspective on his injury and on war than his fellow injured soldiers. Among the other Italians, the Major holds a view that is different from the younger Italians. These differences in perspective are important. 

The major - in losing his wife and suffering a physical injury - is never going to recover. His views on living have been challenged too much. The pictures of healthy legs on the walls of the physical therapy room are ironic to him. These same pictures are not ironic to the narrator who still has a good chance of recovery and some normalcy. 

The narrator's personal narrative remains intact while the major's personal narrative is broken. There is more to be said about how the sense of reality is different (i.e. subjectively defined) for the characters in the story, though they share the same facility and the same modern therapy machines. 

One point that brings the shifting sense of subjective reality to light is the major's sudden shift in attitude. After his wife dies, the major calls the narrator ‘‘a stupid impossible disgrace," where previously he had treated the narrator with cordial respect.

Suddenly the major's view of the narrator has changed. His sense of the world has been changed. This reinforces the psychological notion common in modernism that the mind defines the "real" according to its own fancies, pressures, idiosyncrasies, etc. 

The machines themselves offer another connection to the movement and interests of modernism. The men in the story are supposed to put their faith in these therapy machines, hoping that the machines will heal their wounded human parts. 

No machine can heal the major's wounded emotional being, however, and even the narrator has trouble believing that the machines can make his injured leg look like the healthy legs in the photographs hung around the therapy room. 

Mechanization, here, represents a burgeoning expectation that problems can be removed through "modern ingenuity". The story casts doubt on this prospect, a doubt that is fully consistent with modernism.

The modernist writers, almost as a rule, feared the new technology... (eNotes)

We might suggest also that the major, in his rather mechanical initial attitudes regarding dignity and self-carriage, is symbolized by the machines that fail him. His rigorous attitude cannot save him from heartbreak. The machines cannot heal his damaged psyche when he loses his wife.

...having lost his innocent belief that loss can be minimized through discipline and precision, what the major sees out that window is life’s vast emptiness. (eNotes)

Hemingway's short story about men at an Italian hospital during World War I reflects a modernist point of view in three different ways. First, modernists attempted to portray the modern world in both form and content. To show the fragmentation of this new world, they often omitted traditional elements of fiction such as expositions, conflicts, and resolutions. Rather than spending any time establishing the character of the narrator, Hemingway simply places him in Milan during World War I. He doesn't even tell us the man's name or anything about him other than he may have played football and that he is learning Italian. Hemingway called this the "iceberg principle," reflecting his attitude that a good story would say less, but in its suggestiveness would say much more.

This lack of exposition is followed by a complete lack of true conflict or resolution. In traditional short stories the conflict generally leads to an inevitable resolution, such as a completion of a great deed, a death, a birth, or a wedding. The best we get from Hemingway is the irony that the major escaped death in a war which claimed millions yet his wife died after only a short illness.

Hemingway is also thoroughly modern in his style. He brings a simplicity and succinctness to his stories much like a newspaper reporter who attempts to hone down his story to a series of simple facts without any editorial comments. Newspaper writers are often limited by the number of words they can submit so they strive to say as much as possible in just a few words. Hemingway's stories, and "In Another Country" is no exception, are virtually devoid of descriptive adjectives or long paragraphs describing setting or character. He hoped to pack as much meaning as possible into direct, declarative sentences. He succeeds in the story's opening sentence: "In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more." This simple statement suggests several things. It states facts but also portends a feeling of despair as the "war" and its experiences hover over the narrator's story.

Finally, Hemingway, like the great English war poets of the time, casts doubt on mankind's use of war as a way to bring men bravery and glory. In previous wars, literature tended to celebrate the heroes (think of the "Iliad," "Song of Roland," "The Charge of the Light Brigade"). Instead, World War I is bereft of heroes in Hemingway's modernist outlook. The major, who had been badly injured in the war, scoffs at the idea of bravery:

The major, who had been a great fencer, did not believe in bravery, and spent much time while we sat at the machines correcting my grammar.

The major seems obsessed with grammar because it is a way for him to control the world. Grammar makes sense and has rules, unlike the war which is arbitrary and confusing.

A renowned American Modernist writer, Hemingway touched upon many of the characteristic elements of this movement in his short story "In Another Country":

• METHOD OF NARRATION

Like other Modernists, Hemingway does not employ an omniscient narrator; rather, he gives the story first to the American who yet is somewhat ingenuous in his interior monologue characteristic of the Moderns. Then the insights of the major become apparent, and it is he who perceives the nada--the nothingness--of Hemingway; yet, all is presented with an objective tone.

• ALIENATION AND ALLUSIVENESS

The young American narrator at the beginning declares that the war is present, but "we did not go to it any more"; he and three Milanese soldiers, one of whom is "a little detached," as well as an Italian major take therapy every afternoon.  Injured, they all are alienated from the other soldiers and the combat of the war. Further, there is an alienation from the tragedy of interpersonal relationships that the American does not understand because when he is outside in the cold, he looks in and perceives the interior as warm and wholesome. 

It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came on, and it was pleasant along the streets looking in the windows.

The reality of life is yet somewhat allusive to the young America, for he only understands the absurdity of war while the "tall boy with a very pale face" is also "a little detached" because he has lived many months with death.

• FRAGMENTATION OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE AND THE MEANINGLESSNESS OF LIFE

The role of narrator switches to the major, for it is he who understands the darkness of the interior life that the American does not perceive through the window since death in the deer "carcasses stiff and heavy and empty" are for him outdoors.  But, for the major who has lost the use of his great fencing hand as well as his wife, death resides inside. The Hemingway hero of the narrative, the major tells the American, "I am utterly unable to resign myself" and he "looked out of the window" because he sees the nothingness of life within.

• CONCERNS ABOUT TECHNOLOGY

Expressing the lack of faith of the Modernists in a technology that they felt would cloud man's thinking, the soldiers do not believe that the therapy will rehabilitate them. The major, especially, is skeptical as the doctor shows him the photograph of a withered hand that is rehabilitated, "he did not believe in the machines."  He simply goes through the motions required of him in his terrible aloneness.

• UNCERTAINTY ABOUT LIFE AND ALLUSIONS TO THE PAST

The young American remarks,

We only knew then that there was always the war, but that we were not going to it any more....we felt held together by there being something that had happened that they, the people who disliked us, did not unerstand.

Once the major's wife has died, he is tied to the past in his grief and existential sense of the absurdity and senselessness of life. When he says that a man should not marry, others question him. But, he insists,

"He cannot marry....If he is to lose everything, he should not place himself in a position to lose that....He should find things he cannot lose." 

As the title suggests, the major, along with the other disabled soldiers, now is "in another country,"  a modern world of machines and uncertainty where nothing makes sense and much is already lost--the world of Modernism.