Editor's Choice
How can Hemingway's "Under the Ridge" be critically analyzed?
Quick answer:
Hemingway's "Under the Ridge" critically examines the absurdity and futility of war through a first-person narrator who observes the Spanish Civil War. The story highlights the chaos and confusion of battle, with soldiers killing each other for desertion or self-inflicted wounds. A French soldier's desertion symbolizes sanity amidst the madness. The narrator reveals the falsehood of official war accounts, condemning propaganda and illustrating war's senselessness. Hemingway's own experiences as a war correspondent inform this anti-war narrative.
The first-person narrator, a journalist filming a battle in the Spanish Civil War, recounts what really occurred one day on the battlefield, emphasizing the failure and futility of the fighting. His tone is dry, weary, emotionless, and cynical, reflecting that he can no longer defend warfare as heroic or even worthy. The men involved don't want to be there but at the same will kill each other for leaving or wounding themselves to avoid a meaningless fight. Nothing is working out and people are simply going through the motions. The story emphasizes war's absurdity.
The man the narrator most admires is the Frenchman who sees the futility of what is going on and has the courage to simply walk away. The narrator calls him a "man," a word of high praise. But then, without any emotion, he records that this man is shot as a deserter:
I understood how a...
Unlock
This Answer NowStart your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
man might suddenly, seeing clearly the stupidity of dying in an unsuccessful attack...seeing its hopelessness, seeing its idiocy...[might] walk away from it as the Frenchman had done....I understood him as a man. But, as a soldier, these other men who policed the battle had hunted him down
At the end of the story, the narrator communicates that the official journalistic accounts of the war are lies. The narrator asks the commander: “What can I write on it?”
He is told: “Nothing that is not in the official communiqué" (ie, the false, sanitized picture). The narrator also states:
But the oddest thing about that day was how marvelously the pictures we took of the tanks came out. On the screen they advanced over the hill irresistibly, mounting the crests like great ships, to crawl clanking on toward the illusion of victory we screened.
This story tells a truth that the official reports and films do not. Readers are warned not to believe war propaganda. The story describes what the narrator really experiences, which becomes a scathing condemnation of warfare.
"Under the Ridge" is one of Ernest Hemingway's four short stories about the Spanish Civil War which were posthumously published in book form in 1969 with the release of The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War. The story had originally been published by Cosmopolitan magazine in 1939. The story is one of Hemingway's most blatantly anti-war pieces. It focuses on the confusion and absurdity of war. The main character is the first person narrator whose name is never mentioned but is most certainly Edwin, the same narrator as the other three stories. He is with a film crew producing a documentary about the war. The story is somewhat autobiographical as Hemingway served as a correspondent during the war and helped work on the film, "The Spanish Earth."
Hemingway uses the ridge as a symbol. The war goes on in the insane world under the ridge. Under the ridge, guns fire in the same direction as their own armies, there is confusion over men's identities, commanders are too drunk to function, men argue over thirst and fear, and dust pervades everything, increasing the confusion of the situation:
We had been there in the dust, the smoke, the noise, the receiving of wounds, the death, the fear of death, the bravery, the cowardice, the insanity and failure of an unsuccessful attack.
Over the ridge is sanity, as evidenced by the French soldier wearing the blanket over his shoulder who silently walks up alone away from the battle with his head held high. He is obviously a deserter who is leaving his position in the battle. For the narrator, however, the man is not a coward. Instead, he feels that the man sees things clearly and is doing the right thing:
I understood how a man might suddenly, seeing clearly the stupidity of dying in an unsuccessful attack; or suddenly seeing it clearly, as you can see clearly and justly before you die; seeing its hopelessness, seeing its idiocy, seeing how it really was, simply get back and walk away from it as the Frenchman had done. He could walk out of it not from cowardice, but simply from seeing it too clearly; knowing suddenly that he had to leave it; knowing there was no other thing to do.
The Frenchman, however, is pursued by other soldiers who wind up shooting him, presumably for desertion. Adding to this is the story told by the Extremaduran about Paco, the boy who had wounded himself in the heat of battle in order to be removed from the fighting. Later, Paco, who lost his hand because of the wound, apologizes to the men and pledges to do anything he can for the "cause." Paco ends up suffering the same fate as the Frenchman as he is shot in the head, "punished as an example, in order that there would be no more self-inflicted wounds." These episodes support the idea that war is confused and absurd, especially when men are killed by their own sides just as a message to other soldiers that they should dutifully go along with the "idiocy" and "hopelessness" of war.