Across the River and Into the Trees

Across the River and Into the Trees is a novel by Ernest Hemingway. The title is derived from the last words of Confederate General Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson. The story follows the last three days in the life of a retired United States Army officer in Venice, Italy. In the period just after the Second World War, a fifty-year-old American colonel pays a visit to the site in Italy where he was nearly decapitated during World War I . Cantwell (s... more

Across the River and Into the Trees is a novel by Ernest Hemingway. The title is derived from the last words of Confederate General Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson. The story follows the last three days in the life of a retired United States Army officer in Venice, Italy. In the period just after the Second World War, a fifty-year-old American colonel pays a visit to the site in Italy where he was nearly decapitated during World War I . Cantwell (symbolic name) [explain why it is symbolic] is a skilled soldier, having risen steadily through the ranks in his thirty-year career and having personally killed 122 men (one of them using a nail driven through a two-by-four.) However, these achievements aroused the envy and mistrust of his seniors, who had reached their ranks mostly by political maneuvers rather than martial prowess. Needing a scapegoat, the military demoted him to the rank of colonel after he, following his orders, had led his brigade into an impossible battle in the Hurtgen... less