Ernest Hemingway’s second collection of short stories, Men Without Women (1927), is a foundational work of American Modernism. Comprising 14 stories, the book explores the lives of soldiers, bullfighters, boxers, and expatriates navigating a world marked by disillusionment, loss, and emotional isolation. Characters grapple with physical and psychological wounds in settings that range from the bullrings of Spain to wartime hospitals in Italy. The collection examines themes of The Performance of Masculinity in a Hostile World, The Failure of Communication and Resultant Isolation, and Confronting Defeat with Grace Under Pressure.

Published just one year after his breakout novel The Sun Also Rises, this collection solidified Hemingway’s reputation as a master of the short story and a defining voice of the “Lost Generation.” Drawing in part on his experiences as an ambulance driver during World War I, Hemingway frequently explored the effects of violence, injury, and emotional strain on individuals confronting loss, uncertainty, and change. The stories showcase his influential “iceberg theory” of writing, where deep emotional and psychological realities lie beneath a surface of sparse prose and dialogue. This technique is exemplified in two of the collection’s most famous stories, which are included here, such as “Hills Like White Elephants” and “The Killers.” The latter story, featuring the recurring character Nick Adams, has been adapted to film multiple times, most notably in 1946 and 1964. Hemingway’s literary contributions were later recognized with the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature.

This guide is based on the 2004 Scribner trade paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of graphic violence, substance use, animal cruelty and death, addiction, racism, cursing, death, sexual content, and pregnancy termination.

Language Note: The source text contains outdated and offensive racial and ethnic language, including racial slurs and references to Indigenous peoples using terminology common at the time of publication. This guide reproduces such language only when necessary for textual analysis and otherwise uses current respectful terminology.

Plot Summaries

“The Undefeated” follows Manuel Garcia, an aging, recently hospitalized bullfighter who asks the promoter Don Miguel Retana for work. Retana offers only a low-prestige nocturnal (nighttime) bullfight for meager pay. Manuel accepts and seeks out Zurito, an older picador (a mounted bullfighter who weakens the bull with a lance) and old friend. Zurito urges Manuel to cut off his coleta (pigtail), the symbol of an active bullfighter, and quit. Manuel refuses, and Zurito agrees to help on one condition: If Manuel does not perform well, he must retire. At the fight, Zurito’s lancing weakens the bull, and Manuel performs a series of successful passes with the cape and muleta (red cloth). When he attempts the kill, however, the sword strikes bone repeatedly, and the bull tosses and gores him. The crowd hurls cushions and bottles. Manuel finally drives the sword in to the hilt but collapses and is carried to the infirmary. Zurito holds up scissors as if to cut Manuel’s coleta, but Manuel insists that he had performed well. Zurito relents and stays by Manuel’s side as the doctor administers anesthesia.

“In Another Country” is narrated by an American officer wounded in World War I who undergoes rehabilitation at a Milan hospital. He and other wounded officers sit in machines meant to restore their injuries. A major, formerly Italy’s greatest fencer, has a hand shrunken to the size of a baby’s and does not believe the machines will help. The narrator feels set apart from three decorated Italian officers because his own medals were given largely for being American, not for bravery. One day the major grows suddenly angry, insisting a man must never marry because he will lose everything. He then apologizes: His young wife has just died of pneumonia. He returns days later wearing a mourning band and sits looking only out the window.

“Hills Like White Elephants” presents a conversation between an American man and a girl called Jig at a Spanish train station. The man urges Jig to have an unspecified operation, which the story strongly implies is an abortion. He insists it will restore their happiness. Jig at one point indicates that she will go along with his wishes but looks at the fertile landscape beyond the tracks and reflects on what they stand to lose. She asks him to stop talking and threatens to scream. The story ends with the train approaching and Jig smiling, saying she feels fine.

In “The Killers,” two men, Al and Max, enter Henry’s lunch-room in the town of Summit. They tie up Nick Adams, a young man at the counter, and Sam, the cook, while waiting to kill Ole Andreson, a former heavyweight prizefighter who eats there every evening. When Andreson does not appear, they leave. Nick goes to warn Andreson, who lies on his bed facing the wall and says there is nothing to do; he explains that he got into trouble and is tired of running. Nick returns shaken, saying he wants to leave town because he cannot bear thinking about Andreson waiting to be killed. George, the counterman, advises him not to think about it.

“Che Ti Dice La Patria?” follows a first-person narrator and his companion Guy on a 10-day drive through Fascist Italy. They encounter a rude young hitchhiker, eat in a restaurant in Spezia that appears to operate as both a restaurant and a brothel, and are fined by a Fascist official for a dirty license plate caused by the poor roads. The official writes a receipt that suggests irregularities in the handling of the fine. The narrator closes by remarking that in such a short trip, they naturally had no chance to see how things stood with the country.

“Fifty Grand” is narrated by Jerry Doyle, trainer to the aging welterweight boxer Jack Brennan, who is preparing for a title fight against the younger Walcott. Jack knows he cannot win and confides that he has bet $50,000 on Walcott, viewing it as a business decision since Walcott genuinely outmatches him. During the fight, Jack dominates early but fades. In a late round, Walcott deliberately hits Jack below the belt. Jack realizes that accepting the foul and winning by disqualification would cost him his bet. He claims the blow was not a foul, fights on in agony, and then deliberately fouls Walcott himself. The referee awards Walcott the fight, preserving Jack’s bet. In the dressing room, Jack says he is “all busted inside” (106), and his manager, John Collins, accuses two gamblers of engineering the double-cross.

“A Simple Enquiry” takes place in a snow-buried mountain hut during wartime. An Italian major summons his 19-year-old orderly, Pinin, behind a closed door and asks whether the boy has ever been in love with a girl and whether he is what the major calls corrupt, a coded question about sexual interest in men. Pinin insists he loves a girl. The major tells Pinin he will not touch him and sends him away. Alone, the major wonders whether Pinin lied.

“Ten Indians” follows young Nick Adams riding home from a Fourth of July celebration with the Garner family, who tease him about his girlfriend, Prudence Mitchell. At home, Nick’s father mentions he saw Prudence in the woods that afternoon with Frank Washburn, “having quite a time” (115). Nick cries, goes to bed thinking his heart is broken, and in the morning is awake a long time before he remembers his heartbreak.

In “A Canary for One,” a first-person narrator and his wife share a train compartment to Paris with a somewhat deaf American lady carrying a canary for her daughter. The lady explains she separated her daughter from a Swiss man because no foreigner can make an American girl a good husband. In the final line, the narrator reveals he and his wife are returning to Paris to set up separate residences, casting the lady’s certainties in bitter irony.

“An Alpine Idyll” finds the narrator and his companion John descending from a month of skiing to the valley town of Galtür, where they witness a burial. The innkeeper and sexton recount the story: A peasant named Olz kept his wife’s body in the woodshed all winter because snow blocked the road. Her mouth was open, so he hung his lantern from it each night while cutting wood. When asked if he loved his wife, Olz replied that he loved her fine.

“A Pursuit Race” depicts William Campbell, an advance man for a burlesque show, lying in a Kansas City hotel bed after the show has caught up with him. His manager, Mr. Turner, finds Campbell refusing to leave. Turner’s comments and Campbell’s condition indicate that Campbell has been using drugs, and Campbell drinks as a temporary measure against nausea and the recurring “wolf” he describes. Turner urges him to take a cure, but Campbell re-fuses, insisting there is no cure for anything.

“Today Is Friday” is a one-act play set on the night of the Crucifixion. Three Roman soldiers drink in a tavern run by a Hebrew wine-seller they call George. The first soldier repeatedly expresses admiration for Jesus’s endurance during the Crucifixion. The second is cynical. The third is sick throughout, echoing the day’s physical suffering. They leave without paying.

“Banal Story” is a brief satirical sketch juxtaposing a literary magazine’s breezy promotion of romance with the death of the real Spanish bullfighter Manuel Garcia Maera, who dies of pneumonia with tubes in both lungs. One hundred forty-seven bullfighters march behind his coffin in the rain.

The collection closes with “Now I Lay Me,” in which an American officer on the Italian front lies awake at night, unable to sleep because he feels his soul will leave his body, a sensation that began when he was blown up. He passes the hours mentally fishing trout streams from his boyhood or praying for every person he has ever known. His orderly, John, an Italian soldier who lived 10 years in Chicago, urges him to marry, insisting it will fix everything. The narrator agrees to think about it but finds that the girls he considers all blur in his memory. In a closing passage, the narrator notes that John would feel badly knowing that he has still never married.