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The "Now I lay me" I read in my "Men Without Women" from Penguin Books is a quite different story[edit]
It doesn't mention head wounds (& it is not a shell-shock) , it is about a young american (his orderly calls him Signor Tenente) who is not wounded (not yet : he says he'll be later in hospital in Milano, he is now only disturbed) , and is trying to go to sleep at night on some straw, in an italian farm (not under a tent), while silk-worms are crunching their leaves. Are there 2 versions of that short story ? T.y. Arapaima (talk) 20:37, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Here is an answer to the question I posted on Reference Desk : "In Hemingway's short story "Now I Lay Me" (at the beginning, 8° line in the Penguin Edition) the young american Nick, laying on a straw couch in a farm some miles from the front line in north Italy in 1918, can't sleep nights : "I had been that way for a long time, ever since I had been blown up at night and felt it go out of me and go off and then come back.". "It" is his soul. Can one infer that he has had shell shock ? Thanks a lot beforehand for your answers, t.y. "Arapaima (talk) 17:33, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
He was apparently involved in an explosion, certainly. However, a diagnosis of "shell shock" or PTSD is going a bit farther than I think we dare do here. --Orange Mike | Talk 17:43, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Shell-shock involves more than just insomnia. So unless you can infer more profoundly destabilizing problems, I'd say no. — kwami (talk) 21:23, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]