- As Miranda is being treated by Dr. Hildesheim for her influenza, she has a dream about him garbed in a “German helmet” and “carrying a naked infant writhing on the point of his bayonet” (Porter 322). This causes her to panic, thinking her physician is a “Boche, a spy, a Hun” who needs to be “kill[ed]…before he kills” her or somebody else (Porter 322). Do you think that during the war and after the Armistice, those xenophobic feelings were explicitly expressed to people with German backgrounds despite them either being non-combatants or on the side of the Allied forces? In what ways could this behavior affect the livelihoods of Americans with German heritage and German residents during the Influenza of 1918?
- Miranda gets to see the end of the Great War, but is still fighting her own battle. As she begins to recover from her bout of the flu, Miranda begins to wonder about whether the better alternative is being alive or dead or her ability to share her exerpience with people who may not understand nor appreciate resembles that of soldiers and nurses’ experiences with the war. Even though Miranda never saw the war nor its horrors up close, do you think her experience with the flu virus warrants this response? Is she valid for feeling this way? What are the differences and similarities between Miranda’s experiences to that of soliders and nurses?
- Throughout the story, especially towards the end, Miranda’s has several dreams. One had a ship and a “writhing [terrible]” jungle that “exuded the ichor of death”, another where she Adam where being shot by arrows through the heart but were stuck in a “perpetual [cycle of] death and resurrection, and one that started off in a paradise-like environment that shifted into a hellscape (Porter 311, 317). Do you think that these dreams relate back to Miranda’s feelings about love and death? What exactly do they reveal about Miranda? Narratively, what role do the dreams play?
Literature of the Great War
ENGL 348. Spring 2022. Dr. Scanlon.
