The Man Without a Country

Summary

An orphaned ingénue, Barbara Norton, drifts from gilded parlors to blood-soaked field hospitals, her silk dreams replaced by gauze and gangrene. When her pacifist fiancé, cocooned in privilege, refuses to shoulder the national call, she hurls his ring into the abyss and boards a steamer that soon erupts in a bloom of fire—her name swallowed by the Atlantic. Presumed dead, she haunts the narrative like a revenant while the young man, drunk on nihilism, spits a curse at the flag itself. Enter an elder patriarch who slides Hale’s novella across the mahogany; the page becomes a mirror, and the coward sees Nolan’s spectral exile drifting deck to deck, stateless, loveless, condemned to hear only the words “‘tis well.” The book burns, the conscience ignites; enlistment papers materialize like sacraments. Then—resurrection: Barbara, salt-crusted and alive, strides out of the mist, and the couple clinch beneath a sky that cannot decide whether it is dawn or dusk.

Synopsis

When Barbara Norton is left orphaned, she goes to live with her aunt and uncle. Time passes, now grown to adulthood, Barbara, becomes engaged to a wealthy young man who believes in pacifism. When the United States declares war on Germany, Barbara's fiance declines to enlist, and so Barbara gives him back his engagement ring and goes to France as a Red Cross nurse. En route, her steamer is torpedoed and Barbara is assumed to be drowned. Even this tragedy does not inspire the young man's patriotism and when solicited to enlist, he declares that the United States be damned. These sentiments shock an old friend of his father's, who brings the young man a copy of the book The Man Without a Country . Upon reading the book, the young man visualizes the story of Philip Nolan and is compelled to serve his country. As he is about to go to war, Barbara returns, and the two lovers embrace.