A Boy in France

Infobox short story |
name = A Boy in France
title_orig =
translator =
author = J. D. Salinger
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre = Historical
published_in = Saturday Evening Post
publication_type = Magazine
publisher = Curtis Publishing Company
media_type = Print (Serial)
pub_date = 31 March, 1945
english_pub_date =
preceded_by = Last Day of the Last Furlough
followed_by = The Stranger

"A Boy in France" is a short story by J. D. Salinger. It is the second part of a trilogy of stories following the character Babe Gladwaller. The first story is Last Day of the Last Furlough, and the third is The Stranger. Through the three stories, the character Babe undergoes a great deal of change due to the war.

"A Boy in France" is one of the few stories in which Salinger deals with combat in the war. The setting is at the front, and follows a soldier in his foxhole, trying to maintain his sanity by reading and rereading a note sent from his sister. In this last respect, Babe is a forerunner of Holden Caulfield (of Catcher in the Rye).

Publication

The story was first published in the Saturday Evening Post, March 31, 1945. It subsequently appeared in the 1946 collection "Post Stories 1942 - 45", edited by Ben Hibbs.

Plot summary

The story starts with Babe finishing his army rations. He makes small talk with a comrade and looks for a fox hole to rest in. He silently prays that he will not be hit for not digging his own trench, but he is in too much pain to dig one himself.

He finds a "kraut hole" with a bloody blanket still there. He jumps into it, and tries to set up camp. However, he is soon bitten by a red ant. When he tries to kill it with his hand, he is sharply reminded of his lost fingernail. He imagines pulling his blanket off and emerging clean and healed.

After reading a newspaper clipping in the fading light, Babe re-reads a letter from his sister Matilda for the thirty-oddth time. She tells him how she believes he is in France, but their mother thinks he is in England. She also keeps him updated on recent happenings at home (including two of Babe's former girlfriends, Jackie and Frances, both mentioned in "Last Day of the Last Furlough"), and wishes that he will come home soon.

After finishing the letter, he lets his comrade know where he is, and goes to sleep.

Characters

*Babe: In each of the three stories he is markedly different from the other two. The confident young man that the reader sees in LDotLF is replaced by a weakened and frightened "boy" who fears wildly for his life.
*Matilda: She is the only other character featured in each story of the trilogy, and is Babe's little sister. Her love and innocence allows Babe to hold onto his humanity. This sibling relationship is a popular theme in Salinger stories, seen also in "For Esmé with Love and Squalor" and "The Catcher in the Rye".

Related works

*Last Day of the Last Furlough
*The Stranger
*Soft-Boiled Sergeant