World War I

World War I enters the narrative through Concetta Abruzzi’s recollection of crawling as a child on her parents’ farm in Davoli. The memory makes wartime childhood and the painful movement of her old age echo one another, turning the war into a marker in a life shaped by return as well as achievement.

The Wartime Memory

During the fourth year of World War I, Concetta crawled across her family’s dooryard, trying to catch chickens that easily outran her. The passage identifies the war also by its ironic historical name, the War to End All Wars. It supplies no battlefield account: the conflict is recalled through a child’s small, physical pursuit on a farm.

A Life Returning to Its Beginning

In the present, now ninety-seven, Concetta crawls down the hall toward the kitchen as pain forces her to stop and rest. That movement brings back the earlier scene, and she considers the seven ages of man as a circle that has brought her back to crawling. Between the two moments lies a long, fruitful life: she has published twenty books of poetry, taken tea with Graham Greene, dined with two presidents, and cherished her great-granddaughter. World War I thus anchors the far end of the remembered span, making the return to childhood’s posture both a bodily fact and the passage’s framing image of life’s circle.