THE EMPTY SLEEVE

Lewis talks about Grant Wood's engraving The Empty Sleeve (1865) which presents a stiff-upper-lip Civil War veteran, his arm amputated. Despite his male upbringing, he must submit to being a passenger in a carriage driven by an elegantly dressed young woman. This wood engraving is an emblem of the wounded veteran adjusting to his changed physical condition and to postwar civilian life that has also been profoundly changed. As a result of the Civil War, the nation changes, as does the nation's literature. The arm was lost; but the modern American world is beginning to appear.