Which of Hemingway's novels features a character named Colonel Cantwell?
Answer
Across the River and Into the Trees
Colonel Cantwell is the protagonist of Ernest Hemingway’s novel Across the River and into the Trees. The central character is Colonel Richard Cantwell, a 50-year-old American Army officer living with a terminal heart condition.
The novel opens with Cantwell duck hunting near Venice, Italy, during the closing days of World War II. Much of the narrative then unfolds through memories of his military experiences, especially his service on the Italian front during World War I. His present-day journey is also shaped by his relationship with Renata, a young Venetian woman.
Published in 1950, the novel focuses heavily on mortality, memory, love, military identity, and the way a person faces impending death. Its title echoes the reported final words of Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson: “Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.”
Colonel Cantwell is not part of The Old Man and the Sea, To Have and Have Not, or For Whom the Bell Tolls. Those novels have different protagonists and settings.