The major is sardonic about doctors; his comments are filled with veiled contempt. When a doctor tells Nick that he will play football again, the major wants to know if he too will ever play football again. The major, once Italy's greatest fencer, is honest and realistic about the therapeutic value of the machines and points out that if he and Nick are the first to use them, where did the doctor get the "before and after" pictures?
When the major bursts out into a vindictive attack against marriage, Nick is caught off balance by the major's intense, emotional explosion because the major has usually exhibited superbly disciplined control of himself. Readers later learn that the major's wife, much younger than he, has just died from pneumonia after three days of suffering. The major cannot resign himself to the loss of his wife. He is crushed, shattered by the news.
