Summary

The portrayal of the group of women in the story as driven to a kind of hysteria after three years of isolated living at an army supply depot “deep in the ghostly arms of the forest” suggests the ways the war traumatized even those not involved directly in the actual fighting. The “laughing disorder” that apparently afflicts these women is likened to “the wild, cruel laughter of war.” There is no real path to recovery, no hope of finding happiness during peacetime. The women have been irrevocably changed by the war and counted now among its millions of victims.