Belonging to a country instills in us a sense of identity, and it is a terrible thing to lose, as Phillip Nolan found out.
In his short story “The Man Without a Country,” Edward Everett Hale follows Nolan, a lieutenant in the United States Army, who loses his homeland through his pride, arrogance, and inordinate ambition. Nolan becomes blinded by his overwhelming desire for “fame and separate-sovereignty [a doctrine to prosecute under both federal and state law].”
