Which of the following best states the turning point that the big woman experiences in "War"? She realizes that her son will come from safe from the war. She decides that her husband does not understand how she feels. She realizes that she has not been as brave as the other parents who sent their children to war without grief. She decides that she must care more about her own son than any of the other passengers care about theirs.

Luigi Pirandello's short story "War" presents a brief yet harrowing glimpse into the world of those who are left behind when the young are sent off to war. The story follows a number of parents aboard a train, many of which have sent their children off to war. As the various characters relate their tales, the "bulky woman in deep mourning," as she is described, comes to a realization about certain effects of war. Early in the story, as the woman's husband is attempting to tell of their family's plight, Pirandello writes:

The woman under the big coat was twisting and wriggling, at times growling like a wild animal, feeling certain that all those explanations would not have aroused even a shadow of sympathy from those people who—most likely—were in the same plight as herself.

This passage reveals her understanding of the plight of other parents; they also care deeply for their children and have experienced the unfair aspects of war. Toward the end of the story, the author reveals that, up to this point, the woman had felt as if she was experiencing a different, perhaps worse, form of grief:

The woman who, bundled in a corner under her coat, had been sitting and listening had—for the last three months—tried to find in the words of her husband and her friends something to console her in her deep sorrow, something that might show her how a mother should resign herself to send her son not even to death but to a probable danger of life.Yet not a word had she found amongst the many that had been said. . . and her grief had been greater in seeing that nobody—as she thought—could share her feelings.

This passage illuminates the perspective that the woman held up until this very point on the train. She feared for her son's safety; she felt that her grief as a mother, in her specific situation, was different that that of others and that her husband and their friends could not console her. However, this is not the realization that ends the story; this is simply the paragraph that helps explain the dynamic nature of her character. Her final realization appears in the next two paragraphs, as she listens to the story of a man whose son has fought and died:

But now the words of the traveler amazed and almost stunned her. She suddenly realized that it wasn't the others who were wrong and could not understand her but herself who could not rise up to the same height of those fathers and mothers willing to resign themselves, without crying, not only to the departure of their sons but even to their death.
She lifted her head, she bent over from her corner trying to listen with great attention to the details which the fat man was giving to his companions about the way his son had fallen as a hero, for his King and his Country, happy and without regrets. It seemed to her that she had stumbled into a world she had never dreamt of, a world so far unknown to her, and she was so pleased to hear everyone joining in congratulating that brave father who could so stoically speak of his child's death.

It is in this moment that she realizes that she has not been as brave as the other parents who sent their children to war without grief. The older man's bravery in telling of his lost son helps her reach this epiphany. Here she comes to understand that a parent should be brave and proud, rather than grief-stricken. However, her final question to the old man, along with his reaction, reveal that pride and grief are not binary opposites.