"Then We Were Three" is a work of short fiction by Irwin Shaw originally appearing in McCall's magazine in 1955 and first collected in Tip on a Dead Jockey and Other Stories (1957) published by Random House.
[1] The story was published in the O. Henry collection for 1957[2] "Then We Were Three" is the basis for the film Three (1969) and starring Sam Waterston and Charlotte Rampling.
Bert is a glib extrovertThey discover the girl, Martha, while visiting the Uffizi art gallery in Florence and she joins them.
Munnie, too modest to climb aboard in the nude, declines to be rescued, and barely makes it back to shore.
He writes a short note to Bert informing him that he is returning to the United States; he makes no reference to Martha.
Biographer Michael Shnayerson reports that Shaw, impressed by the rendering of the incident, retreated to the restroom to furtively record notes from which he would develop the story.
[8] Giles interprets Munnie’s nakedness and the understanding that Bert and Martha have betrayed him as an Adam figure: He has, in all innocence, tasted of the Tree of Knowledge.
One would have to search through a great deal of fiction to find a familiar pattern of symbolism more effectively understated….The story is beautifully told, supported by underlying Garden of Eden imagery, which is both thematically crucial and consistently understated.”[9]As an “initiation story” Munnie suffers the perfidy of the cynical Bert and Martha’s passive rejection.
While he is still fighting against the implications of what he has learned, the summer and his youth have indeed come to an end…but his failure is through strength, not weakness.”[11]Stripped of his delusions, Munnie—in contrast to his companions—emerges fully “as a decent, caring individual.”[10]