"Big Two-Hearted River", the concluding and climactic piece, details Nick's return from war. In it Nick knows he has left his needs behind; Debra Moddelmog highlights how all of the Nick storylines, and most of the others in the collection, are about a "flight from pain". She believes that Gertrude Stein's definition of the Lost Generation applies to "In Our Time" as much, if not more so, as to "The Sun Also Rises"; that "Nick seems to believe that the things most worth having and caring about – life, love, ideals, companions, peace, freedom – will be lost sooner or later, and he is not sure how to cope with this assurance, except through irony, bitterness, and, sometimes, wishful thinking." In the last story he learns to come to terms with the loss of his friends, and acknowledges "all the loss he has experienced in the last few years and, equally important, the loss he has come to expect."