I Love Catherine Barkley Essay

Henry is an extremely strong character dealing with all the struggles being thrown at him, though they may get him down he still seems to prevail somehow. Things didn’t start out all well for the power couple of this novel, though, in the beginning Frederick Henry couldn’t have been any less interested in Miss Barkley thinking about a future for them he was moreover playing her. Henry says, “I knew I did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards.” (Hemingway 30). He was awfully blunt to say that he just messing with her and she hadn’t had the slightest idea about it. It is seen as the book progresses that Henry begins to grow more in himself and

When they first met Henry perceived Miss Barkley as a woman in nurse’s uniform with gray eyes and tawny skin and described her as very beautiful, while on the other hand Rinaldi sees her as more of a “sex object” (Novel Summaries Analysis) with which she does not want to be seen as or associated as. Frederick once he grows into himself sees her for her true, genuine self and not for just some play toy. Miss Barkley knows grief just as well as Frederick seems to know and find in this novel. She also tried to make fantasies to allow being around the war easier to bear for herself. In the beginning Catherine pretends she is in love with Frederick to allow herself to escape the tragic memory of losing her fiance in battle (LitCharts.) so it is much inferred that losing her fiance caused a loss of innocence in herself as well. Miss Barkley is also seen through the beginning of the book as a little insecure and worried about Frederick’s true intentions. She states, “Oh, darling, she said. You will be good to me, won’t you?.... “You will, won’t you?” (Hemingway 27) This explains a loss of innocence in Miss Barkley because she was very hesitant on letting Henry in. He was putting out that he liked her, but she wasn’t so sure about it. Once she let him kiss her, she began to open up to him more thus in a way of losing her innocence and

The novel was said to bring such vividness as to make the reader become a participating witness and to touch the limit that human nature can stand, when love and parting are the point. (Reynolds, Michael) The tragic reality of what happens is truly tough to fathom at the ending of the novel all characters to portray a massive loss of innocence, but Harold Bloom, couldn’t seem to explain any better that, “The author reminds us of the perennial truth that everyone must die someday and that is was simply Catherine and her baby’s time to die.” Ernest Hemingway put into play that a loss of innocence may not always be a tragedy, but more of a lesson and a change that could happen for the better and even though this is an obstacle thrown in the path. The portrayed loss of innocence in the characters play a major part, throughout the novel and do cause a loss bigger than imagined. That just goes to show just as in the novel, reality is the