Ernest Hemingway defined a hero as, “A man who lives correctly, following the ideals of honor, courage and endurance in a world that is sometimes chaotic, often stressful, and always painful.” It is blatantly apparent that Henry, the protagonist of A Farewell to Arms, did not exemplify any of these traits at all in the beginning of the novel. However, as the book progressed, Henry gradually learned how to be a “Hemingway Hero”, and he eventually progressed to the point where he completely embodied all that is expected of such. It is crucial to realize, however, that Henry did not become a textbook example of a Hemingway Hero overnight. It would have been absolutely impossible for Henry to become the man he was at the end of the novel without two very important things: his experiences brought on by the war and Catherine Barkley.
Throughout all of his works, Ernest Hemingway builds a hero that possesses a set of unique attributes. Yes, the Hemingway hero is courageous, calm in the face of danger, and selfless. They are also free-spirited, existential, humble, and possess self-discipline; however, what really sets a Hemingway Hero apart from your average well-to-do man is his perspective on the world. Death is a potent theme in Hemingway’s works and plays a vital role in Farewell to Arms. A Hemingway Hero is judged by how well he can handle adverse situations, above all being death. Staying strong in the face of death itself and truly grasping the finality of death is what makes a Hemingway Hero unique. In addition, their outlook on death also leads these heroes to believe their existence to be meaningless. All Hemingway Heroes are fated to lose their battle with life because they will all eventually die. Ernest Hemingway use...
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... you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve (Hemingway 72).” Catherine made Henry to a complete 180. She made him want to build himself into a better person. Henry was better around Catherine, and it is indubitable that without her, Henry would never have become the exemplary man he was at the end of the novel.
To conclude, Henry did, indeed, transform into a Hemingway Hero by the end of the novel as a result of his personal experiences and the love he shared with Catherine. Henry did not blossom into a Hemingway Hero overnight; rather he slowly grew into a person who exemplifies all that a Hemingway Hero is. Unfortunately for Henry, he lost all that ever mattered to him in the process, making him a tragic example of the failings of love and war.
Works Cited
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. New York: Scribner, 1957. Print.
Hemingway refuses to romanticize his character. Being “tough” people, such as boxers, bullfighters, gangsters, and soldiers, they are depicted as leading a life more or less without thought. The world is full of such people, and it is unrealistic to put sublime thoughts into their heads.
Through Henry's progression in thoughts, Crane explores this changing view of the hero. As the book opens, "the youth [Henry] had believed that he must be a hero" (Crane 50), as he set out as a newly enlisted man. Awaiting the call of his first battle, Henry reflected that "[s]ometimes he inclined to believing them all heroes" (Crane 75) based simply on their role as soldiers. However, when confronted with the reality of battle, Henry soon noticed that "[t]here was a singular absence of heroic poses" (Crane 86). Trying to cope with his own inadequacy, Henry finds himself always lacking in comparison with those around him. As they marched along he thought that heroes "could find excuses . . . They could retire with perfect self-respect and make excuses to the stars" (Crane 123). Marching among those heroes wounded in battle, "they rendered it almost impossible for him to see himself in a heroic light" (Crane 125). Henry began to despair "that he should ever become a hero" (Crane 126). However, through a new confrontation in battle, Henry found himself funct...
Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. His mother, Grace Hall, was a trained opera singer and later on, a music teacher. His father, Clarence Hemingway, was a doctor and an avid naturalist ("Ernest Hemingway: An Inventory”). Just after graduating high school, at the age of eighteen, Hemingway enlisted in the army to fight in World War I ("The Big Read"). After being severely wounded in the war, he moved to Paris in 1921, and devoted himself to writing fiction (Baker). It is said that, “No American writer is more associated with writing about war in the early 20th century than Ernest Hemingway” (Putnam). Hemingway’s book A Farewell to Arms was published in 1929, and was based off of the events that happened to him in the war and what happened in his love life. Fredrick Henry, the protagonist, is an American ambulance driver fighting for the allies during World War I. He is introduced to a nurse named Catherine, who he later on falls in love with. Henry was hit by a trench mortar shell and was very badly injured. He is then sent to Milan, where Catherine later on comes to help nurse him to health. The two fall in love and Henry no longer is involved with the war, so they try and have a child, but both Catherine and the child die during labor, and Henry is left alone. Psychoanalytical approach views the psychological motivations of characters, which refer to the dynamics of personality development and behavior based on the unconscious motivations of a person ("Psychoanalytic Theory”). Hemingway’s writing was greatly impacted by his real life tragedies, which consist of witnessing the gruesomeness of war and his discovery and loss of love, this helps exhibi...
Throughout the 20th century there were many influential pieces of literature that would not only tell a story or teach a lesson, but also let the reader into the author’s world. Allowing the reader to view both the positives and negatives in an author. Ernest Hemingway was one of these influential authors. Suffering through most of his life due to a disturbingly scarring childhood, he expresses his intense mental and emotional insecurities through subtle metaphors that bluntly show problems with commitment to women and proving his masculinity to others.
The similarities between the people of Hemingway’s life and his fictitious characters can also be found between Lieutenant Henry, the main character of “A Farewell to Arms”, and Hemingway himself. Once again, the similarities between these characters is astonishing; so much that Lieutenant Henry seems to be Hemingway’s idea of his younger self rather that a fictitious character.
"After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain" (332). This last line of the novel gives an understanding of Ernest Hemingway's style and tone. The overall tone of the book is much different than that of The Sun Also Rises. The characters in the book are propelled by outside forces, in this case WWI, where the characters in The Sun Also Rises seemed to have no direction. Frederick's actions are determined by his position until he deserts the army. Floating down the river with barely a hold on a piece of wood his life, he abandons everything except Catherine and lets the river take him to a new life that becomes increasing difficult to understand. Nevertheless, Hemingway's style and tone make A Farewell to Arms one of the great American novels. Critics usually describe Hemingway's style as simple, spare, and journalistic. These are all good words they all apply. Perhaps because of his training as a newspaperman, Hemingway is a master of the declarative, subject-verb-object sentence. His writing has been likened to a boxer's punches--combinations of lefts and rights coming at us without pause. As illustrated on page 145 "She went down the hall. The porter carried the sack. He knew what was in it," one can see that Hemingway's style is to-the-point and easy to understand. The simplicity and the sensory richness flow directly from Hemingway's and his characters' beliefs. The punchy, vivid language has the immediacy of a news bulletin: these are facts, Hemingway is telling us, and they can't be ignored. And just as Frederic Henry comes to distrust abstractions like "patriotism," so does Hemingway distrust them. Instead he seeks the concrete and the tangible. A simple "good" becomes higher praise than another writer's string of decorative adjectives. Hemingway's style changes, too, when it reflects his characters' changing states of mind. Writing from Frederic Henry's point of view, he sometimes uses a modified stream-of-consciousness technique, a method for spilling out on paper the inner thoughts of a character. Usually Henry's thoughts are choppy, staccato, but when he becomes drunk the language does too, as in the passage on page 13, "I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you
In this novel A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, Hemingway brings about the evolution of Frederick Henry being converted into a code hero in realistic ways.
"All fiction is autobiographical, no matter how obscure from the author's experience it may be, marks of their life can be detected in any of their tales"(Bell, 17). A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway is based largely on Hemingway's own personal experiences. The main character of the novel, Frederic Henry, experiences many of the same situations that Hemingway lived. Some of these similarities are exact, while some are less similar, and some events have a completely different outcome.
middle of paper ... ... Henry1s involvement in the war always leads him back to Catherine, whether by choice or accident. His love for her became an important drive for him to go on: when he was wounded, during the retreat, when he killed a man, and when abandoning the Italian Army. Henry1s life was the war, but his motivation was his love for Catherine.
Hemingway uses the book to explain the brutality of war and the burdens it places to those who becomes victims of it. It is a lesson Lieutenant Henry learns early on during the book, and it is one that we as a society should keep in mind especially in these ever cautious time we live in. It also gives the reader a chance to view the insight of those who participated in the action of wars, and in chapter XXVI we are reminded of these peoples’ views through the statements made by the priest in Henry’s quarters. He proclaims, “You cannot believe how it has been. Except that you have been there and you know how it can be. Many people have realized the war this summer. Officers whom I thought could never realize it realize it now.
The world contains many recurring events that remind humans of morals or things that are important. In the novel “A Farewell to Arms” many events come again and again. Usually, these events that repeat or come again have a deeper message inscribed in the text. This is not unlike the novel “The Great Gatsby” which has weather that unfailingly matches up with the tone and mood of the text. Author Ernest Hemingway has created “A Farewell to Arms” with a motif that is very precise.
The trip down the river gives him time to think about his future life with Catherine, even though he is uncertain if there will ever be a future between them again. The river eventually takes him to a railroad where he makes the decision that he is done with the war and that he made his "farewell to arms". Hemingway uses water as a metaphoric cleansing for Frederic’s past experiences. When Henry emerged from the river, it was as if he was reborn.
Hemingway characterizes his heroes as people with strength, courage, and bravery, but even heroes have their flaws. For example, Frederic Henry, the protagonist of A Farewell to Arms, survives an artillery bombardment that kills one of his own men and badly injures him. Hemingway shows the strength of this character through his survival of the bombardment and full recovery of his wounds. Hemingway portrays Frederic as a hero through this strength. In addition, Fredric, being fully aware of the dangers from both the enemy and the Italian's, who mistake him and his drivers for German's, kill one of them, and then threaten to execute Frederic, who escapes. In this daring escape, Frederic presents his courage and bravery in a dangerous situation. Hemingway demonstrates that although one of Frederic's men dies, he is still courageous in that his escape was successful. Frederic Henry's potential as a hero is shown by Hemingway's illustration of events that depict Frederic's use of his strength, his courage, and his bravery (Lewis 46).
Hemingway relied mostly on his morals throughout his time in the war, suggesting his dependency on his Superego and the strength of his consciousness. Hemingway acted primarily based on his Superego and moral reasoning, even going as far as volunteering for the war on the Italian front and staying in battle despite an injury that gave him medical leave (Piep). Hemingway created the novel’s main character, Frederic Henry, to embody a large part of his moral standards regarding the war: both Americans volunteering on the Italian front, willingly working as ambulance drivers, and even returning to the war despite threats to their health (Prescott). Despite their similarities in moral standards, Hemingway and Henry are most similar in terms of their large dependencies on their Superego for decision making. Hemingway was a firm believer in men volunteering and supporting the war, claiming that it was “simply my [his] duty” to serve the country not only because he was fit to serve, but as an act of moral conduct (Piep). Hemingway’s acts of selflessness can be seen repeatedly through Henry’s actions,
The state of affairs and the grim reality of the war lead Henry towards an ardent desire for a peaceful life, and as a result Henry repudiates his fellow soldiers at the warfront. Henry’s desertion of the war is also related to his passionate love for Catherine. Henry’s love for Catherine is progressive and ironic. This love develops gradually in “stages”: Henry’s attempt at pretending love for Catherine towards the beginning of the novel, his gradually developing love for her, and finally, Henry’s impas... ...