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comparing and contrasting the realities of war in another country by ernest hemingway
medical advancements ww1
women contributions in war effort
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Introduction A Farwell to Arms, written by Ernest Hemingway, is an excellent book that describes the struggles for one man to juggle his war life as a soldier in the Italian Army and his love life during World War One. Written in 1930, Hemingway wrote an excellent 330 page novel in describing the life of Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American serving in the Italian Army and juggling the two most important things in his life right now, his job serving in the war, and his love, Catharine Barkley. Summary: In the mid 1950’s, World War One broke out, leaving American Frederic Henry to serve in the Italian Army as a lieutenant. At first, Henry thinks all that is important is to win the war against the Austrians and get home. After a while in the war, he thinks differently. After he meets Catherine Berkley, a Scottish nurse serving in Italy, all his ideas change. He believes Berkley is the love of his life and starts going crazy about her. Through various adventures, the two seem inseparable, and when it is revealed she is pregnant, he just can’t stand not being without her. But when the war comes calling, he is forced to head back to the front and hope for the best of his future wife. In the end, the two escape Italy and head for Switzerland to live and build a family. Once complications arise from birth, Catharine dies due to birth complications and the kid dies. In the end he can’t say goodbye and leaves for his hotel room very sad. Content Summary The book is organized in sequential order. Each event happens one after another with no going back, unless mentioned in dialogue. Chapters usually start with some sort of idea of what is happening in the war, then depending on the situation, can either get perso... ... middle of paper ... ...rywhere, and shell shock just got the best of people eventually. 6. Trench life for soldiers was difficult, never knowing what was going to happen, terrible rations and always a constant fear of death. 7. The front line was somewhere where you did not want to be. Henry hated going to the front and so did everybody else since the front was usually the place you were going to get hurt. 8. Austria made a lot of advances into Italy and Italy pushed back, leading the wart to be a stalemate, just like how trench warfare was. 9. There was a diversity of gender helping out. Usually it was all males doing the nursing, but now there were female nurses, and even doctors, which was unheard of in wartime. 10. Some countries, like Switzerland, were neutral countries during wartime, leading a lot of people, like Henry and Berkley to escape there to live and avoid the war.
For example, further interviews recorded by White in “Remembrance, Retrospection, and the Women’s Land Army in World War I Britain” explained that “priority was given to [women] with agricultural experience” and those who had no experience were obligated to “complete six weeks of training [at] agricultural college” (White 165). As a result of this, the number of women pursuing education in colleges and schools skyrocketed. Furthermore, as war led to an increase in the number of injured men, there was a shortage of nurses, and women swarmed into medical universities to receive their educations so they could serve as nurses. In his “Universities, medical education, and women,” Watts states that when it was observed that women could “join the popular and increasing band of professional nurses … women were striving to gain university admission” (Watts 307). Since women during this time period were accustomed to working at home and taking care of a family, it did not take much time for a notable amount of stay-at-home women to transition to nursing. Since nurses were at such a shortage during a period of war, universities were extremely willing to provide women with education in the medical field. In addition, as men across the country were constantly being deployed to the battlefield, vacancies in
The First World War saw a new form of warfare known as Trench warfare which involved trenches which were deep long dugouts made by the soldiers that lived in these trenches. The trenches proved useful as they protected the soldiers from artillery and bomb fire and were most likely situated in the eastern and western fronts of Europe. However the conditions of the trenches were far from exuberant but were in fact severely terrible. There was bad hygiene throughout the trenches, for example soldiers bathed probably only once a month and as such were prone to diseases such as trenches fever (which were due to the lice attracted by the bad hygiene). The weather was no exception as well, in the summer it would be too hot and in the winter it would be too cold and due to the nature of the trenches, when it rained the trenches would be filled with water, and due to such conditions welcomed the disease known as trench foot which was due to prolonged exposure to water and claimed the foots of many soldiers. There was also the constant danger of bomb fire and snipers would always be on the lookout for any movement. Latrines, which were toilets used in the trenches also sprouted fear as the enemy could see them in this area of the trenches and therefore were in constant danger of death. Soldiers also had to follow a strict code of conduct which was known as trench etiquette which ordered them to respect higher officers and they would have to be punished if the trench etiquette was ignored.
From early in the war, in May of 1914, Blunden recalled his experience in the trenches of France. Structured with sandbag walls, the Old British Line in which the men were stationed was only a frail comfort, as the trenches were often only one row deep with no additional protection against debris caused by artillery shells. Communication between the between the front line and the Old British Line was provided some covered by through the Cover Trench, although Prior’s account of returning from The Island, the front line, states that he had to pause every two minutes to lay in a ditch along the road to avoid the infamous German machine guns. The Germans bombarded the Cover Trench with heavy fire and large shells over the farmhouse and its residents, including children. Because the Germans were known for using gas, Blunden and his men underwent training to prepare for attacks. After completing this course, he was sent to the dugout near Cuinchy Keep, which was described as “dirty, bloodthirsty and wearisome,” primarily due to the number of mines which had already been exploded, and that it was not completely finished. However, when fighting in the trenches, “There was nothing for it but to copy experience, and experience was nothing but a casual protection.”
...stated the countries of Europe and their soldiers who died from the new weaponry and poor living conditions in World War I. At first, trench warfare seemed beneficial and apt, but instead it caused a horrific stalemate that lasted for about four years. This new battle style led to advancements in technology and terrible sanitation that led to more brutal deaths. In essence, the soldiers who survived the trenches, survived hell.
many men were involved in the war, women finally had their chance to take on many of
Shortly after the Civil War began, both sides realized that they were running short on staffing for their hospitals. Usually, “A working woman was an object of pity or scorn in Victorian America.” (USAHEC.org). Women were usually devoting their lives to caring for their husband and children; creating a nice, clean home (The History Channel Website, 2013). If they did nurse, it was only in their homes and for their family members (Egenes, 2009). The Civil War was the first time that women really played an important role in a war effort (The History Channel Website, 2013). When they found out that each side was in need of nurses, women immediately started volunteering to “help the war efforts of their side” (Freemon, 1998). Most of the women focused on helping wounded and sick soldiers (Freemon, 1998). Women of all ages and social classes nursed both Union and...
brigades and signed up to be nurses. This war forced woman of both sides into the public life.
During the war the women also helped in hospital. Usually called nursing sisters these women made one hundred and fifty dollars a month. they were the spirt of the hospital, the women would take care of the wounded, administer medication, assist doctors, and much more in the war hospitals helping and saving thousands. These...
Ernest Hemingway was a great American author whom started his career humbly in a newspaper office in Kansas City at the ripe, young age of seventeen. Once the United States joined World War One, Hemingway deemed it fit to join a volunteer ambulance service. During this time Hemingway was wounded, and decorated by the Italian Government for his noble deeds. Once he completely recovered, he made his way back to the United States. Upon his arrival he became a reporter for the American and Canadian newspapers and was sent abroad to cover significant events. For example, he was sent to Europe to cover the Greek revolution. During his early adulthood, Hemingway became a member of the group of expatriate Americans in Paris. This is known as the time in his life in which he describes in two of his novels; A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises the latter of the two being his first work. Hemingway was able to use his experiences of serving in the front during the war and his experience of being with other expatriates after the war to shape both of these novels. He was able to successful write these novels due to his past experience with working for newspapers. His experience with the newspaper seemed to be far more beneficial than just supplying him with an income, with the reporting experience under his belt he also was able to construct another novel that allowed him to sufficiently describe his experiences reporting during the Civil War; For Whom the Bell Tolls. Arguably his most tremendous short novel was a about an old fisherman’s journey and the long, lonely struggle with a fish and the sea with his victory being in defeat.
With rainwater comes mud, which made it hard for soldiers to keep their legs and feet dry since they were basically submerged in around three meters of mud. Soldiers would easily get trench foot, which eventually made your foot rot off of your body. It is difficult to imagine just how bad these trenches smelt and how bad they were to live in.
The World War One novelist Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “There were many words you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene” (Hemingway, ‘A Farewell to Arms’, 1929). Hemingway knew the horrors of war. He was a veteran of World War One. This was a war where 65 million troops were mobilized, and 37 million were killed, wounded, or went missing. War was seen as glorious until these views were brought in. Hemingway became famous for his writing as a member of the ‘Lost Generation’ of American writers. He, along with writers such as Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and T. S. Eliot made up the great American writers of the time. However, they did have their European
Spanier, Sandra Whipple. "Hemingway's Unknown Soldier: Catherine Barkley, the Critics, and the Great War." New Essays on A Farewell to Arms.
The First World War introduced a new type of warfare. New weapons were combined with old strategies and tactics. Needless to say, the results were horrific. However, a new type of warfare was introduced: trench warfare. In the movie War Horse, the character that owned the horse originally while he worked on his farm, Albert Narracott, finally was old enough to join the army. His first sight of battle was the Battle of Somme which took place in France near the Somme River. During this battle, the British troops start out in trenches, which were pretty much tunnels dug strategically to avoid gunfire. The soldiers would wait until they were told to advance, and they would run from one trench to the next. Trenches and the area between trenches were muddy and the trenches themselves were poorly conditioned (http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/chapters/ch1_trench.html). Many of the soldiers who fought in trenches succumbed to a foot disease called trench foot and if not treated immediately, gangrene could infect the foot and an amputation would be necessary for survival. Commanding officers ordered one or t...
In his novel A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway transfers his own emotional burdens of World War I to his characters. Although considered to be fiction, the plot and characters of Hemingway’s novel directly resembled his own life and experience, creating a parallel between the characters in the novel and his experiences. Hemingway used his characters to not only to express the dangers of war, but to cope and release tension from his traumatic experiences and express the contradictions within the human mind. Hemingway’s use of personal experiences in his novel represents Freud’s Psychoanalytic theory regarding Hemingway’s anxieties and the strength and dependency that his consciousness has over his unconsciousness.
In Book I, the army is still waiting for action, and the world is one of boredom with men drinking to make time go by and whoring to get women. War itself is a male game; ”no more dangerous to me myself than war in the movies” (34). Love is also a game. When Henry meets and makes his sexual approach to Catherine Barkley he is only trying to relieve war’s boredom; ”I knew I did not love Catherine Barkley or had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards” (28).