War Scene

War scene

A Farewell to Arms is one of the great American novel written by Ernest Hemingway concerning his own experiences serving in the Italian campaigns during the First World War. It opens with a description of artillery-laden troops marching slowly through the rains of late summer and autumn. One of these men is an American called Frederic Henry, a volunteer ambulance driver. Henry is currently in the Italian army, at the Italian front during World War I. This novel gives brilliant depictions about the conflict’s senseless savageness and violent perplexity: the scene of the Italian army’s retreat remains one of the most intense evocations of war in American literature.

In the first part of the book begins in the Alps around the frontier between Italy and present-day Slovenia. Britain, France, and Russia for allied against the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany, Italy is responsible for preventing the Austro-Hungarian forces form assisting the Germans on the war’s western front, and Russia in the east. “Book 1 charts Frederic’s descent into the horrors of the war. In book 2 his fate improves radically once he is taken to Milan, where he consummates his affair with Catherine. But book 3 returns Frederic to the front, where everything is worse than before. In book 4 and early in book 5, the happiness of Milan emerges Again, as Frederic and Catherine make their escape to Switzerland.” Bloom (Page 28). The Italian-Austrian Henry was border during the First World War. Henry returns from winter leave in early spring. His roommate, Rinaldi, is enamored of Catherine and he convinces Henry to visit the hospital with him and Henry finds himself attracted to Catherine. Henry and Catherine briefly begin a romantic relationship...

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...ook makes heartbreakingly clear, such shelter is always temporary.

Word cited

Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1957

Bloom, Harold. Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.

Gellens, Jay, ed. Twentieth-Century Interpretations of “A Farewell to Arms”: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970.

Charles Scribner’s Sons. A Farewell to Arms NewYork, renewal Copy right Ernest Hemingway 1957

Monteiro, George, ed. Critical Essays on Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1994.

Dr. Eric Hibbison, Professor of English and Chief Chair, Virginia Community College System 2001. Available online from: http://vccslitonline.cc.va.us/afta/