Death is amongst the major concern during the World War 1-era of Ernest Hemingway’s novel, A Farwell to Arms. In Ernest Hemingway’s A Farwell to Arms, he feels that death seems to be of resignation. He accepts death as inevitable, and in the context of war, senseless death is everywhere. Death waits for everyone through the attitudes that cowards and brave people have. However, he feels that a person can face the inevitable with bravery and courage. Hemingway believes death is inevitable, but courage still matters as evidenced by courage, bravery, and love.
Through Henry and Catherine’s relationship and experiences together, Hemingway demonstrates the belief that while death is inescapable, it is still important to face death with courage. Henry is stating that he has made a “separate peace” with the war which means he is trying to forget about it. When Lt. Henry and Catherine were discussing about how they are going to be in the future, Lt. Henry states, “If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world ...
“Don’t talk about the war,” he says after abandoning the front, “it was over…but I did not have the feeling it was really over” (Hemingway 245). For Frederic the war captured his mind in a way that he
War creates only two types of men: heroes and cowards. In the book, A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway, Mr. Frederic Henry was an American Lieutenant ambulance driver in the Italian Army. "The army was staying in Gorizia, a little town that had been captured by the Italian army" (5). The town looked across a river and the plains to the mountains. There was fighting going on in those mountains, only a mile away. One evening when Frederic came in the house after doing some work on his ambulance, his friend Rinaldi took him to a hospital to meet a nurse who was a friend of Rinaldi's. Frederic thought that Miss Barkley was very pretty and good looking. Frederic started seeing Miss Catherine Barkley on a regular basis.
Suddenly, it enters your thoughts and streams throughout your mind; you begin to think, you are in a stream of consciousness. You are in your own world of random words and sentences, amounting to nothing, and at times making all the sense in your world, a world that only exists within your mind. That is exactly how a stream of consciousness works, according to Charles Bohner and Dean Dougherty (1216). Ernest Hemingway himself traverses into three streams of consciousness of his own in order to develop Henry's character and the over all theme of A Farewell to Arms, war and love and all feelings in between. For instance, while Henry is not really required to go to war, he volunteers, without thinking of the consequences and horrors of war. However, along the way, he manages to encounter love, incur physical pain, and realize the horrors of war. And so, having to face a possible death while at the front, Henry finds himself in an extraordinary position. He is somewhere between life and death and while between these two extremes his experiences shapes him into a more mature character.
Hopeless Suffering in A Farewell to Arms Near the end of A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway has Fredrick Henry describe the time he placed a log full of ants on a fire. This incident allows us to understand a much larger occurrence, Catherine's pregnancy. Combined, both of these events form commentary on the backdrop for the entire story, World War One. After he finds out his son was stillborn, Lt. Henry remembers the time when he placed a log full of ants on a fire.
One of Ernest Hemingway’s greatest novels, “A Farewell to Arms”, has been surrounded by controversy among literary, as well as historical, scholars regarding Hemingway’s inspiration for the famous novel. Many feel that Ernest Hemingway created this fictional book solely from his imagination rather than his experiences, while others believe that Hemingway drew the inspiration for this book from his experience as a volunteer ambulance driver throughout the war. Even though there has been much controversy, there is documented historical proof that the experiences that Hemingway had experienced from his time in the war had influenced his creation of “A Farewell to Arms”.
Bloom, Harold. Introduction. Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea, 1987.
Works Cited and Consulted Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. Simon & Schuster, Inc.; New York, NY; 1929. The Cambridge Companion to Ernest Hemingway; edited by Scott Donaldson; Cambridge U. P.; New York, NY; 1996. Mandel, Miriam B.; Reading Hemingway: The Facts in the Fictions; The Scarecrow Press, Inc.; Metuchen, NJ; 1995.
...is story, Hemingway brings the readers back the war and see what it caused to human as well as shows that how the war can change a man's life forever. We think that just people who have been exposed to the war can deeply understand the unfortunates, tolls, and devastates of the war. He also shared and deeply sympathized sorrows of who took part in the war; the soldiers because they were not only put aside the combat, the war also keeps them away from community; people hated them as known they are officers and often shouted " down with officers" as they passing. We have found any blue and mournful tone in this story but we feel something bitter, a bitter sarcasm. As the war passing, the soldiers would not themselves any more, they became another ones; hunting hawks, emotionless. They lost everything that a normal man can have in the life. the war rob all they have.
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).
While Frederic Henry may be the main focus of the novel, we cannot forget that Catherine Barkley is the original Hemingway Code Hero that helped Henry mature to the hero he is at the end of the novel. Without Catherine’s heroism, Frederic Henry would still be an immature ambulance driver that frequents brothels without much meaning to his life. Catherine forces him to grow up and face the world, and that is why she deserves her title as a Hemingway Code Hero.
In novels or other literary works many authors write about things they dream about. Many write about what stories they have heard from fellow companions. None have written about such vivid, yet traumatic experiences as the twentieth century writer, Ernest Hemingway. That is why Hemingway's tend to concur to his real life experiences.
Oak Park, Illinois greatly influenced the writing world on July 12,1899. For on that day Grace Hemingway, the wife of Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, gave forth to the writing world a baby boy by the name of Ernest Miller Hemingway (Young 82). He would, later in his life, compose the most powerful literary impact upon the new generation of American writers with his plain, factual, but evocative style (Morris 863). No one in America would ever influence the writing world like Hemingway.
There are indications in each of the novel’s five books that Ernest Hemingway meant A Farewell to Arms to be a testament against war. World War One was a cruel war with no winners; ”War is not won by victory” (47). Lieutenant Frederic Henry, the book’s hero and narrator, experiences the disillusionment, the hopelessness and the disaster of the war. But Henry also experiences a passionate love; a discrepancy that ironically further describes the meaninglessness and the frustration felt by the soldiers and the citizens.
The novel also highlights the passionate relationship between Henry and Catherine Barkley, a British nurse in Italy. Henry’s insight into the war and his intense love for Catherine emphasize that love and war are the predominant themes in the novel and these themes contribute to bringing out the implicit and explicit meaning of the novel. Being a part of the Italian army, Henry is closely involved with the war and has developed an aversion to the war. Henry’s association with the war has also made him realise that war is inglorious and the sacrifices made in war are meaningless. Specifically, Henry wants the war to end because he is disillusioned by the war and knows that war is not as glorious as it is made up to be.