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A Farewell to Arms is a novel by Ernest Hemingway about an American ambulance driver in Italy during World War I, and the nurse, Catherine Barkley, with whom he falls in love. The story is narrated by his driver, named Frederic Henry. Whether or not this book is truly an anti-war novel is debatable, but it well depicts the effects an ongoing war has on soldiers and how the men try to numb this pain. Henry's close friend at the front, Rinaldi, forgets the war with the help of sex and seduction, the priest takes comfort in God, the Captain has humor and jokes about the priest, and almost all drink profusely, taking wine and brandy like water. But the most important and notable attempt to escape from the pain of war is Henry and Catherine's: they hide from the real world in their imaginary tales of love, then become buried in obsession with each other, but, eventually, they truly love one another.
Mr. Henry meets Ms. Barkley (very appropriately) in the springtime. Rinaldi originally was planning on having a relationship with the English nurse, but forfeited her to Henry when he saw their mutual interest. When Catherine and Henry first met, she was carrying a rattan stick, and Henry asks about it. Catherine explains: "It belonged to a boy who was killed last year'... He was a very nice boy. He was going to marry me and he was killed in the Somme.'" (Hemingway, 18) The fact that she is carrying around one of her fiancee's possessions shows that she is still mourning his death. Catherine, wanting escape from the grief of her fiancees death, and Henry, wanting to forget about the war, begin their relationship. Since their relationship was born of a need for entertainment rather than real mutual interest, it started off as...
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...the end the world kills you. Catherine gets a hemorrhage, and Henry pleads with God not to let her die. Before she does, she tells Henry that she wants him to have other girls. Even while dying she was thinking about Henry's happiness, a sure sign of honest love. Catherine dies, and Henry walks to his hotel alone, in the rain.
Henry and Catherine both tried to hide from the pain of reality in each other. Their relationship started as a meaningless game, but as their need for companionship grew they became obsessed with each other and their love. Finally, when the fantasies and dreams were not enough, they literally ran away from the war together. In the end, even though their love started as a lie, it is obvious that they both held a true love for each other.
Works Cited
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms . New York: Scribner Classics, 1997. Print.
...s inner self. What is seen as a relationship amongst these two young men is now torn apart by the transformation of Henry caused from his witnesses during warfare.
Henry and Catherine hold a steady, loving and trustworthy relationship even through the tough times of war. Even though there are disputes on whether Henry and Catherine really loved each other, they held a good relationship. They tended to each others needs. Catherine took it slow while Henry wanted to rush into things to quickly. "Hello," I said. "When I saw her I was in love with her. Everything turned over inside of me." (91) Catherine and Henry were inseparable. Throughout the novel, their relationship became more serious and Henry had finally decided that he was in love with Catherine Barkley. "I really love you. I'm crazy about you." (92) This quote displays how Henry just can't get enough of Catherine how he wants to rush into things to quick. Henry doesn't like Catherine for who se really is but is taken over by the power of her looks.
After swimming to safety, Frederic boards a train and reunites with Catherine. She is pregnant with their baby. With the help of an Italian bartender, Catherine and Frederic escape to Switzerland, and plan to marry after the baby is born. When Catherine goes into labor, the doctor suddenly discovers that her pelvis is too narrow to deliver the baby. He attempts an unsuccessful Cesarean section, and she dies in childbirth with the baby. To Frederic, her dead body is like a statue; he walks back to his hotel without finding a way to say goodbye, seemingly lost forever.
While Catherine’s love grows for her hero, Henry Tilney, John also develops affection for Catherine. During this struggle for Catherine’s love, John begins to mature into the ‘classic villain.’ For example, during a normal evening at the ball, Catherine had promises to dance with Henry Tilney. However, Thorpe approaches Catherine and declares, “What is the meaning of this? - I thought you and I were to dance together” (Austen 46). Catherine is flustered since this declaration is false. After a barrage of half-truths, John once again talks about his beloved horses and his knowledge of them. Suddenly without any type of closure, he is wisped away by the “resistless pressure of a long string of passing ladies” (Austen 47). In this section of the novel, John Thorpe quickly becomes dislikeable and Jan...
He was a human that had emotions, he experienced grief with the multiple miscarriages and deaths of his sons and the betrayals of his wife’s, Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard. Also the death of Jane Seymour, the only wife to give him a male heir, brought him into a depression. These events changed Henry’s perspective of his own self, that he was without a legal heir, his health was horrendous and he was being betrayed by those closest to him. Lipscomb describes the transformation of Henry from the popular prince to the tyrant king know today. As shown, “the last decade of his reign, Henry VIII had begun to act as a tyrant. The glittering, brilliant monarch of the accession, toppled into old age by betrayal, aggravated into irascibility and suspicion as a result of ill health and corrupted by absolute power, had become a despot”. Henry is not thought of as the good Christian, but Lipscomb writes throughout this book that Henry was very serious about his religious affiliations. Lipscomb portrays Henry VIII as, “a man of strong feeling but little emotional intelligence, willful and obstinate but also fiery and charismatic, intelligent but blinkered, attempting to rule and preserve his honor against his profound sense of duty and heavy responsibility to fulfil his divinely ordained role”. In other words he was an emotional mess that did not know what to do with his feelings, so he bottled them up and south to seek
Heathcliff's love for Catherine transcends the normal physical "true love" into spiritual love. He can withstand anything against him to be with her. After Hindley became the master of Wuthering Heights, he flogged Heathcliff like a slave. Although Heathcliff could have simply run away, his decision to endure the physical pains shows his unrelenting devotion to Catherine. Fortunately, Catherine feels as deeply for Heathcliff as he does for her, explaining to Nelly that "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same…" Their love for each other is so passionate that they can not possibly live apart. At Catherine's death, Heathcliff hopes that she will not rest, but will haunt him until he dies. This absurdity contradicts the traditional norm that one should pray that the dead rest in peace. Near the end of the novel, we learn that Catherine has haunted Heathcliff, allowing him only fleeting glances of her. This shows that despite their physical separation, nothing can part them spiritually. When Heathcliff dies and unites with Catherine once again, the neighbors see them haunt the moors. We finally see the power of their love; Not only does this love transcend physical barriers, it transcends time as well...
When the two first meet, Catherine is still dealing with the death of her fiancé in battle. This presents her as a woman who knows the dangers and possibilities of war. As a nurse physically present during the war, she is rightfully not perceived as grieving and mortified by her fiancé¹s death. She did not marry him because he wanted to enlist in the war, ³I would have married him or anything ... But then he wanted to go to war and I didn¹t know² (Hemingway, 19). Typically, many women married their sweethearts in lure of the war. She goes onto say that she ³didn¹t know anything then,² but the fact that she did know that the war was not an excuse to get married presents her as perceptive and intellligent (19). The war alone could not justify her love for her life long friend and fiancé. This tragic event explains her confusing emotional behavior towards Henry at first.
...ne show his sensibility. His imagination and creativity motivate him to read Gothic romances and to indulge in the effects that his inventive tales produce. His decision to marry Catherine is motivated by feelings of love that further exemplifies his sensibility. Throughout the novel the readers see an excellent display of Henry's ability to maintain equilibrium between the two qualities. He passes his knowledge onto Catherine to help her to become a better person. At the end of the novel it is apparent that Henry has taught the keys of his success to Catherine.
...e of joy and pain in Catherine’s life, as their love was so powerful that it can only be embraced by the extent of death. With many other important messages in the novel, the most important is the changes that occur in and between the characters. The numerous characteristic aspects, the characters in the story are enthralling. Although, Cathy Linton may be recognized as a duplicate of Catherine Earnshaw due to the parallelism of generations, their traits and personalities are entirely individual. Cathy is an innocent and fine young lady, and Catherine is a selfish evil monster. Throughout the progress of the story the reader can clearly appreciate the mismatched traist of the mother and daughter. And like, psychologists have said, “Often children avoid the ways their parents have gone”. Although Cathy doesn’t experience her mother ways, she lives the opposite way.
A Farewell to Arms has many similarities between Henry and Hemingway; the first noticeable one is that Henry, like Hemingway, was an American in the Italian army. Henry was an ambulance driver for the Red Cross, just like Hemingway was. Thomas Putnam stated in his article on Hemingway that "during the First World War, Ernest Hemingway volunteered to serve in Italy as an ambulance driver with the American Red Cross. In June 1918, while running a mobile canteen dispensing chocolate and cigarettes for soldiers, he was wounded by Austrian mortar fire." This is comparable to Henry’s experiences in A Farewell to Arms. Anders Hallengren drew the connection that both men, real and fictional, were one of the first Americans wounded in World War I. "There is a parallel in Hemingway's life, connected with the occasion when he was seriously wounded at midnight on July 8, 1918, at Fossalta di Piave in Italy and nearly died. He was the first American to be wounded in Italy during World War I." A...
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.
...Catherine are not married. She tries to comfort Ferguson instead of becoming angered, as Frederic does. Also when fleeing to Switzerland Catherine keeps her calm to successfully acquire visas so that they can stay and Lt. Henry will not be captured. The most obvious place in the novel where Catherine shows she is not scared of death and how well she remains graceful, even under pressure is during her painful labor. She does her best to stay positive even though she becomes certain she is going to die, and she is constantly reassuring Frederic. She says everything from “Don’t mind me, darling. Please don’t cry. Don’t mind me,” to “Don’t worry darling, I’m not a bit afraid. It’s just a dirty trick,” in hopes of comforting Frederic. Even though she is in great pain she is not thinking about herself, but instead Frederic just as she does for the duration of the novel.
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.
Hemingway synthesizes the theory that because of the pain that is brought about, love is not able to survive. The feeling of love is felt by both Henry and Catherine, but it is hard to realize that when pain always surrounds the couple. Hemingway’s creative mind creates a frustrating love story for the reader – one in which ends in devastation. Love is present but will not last. Human nature is to be attracted to love, but humanity may be destined for pain because of the tragedy brought about by love.
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... ...