Love and Agony in A Farewell to Arms
The vigorous, strapping youth boldly advances into war, rifle in hand, picture of mom in his pocket- hair neatly combed, clean socks. Eagerly he arrives on the sunny front and fights off the enemy with valor, saving whole troops of injured soldiers as he throws them over his shoulders and prances upon the grassy lawn to safety. Between various sequential medal-awarding ceremonies, he meets a radiant young nurse tending the blessed wounded he saved. They fall in love, get married, produce beautiful war babies, and everyone returns home happily. Wouldn't it be just lovely if war were really like that?
It's not. It's war. Ernest Hemingway's, A Farewell to Arms is a book about war. As a reader, when I start reading a book about death, blood, guts, and destruction, I typically will not expect a Cinderella "Happily Ever After," "aw, isn't that sweet?" ending. But, isn't it a love story? Well, yes, it's love in war. Let us not forget the circumstances that surround and confine this love. Is the tragic ending of the novel thus valid? Well, yes- it is war, after all. Few good things result. Am I pro-ending? Well, I'm certainly not rejoicing over the death of two innocent lives, nor do I think Mr. Henry does either. There is a difference though between recognizing the possible realism of the story, including how the ending fits into it, and personally liking the occurrences within- I for one have no strengthened desire to pack my bags and head off to war.
Pain and agony, blood and guts, bodies strewn over fields of mud are all immediate turn-offs for me. But, besides the obvious, my biggest issue with the war is that it causes the characters to create their own fragile wor...
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...ou'll never get married...You'll die then. Fight or Die. That's what people do. They don't marry.' " (108).
Indeed, it's war. They don't get married. She does get pregnant. She does die, as did many young women in such times and circumstances, in childbirth. Is this unreasonable? Of course not. Is it sad? Very much so. Does the one who loved her, however superficially it may have been, rejoice over her death? No. He prays for her survival, and he grieves. He didn't want to see his buddies die on the battlefield, he didn't want to see Rinaldi die from a sexually transmitted disease, and he certainly didn't want to see the death of his so-called wife and newborn child. War brings pain. Even through the pretending, no one can truly escape the agony.
Works Cited
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1929.
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...ome aspect of war, from battling with enemies to how battle spiritually destroys young men. The one positive point of this novel is how friends cared for one another when going through tragedies and stressful experiences. It also portrays how strong a soldier needs to be, in order for them to be in the war.
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, written by the talented author Chris Hedges, gives us provoking thoughts that are somewhat painful to read but at the same time are quite personal confessions. Chris Hedges, a talented journalist to say the least, brings nearly 15 years of being a foreign correspondent to this book and subjectively concludes how all of his world experiences tie together. Throughout his book, he unifies themes present in all wars he experienced first hand. The most important themes I was able to draw from this book were, war skews reality, dominates culture, seduces society with its heroic attributes, distorts memory, and supports a cause, and allures us by a constant battle between death and love.
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While soldiers are often perceived as glorious heroes in romantic literature, this is not always true as the trauma of fighting in war has many detrimental side effects. In Erich Maria Remarque 's All Quiet On The Western Front, the story of a young German soldier is told as he adapts to the harsh life of a World War I soldier. Fighting along the Western Front, nineteen year old Paul Baumer and his comrades begin to experience some of the hardest things that war has to offer. Paul’s old self gradually begins to deteriorate as he is awakened to the harsh reality of World War 1, depriving him from his childhood, numbing all normal human emotions and distancing future, reducing the quality of his life.
War is no child 's play, but unfortunately, we have had times in our past when the youth of our great nation had to defend it. Combat is not an easy for anyone; watching death, the constant ring of gunfire, the homesickness, fearing for your life, and witnessing bloodshed daily, this will begin to take its toll. The minds threshold for brutality can only handle so much and eventually will become sickened by these events. This sickness is called Post-traumatic stress disorder. As shown through the characters of The Things They Carried, soldiers of war may begin to show PTSD symptoms before the war is over, and may continue to fight the disorder after the war has ended.
War always seems to have no end. A war between countries can cross the world, whether it is considered a world war or not. No one can be saved from the reaches of a violent war, not even those locked in a safe haven. War looms over all who recognize it. For some, knowing the war will be their future provides a reason for living, but for others the war represents the snatching of their lives without their consent. Every reaction to war in A Separate Peace is different, as in life. In the novel, about boys coming of age during World War II, John Knowles uses character development, negative diction, and setting to argue that war forever changes the way we see the world and forces us to mature rapidly.
Dave Pelzer is the survivor of the third worst case of child abuse in California's history. Dave grew up with his two brothers and two parents. Catherine, Dave's mother, loved to cook exotic meals for her family and decorate their home in creative and imaginative ways each holiday season. She was full of energy, often taking her kids on tours of downtown San Francisco while her husband was at work as a fire fighter, exposing them to Golden Gate Park and Chinatown. Once, while on a family camping trip, young Dave was watching the sunset when he felt his mother embrace him from behind and watch the sunset with him over his shoulder. "I never felt as safe and warm as at that moment in time," he recalls.
The physical effects of war overwhelm the naïve causing pain and suffering. Initially, war entangles the lives of youth, destroying the innocence that they experience as an aspect of their life. The girl “glid[ing] gracefully down the path” (1) and the boy “rid[ing] eagerly down the road” (9) have their enjoyable realities striped by the harshness of war. Likewise, war enters women’s lives creating turmoil. The woman who works “deftly in the fields” ( ) no longer is able to experience the offerings of life. The “wire cuts,” ( ) pushing her away from the normal flow of life. In addition, man undergoes tragic obstacles as a result of war. “A man walks nobly and alone” ( ) before the horrible effects of war set in on his life causing disruptions. War enters the life of man destroying the bond man shares with his beloved environment ( ).
Escape from Reality in A Farewell to Arms & nbsp; In Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, Fredric Henry gets involved with Catherine Barkley to escape the insanity of war. Frederic loves Catherine. Catherine loves Frederic. The extreme situation of war and fate allowed both of them to be thrown together and fall in love.
...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 boy’s safe haven attachment increases as the novel progresses. The man keeps trying to teach the boy to be on his own, due to unknown future, although the boy remains securely attached. Safe ha...
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.
...so provided the reader with realistic descriptions of the warfront. Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms realistically explores the inglorious and brutal truths of war, and idealistically analyzes the power of true love.