Introduction: A Farewell to Arms is divided into five books. In the first book, Rinaldi introduces Frederic Henry to Catherine Barkley; Frederic attempts to seduce her, and their relationship begins. While on the Italian front, Frederic is wounded in the knee by a mortar shell and sent to a hospital in Milan. The second book shows the growth of Frederic and Catherine's relationship as they spend time together in Milan over the summer. Frederic falls in love with Catherine and, by the time he is healed, Catherine is three months pregnant. In the third book, Frederic returns to his unit, but not long afterwards the Austrians break through the Italian lines in the Battle of Caporetto, and the Italians retreat. Frederic kills an engineering sergeant for insubordination. After falling behind and catching up again, Frederic is taken to a place by the "battle police", where officers are being interrogated and executed for the "treachery" that supposedly led to the Italian defeat. However, after seeing and hearing that everyone interrogated is killed, Frederic escapes by jumping into a river. In the fourth book, Catherine and Frederic reunite and flee to Switzerland in a rowboat. In the final book, Frederic and Catherine live a quiet life in the mountains until she goes into labor. After a long and painful birth, their son is stillborn. Catherine begins to hemorrhage and soon dies, leaving Frederic to return to their hotel in the rain.
Love in the novels of Hemingway is not a sentimental affair where lovers cry and long for one another. His concept of love unlike that of Charles Dickens is realistic and an urgent need of body and mind which explains why lovers in the novels of Hemingway form sexual and emotional intimacy...
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...ndeed. The poignace of story is beautiful orchestrated to heart wrenching finale of the novel.
There is contrast in the two themes. But ultimately we feel convinced that it is neither love nor war which is salient feature dominating the novel. It is the concept of man pitted against the unknown who dominates the proceeding be it in the factor of war or love. Be what may the theme of ‘A Farewell to Arms’ touches an emotional chord in the heart of every feeling man and woman. It is the convention that death is the ultimate reality that is left in the minds of the readers.
Works Cited
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929)
Mellow, Jeffrey. Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences. Boston: Houghton Mifflin (1992).
Meyers, Jeffrey (1985). Hemingway: A Biography. New York: Macmillan
Catherine Barkley is Frederick’s true love. “I felt damned lonely and was glad when the train got to Stresa…I was expecting my wife…” (Hemingway 243-244). This quote shows the physical and emotional yearning that Catherine inspires in Frederic. This desire for her is what helps him through the war. Eliezer’s love, on the other hand, is directed towards his father.
Many books contain multiple meanings behind them, and have underlying themes to them. The book All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, is no exception. The plot of the book revolves around a young German soldier by the name of Paul Bäumer. Paul is in the war with his friends that he had gone to school with before war along with other comrades he meets in boot camp. In the book All Quiet on the Western Front there are four main themes which are expressed by Remarque which include: Loyalty and friendship under fire, unbelievable suffering at the hands of other human beings, betrayal by adults, and the beauty of nature in stark contrast to the psychotic experiences of war. In the book there are four different examples which clearly explain how these themes clearly represent the book. All together the themes show the tragedy that war really brings upon people in the least way deserve it.
Erich Maria Remarque develops this theme by utilizing the symbol of army attire, the motif of separation of powers between different generations, and the motif of lost innocence. Remarque visits the many horrors of wars in the field and in their consciences through powerful symbolism that convey the realities they face, readers can see this through remarks of the characters along the story. Readers observe how the loss of youth scars these men and their ambitions, how soldiers seemingly feel like kids without their attire and the great divide and distrust they hold towards their previous generation. It is in these devices readers can fully grasp the horror and tragedy of
... experiences of love with Agnes von Kurowsky. That being said, the two main characters of the text can be psychoanalytically depicted through the use of the id, the ego, and the superego, which helps uncover how complete happiness is unachievable. The protagonist, Fredric Henry could not obtain complete happiness due to the situations he encountered himself in. Catherine also could not acquire absolute happiness because of the loss of her fiancé. Lastly, the rain symbolizes tragedy and the dissolution of happiness, which can be seen through the soldiers on the battlefield. Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954 because of his ability to capture the art of narrative. Later on, Hemingway committed suicide on July 2, 1961 (“Ernest Hemingway- Biorgaphy”). “In order to write about life first you must live it” (Ernest Miller Hemingway, 1899 – 1961.”).
Hemingway’s dialogue reveals the difficult nature of a relationship between a man and a woman, as it focusses on incompatibility of their relationship and their different values on abortion. The reader witnesses a deep conflict between them on the issue as the decision will affect both their relationship and the rest of their lives.
"After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain" (332). This last line of the novel gives an understanding of Ernest Hemingway's style and tone. The overall tone of the book is much different than that of The Sun Also Rises. The characters in the book are propelled by outside forces, in this case WWI, where the characters in The Sun Also Rises seemed to have no direction. Frederick's actions are determined by his position until he deserts the army. Floating down the river with barely a hold on a piece of wood his life, he abandons everything except Catherine and lets the river take him to a new life that becomes increasing difficult to understand. Nevertheless, Hemingway's style and tone make A Farewell to Arms one of the great American novels. Critics usually describe Hemingway's style as simple, spare, and journalistic. These are all good words they all apply. Perhaps because of his training as a newspaperman, Hemingway is a master of the declarative, subject-verb-object sentence. His writing has been likened to a boxer's punches--combinations of lefts and rights coming at us without pause. As illustrated on page 145 "She went down the hall. The porter carried the sack. He knew what was in it," one can see that Hemingway's style is to-the-point and easy to understand. The simplicity and the sensory richness flow directly from Hemingway's and his characters' beliefs. The punchy, vivid language has the immediacy of a news bulletin: these are facts, Hemingway is telling us, and they can't be ignored. And just as Frederic Henry comes to distrust abstractions like "patriotism," so does Hemingway distrust them. Instead he seeks the concrete and the tangible. A simple "good" becomes higher praise than another writer's string of decorative adjectives. Hemingway's style changes, too, when it reflects his characters' changing states of mind. Writing from Frederic Henry's point of view, he sometimes uses a modified stream-of-consciousness technique, a method for spilling out on paper the inner thoughts of a character. Usually Henry's thoughts are choppy, staccato, but when he becomes drunk the language does too, as in the passage on page 13, "I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you
Anton Chekhov and Ernest Hemingway both convey their ideas of love in their respective stories The Lady with the Pet Dog and Hills like White Elephants in different ways. However, their ideas are quite varying, and may be interpreted differently by each individual reader. In their own, unique way, both Chekhov and Hemingway evince what is; and what is not love. Upon proper contemplation, one may observe that Hemingway, although not stating explicitly what love is; the genius found in his story is that he gives a very robust example of what may be mistaken as love, although not being true love. On the other hand, Chekhov exposes love as a frame of mind that may only be achieved upon making the acquaintance of the “right person,” and not as an ideal that one may palpate at one instance, and at the another instance one may cease to feel; upon simple and conscious command of the brain. I agree with Hemingway’s view on love because it goes straight to the point of revealing some misconceptions of love.
But this is where Frederic made his mistake. He kept his distance from right and wrong regarding war and love. He had separated himself from war and seemed to have no place in it at all, mentally or physically (for example when he is in the hospital in Book Two). But when Aymo is killed by his own army, Frederic discovers the reality that he is not really separated from this event at all. He is very much part of this war whether he likes it or not.
Schneider, Daniel. "Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms: The Novel as Pure Poetry." Modern Fiction Studies, 14 (Autumn 1968): 283-96.
Eby, Carl P. "Hemingway's Fetishism: Psychoanalysis and the Mirror of Manhood. Albany: State University of New York Press. As Rpt. in Bauer, Margaret D. "Forget the Legend and Read the Work: Teaching Two Stories by Ernest Hemingway. College Literature, 30 (3) (Summer 2003): 124-37. EBSCOhost.
The world contains many recurring events that remind humans of morals or things that are important. In the novel “A Farewell to Arms” many events come again and again. Usually, these events that repeat or come again have a deeper message inscribed in the text. This is not unlike the novel “The Great Gatsby” which has weather that unfailingly matches up with the tone and mood of the text. Author Ernest Hemingway has created “A Farewell to Arms” with a motif that is very precise.
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).
Book II describes a slight transformation when Henry, wounded, spends time in hospital. He is suddenly more involved with the war, but, as a release from the war, he now acknowledges his great love for Catherine. The war is never far away, though. Protest riots take place in Rome and Turin and there are intimations that the war is becoming a stalemate, the army disillusioned; ”there was a great contrast between his world pessimism and personal cheeriness” (127), the prospects of victory evaporating; ”the war could not be much worse” (129).
Theme is a literary element used in literature and has inspired many poets, playwrights, and authors. The themes of love and war are featured in literature, and inspire authors to write wartime romances that highlight these two themes. Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms deals with the collective themes in the human experience such as love and the reality of war. A Farewell to Arms is narrated from the perspective of Fredric Henry, an ambulance driver in the Italian army, and pertains to his experiences in the war. 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. 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...