The Motif of Ernest Hemingway´s A Farewell to Arms

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 whereas the novel “The Great Gatsby” has weather that unfailingly matches up with the tone and mood of the text. The author Ernest Hemingway has created “A Farewell to Arms” with a motif that is very precise. The motif of rain and nature in Hemingway’s novel divulges that there are things that a human beings cannot control; making them recognize what they lack and how life can bring sadness.

The constant appearance of rain allows for sadness to be foreshadowed; the opposite can be inferred where there is more of a relief than sadness. The book says in the weather “…came the permanent rain and with the rain came the cholera” (Hemingway, 4). When the rain pours in the beginning of the book, it started to describe the scenery. The rain was signifies rain as death and as a tragedy for thousands of death soldiers follow along the cholera that comes with the rain. Usually when it rains in a novel or in a movie, the plot turns negative. Rain serves as a potent symbol of inevitable disintegration of happiness in life. Before Hemingway describes the rain, he says that “the leaves” on the trees “fell early that year” and this is not an example of rain, but it shows that not only does rain foreshadow sadness, but nature itself does. The nature aspect of this was that the leaves symbolize the soldiers and since they are falling early that year that means that they are dying as a young man. The death of them are sometimes forgotten with the permanent rain that falls o...

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...ether and in his own hands, she breathes her last breathe.

Earnest Hemingway throughout the novel, develops the motif of rain to the extent where the word standing alone has the power to change with despair and aguish. In most novels, movies, or stories, rain is utilized to represent revival, new life, and ore positive things. Hemmingway uses this element to send the message out that rain is a gloomy, dark, sad element. Catherine in the book says that everything ends in dead and it was raining when she was in the hospital and when Henry comes out. Albert pike once said “What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.” Henry was our main character and we followed his story, but Henry is forever changed although the rain and he will never forget her even if it will rain for the rest of his life.