preview

A Farewell To Arms And The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

Better Essays

Kelly Warner
29 September 2017
EN 234 – Introduction to Fiction
Setting and Symbolism

In the novel “A Farewell to Arms” by Ernest Hemingway and the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, there are distinct similarities and differences in the setting and symbolism used throughout. In order to see what the authors are trying to say, from time to time, you have to look deeper into the facts in the writing and analyze. Both of these stories are extremely stimulating, while still being heartbreaking. The styles that these stories have make you as a reader see things differently in your own life and your own experiences. If you look at the similarities in these two stories, it is apparent that both of the authors use weather to …show more content…

The weather also had meaningful symbolism in both of the stories that led to the plot and conclusion of the story. The rain in “A Farewell to Arms” has more meaning than what we initially read. Rain symbolized death. If you look at the first chapter, it reads, “In the fall when the rains came the leaves all fell from the chestnut trees and the branches were bare and the trunks blank with rain; the vineyards were thin and bare-branched too and all the country wet and brown and dead with autumn” (Hemingway, 4). There was an outbreak of fatal illnesses that killed seven thousand people, “At the start of the winter came the permanent rain and with the rain came the cholera” (Hemingway, 7). Later on, Catherine tells Henry “I’m afraid of the rain because sometimes I see myself dead in it; and sometimes I see you dead in it” (Hemingway, 107). “A Farewell to Arms” and “The Lottery” both use religion as a form of symbolism. Henry describes the priest’s home of Abruzzi as a “place where the roads were frozen and hard as iron, where it was clear and cod and dry and the snow was dry and powdery” (Hemingway, 116). Even though the story showed glimpses of hope, Henry said “I believed that life was a tragedy and knew it could only have one end” (Merrill). The author of “The Lottery” was a Christian woman, so I can see why the critic Helen Nebeker argued that “the three legs of the

Get Access