A Farewell to Arms Essay: Inevitability of Death Revealed

    "All fiction is autobiographical, no matter how obscure from the author's experience it may be, marks of their life can be detected in any of their tales"(Bell, 17).  A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway is based largely on Hemingway's own personal experiences.  The main character of the novel, Frederic Henry, experiences many of the same situations that Hemingway lived.  Some of these similarities are exact, while some are less similar, and some events have a completely different outcome.

Ernest Hemingway’s novel of A Farewell to Arms depicts the harsh veracities of World War 1, based on Hemingway’s personal accounts. His novel, written with simplicity and sensory detail, develops a zealous affair between an injured ambulance driver and his nurse. Hemingway’s illustration of lovers amidst a war allows readers to create their own interpretation of how the story evolves. His writing entails the reader to examine the chaotic circumstances throughout the novel. For example, on page 172, Hemingway writes, “Well, we were in it. Everyone was caught in it and the small rain would not quiet it. ‘Goodnight, Catherine,’ I said out loud. ‘I hope you sleep well. If it’s too uncomfortable, darling, lie on the other side,’ I said. ‘I’ll get you some cold water. In a little while it will be morning and then it won’t be so bad. I’m sorry he makes you so uncomfortable. Try and go to sleep, sweet!’ I was asleep all the time, she said. You’ve been talking in your sleep.” Hemingway collaborates all the lovers’ troubles into a simple understanding. He allows the reader to acknowledge frustration and concern in daily life and plan how to overcome such obstacles. On page 169 he writes, “When we were out past the tanneries onto the main road the troops, the motor trucks, the horse-drawn carts and the guns were in one wide slow-moving column. We moved slowly but steadily in the rain, the radiator cap of our car almost against the tailboard of a truck that was loaded high, the load

“Bodies bleed in his novel, at times uncontrollably, and Frederic's narrative likewise suffers at times from troubling and uncontrollable outflow” (Dodman 98). These soldiers are bleeding uncontrollably, which shows the physical destructiveness of war, but these doctors are more greatly emotionally traumatized by witnessing these soldiers bleeding out and dying and knowing that there is not much they can do to save them. Just as the bullets and bombs have caused the soldier’s “uncontrollable outflow” of blood, Hemingway’s novel suffers from “uncontrollable outflow” because of the traumatizing events he witnesses.

Death is the unavoidable force in the novella, the one fact that no living creature can escape. But death, Hemingway suggests, is never an end in itself: in death there is always the possibility of the most vigorous life. The reader notes that as Santiago slays the marlin, not only is the old man reinvigorated by the battle, but the fish also comes alive “with his death in him.” Life, the possibility of renewal, necessarily follows on the heels of death.

Ernest Hemingway wrote A Farewell to Arms, a celebrated historical fiction, amidst a time of war and personal suffering. Hemingway believed at this time that “life is a tragedy that can only have one end” (Hemingway, VIII). He continues further, calling war a “constant, bullying, murderous, slovenly crime” (Hemingway, IX). Hemingway also suffered at home, in addition to his issues regarding the state of the world. His wife had just endured a difficult pregnancy and delivery, which contributed to the last bitter chapter of his story. Keeping in mind the tortured and surly mental state of Hemingway, it is difficult to swallow the idea that he would write a wholesome, well founded love story that attracts people. To some readers, A Farewell to Arms tells of a whirlwind romance between an ambulance driver and a nurse that is based on an unbreakable foundation of love, trust, magnetism, and compassion. Anxious modernists, like Trevor Dodman who are cited in Joel Armstrong’s nonfiction text, will come up with a remarkably different outlook on this tragedy. With aid from “‘A Powerful Beacon’ Love Illuminating Human Attachment in Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms”, the loveless relationship between Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley will be seen as rushed, meaningless, and mentally destructive to the parties involved.

In Hemingway’s novel multiple characters fall in lost love. The characters think they are in love, but in the end they aren’t. Hemingway introduces us to multiple relationship and characters. Through these relationships the author shows the struggle of friendships and relationships and the connection of love through the generation is gone. The love they feels faded, friendships are lost and not reconnected. Lost love, in multiple ways is shown and expressed in the novel. In Hemingway’s novel love gets lost in many aspects.

He uses symbols effectively, which helps him to explore the theme of disillusionment and death. Death in his stories has many names; for example 'nada' or 'nothingness' – it may be assumed that it is always present. “Hemingway and the Lost Generation thereby explored more than just death, but the possibility of escape from the corruption of the old dreams – of being able to “resume again unknowing” – without returning to the past” (Currell 2009: 39). His short stories contains an excellent portraiture of society struggling with their personal waste lands. Even though they are not literally about the Great War, they display the inner significance of the Roaring Twenties; they show society's mentality and confusion. “Themes of Hemingway’s works have their roots in journalism and in topic or events that he believed were representative of the post-war world his grown-up characters and his readers alike had to confront” (Stewart 2001: 31). Further-more, in Hemingway’s fiction all the values seem to be no longer valid; a reader encounters disappearance of religion, which failed to provide emotional support for traumatised socie-ty. It also does not present valid answers. Finally, in Hemingway’s short stories appears a very important theme of anomie – the state where there are no law or norms. It can be also defined as an individual’s alienation (Idema 1990:

Although the story is told through first-person narration, we know that Frederic is a clean-shaven man who is tall in stature and although he is not handsome, he is attractive which makes him fit into Hemingway’s code hero. He shows us that he is a strong man and you realize this by everything he has to go through during his time of service. He is a strong man by fighting for a country that isn’t even is. By fighting for another country he is trying to discover himself and he wants from life. He is trying to discover what he truly wants.

take on Hemingway’s work. The main literary analysis that will be explained is the significance

To mirror the couple’s confusion of life verses death through abortion, Hemingway arranges words and phrases to establish the story indirectly. While most who visit Europe enjoy it, literature and movies

Hemingway uses a variety of literary elements to portray his message. The setting of the story is the summer of 1919 in a small Oklahoma town. World War 1 just ended two years prior and the main character, Harold Krebs, explains his post-war experiences (Meyer 129). Krebs is the protagonist who is “suffering from an inability to readjust to society” (Imamura para. 3). He is a dynamic, round character. At first he “did not want to talk about the war

Hemingway's world is one in which things do not grow and bear fruit, but explode, break, decompose, or are eaten away. It is saved from total misery by visions of endurance, by what happiness the body can give when it does not hurt, by interludes of love which

Ernest Hemingway's WWI classic, A Farewell to Arms is a story of initiation in which the growth of the protagonist, Frederic Henry, is recounted. Frederic is initially a naïve and unreflective boy who cannot grasp the meaning of the war in which he is so dedicated, nor the significance of his lover's predictions about his future. He cannot place himself amidst the turmoil that surrounds him and therefore, is unable to fully justify a world of death and destruction. Ultimately, his distinction between his failed relationship with Catherine Barkley and the devastation of the war allows him to mature and arrive at the resolution that the only thing one can be sure of in the course of life is death

Many of the passages of the novel reflect his life. Hemingway writes: “But man is not made for defeat," he said. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” This has been shown through his life, as Hemingway wrote the novella to prove he wasn’t finished as a writer. This is also reflected during his time in World War 1. Hemingway was wounded by Austrian Mortar fire, and yet despite his injuries or “defeat,” Hemingway carried a wounded italian soldier to safety. Hemingway wrote: "When you go to war as a boy you have a great illusion

Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms tells the tale of two young, star-crossed lovers in the midst of World War I. A powerful romance and stirring history of the war, this semi autobiographical novel meshes the contrasting worlds of love and war, setting war as the backdrop of love. The novel’s portrayal of love is an issue that has attracted critical debate, prompting many academics to reflect on its existence, form, and role in the plot. Joel Armstrong is one such academic. His literary criticism entitled, “‘A Powerful Beacon’ Love Illuminating Human Attachment in Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms,” asserts that love is the centering principle of the novel, and that the narrative’s world is one in which “love illuminates all of life” (Armstrong 79). As Armstrong asserts, love is the centering principle of A Farewell to Arms because it serves as an anchor for Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley during the tumultuous events of war, motivates them to go through significant struggles, and works along with loss to lend more meaning to significant events in the plot.