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Ernest Hemingway Symbolism Essay

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Catherine’s life before Italy was very difficult for her considering the grief she carries with the memories she left. Catherine worked and lived in France and unfortunately her fiancée died in battle, “He was going to marry me and he was killed in the Somme” (Hemingway 18). She discusses that her initial move to Italy was out of solidarity for her dead fiancée. Catherine continues to pursue her medical career as a V.A.D.. When Frederic is asked why he, an American, is working for the Italian army, he claims that “There isn’t always an explanation for everything” (Hemingway 15). Frederic’s past is shielded from the novel but more is revealed later on while he is staying at his friend Simmon’s home. He is asked why he used to live in Rome to …show more content…

The mountains’ symbolic meaning is safety and purity because when Frederic and Catherine reach the Swiss Alps, they are isolated from the corruption happening down below in the plains. The plains symbolize the struggles both of them have been through to survive. The rain symbolizes death "In the fall when the rains came the leaves all fell from the chestnut trees and the branches were bare and the trunks black with rain"(Hemingway 151). Frederic says "The vineyards were thin and bare-branched too and all the country wet and brown and dead with autumn” (Hemingway 4). The rain that fall caused an outbreak of diseases such as cholera which killed seven thousand "I'm afraid of the rain because sometimes I see myself dead in it,” (Hemingway 134) Catherine says to Frederic. "And sometimes I see you dead in it” (Hemingway 134).
10. The attitude towards war in A Farewell to Arms is antiwar. The novel is not against violence but is against thoughtless violence. This could be because of the psychological damage that war inflicts on individuals and populations and its brutal upheaval of the lives of survivors. Catherine and Frederic both show psychological damage due to their war surroundings which is just one of the reasons why they love each other. In violence like this, it does not matter about having the title “winners or

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