preview

Love And Love In Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms

Decent Essays

Suddenly, an idea enters your train of thought and streams throughout your mind; you are in your own world of random words and phrases that amount to nothing... but make all the sense in your world, a world that only exists within. In A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway traverses into Frederic’s stream of consciousness in order to develop Frederic’s dependence on the love of Catherine Barkley. Frederic's development throughout the novel is mirrored by a progression in his attachment to Catherine. Through foreshadowing and streams of consciousness, Hemingway uses Frederic’s relationship with Catherine to actualize his growth. The deeper his devotion to Catherine, the more his views change about the war. When Frederic is first introduced, he is arrogant and dissolute and has yet to establish any parameters for his life. Upon meeting Catherine, Frederic’s lust for her makes him long for her company; and although he desires a purely sexual relationship, he "accidentally" falls in love with her. Frederic’s transformation from a disillusioned young man to a weathered soul that has suffered life's greatest agonies is a result of his loss in love and war.
At the beginning of the novel, Frederic is an independent, yet naive, soldier lacking direction in life and passion for the war:
I had gone to no place where the roads were frozen and hard as iron, where it was clear cold and dry and the snow was dry and powdery and hare-tracks in the snow...I had gone to no such place but to

Get Access