A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
One of Hemingway’s war and love stories, this novel takes place in Italy during World War I and is tied closely to the author’s own experience as an American Ambulance Driver for the Italian Army. The story opens during a lull in the action and the reader meets a group of men who work with the wounded during battle. In the course of waiting for action, the protagonist, Henry, meets and courts an English nurse stationed in Italy. The core of the tale is the evolution of the love of these two in the face of increasing military involvement, including an engagement in which Henry is wounded and after his return to the front, an Italian retreat from which he barely escapes with his life. Ultimately, he and Catherine, his English love, defect and enter Switzerland to await the birth of their child. Baby and mother both die and Henry is left alone, his future left by the author unplotted.
Through the character of Frederic, Hemingway eloquently argues against war. Frederic accepts what life hands him without murmuring, but argues the fatalist’s philosophy: whether you were good or bad. Hemingway himself had served in the Italian army as an ambulance driver and, like Frederic, was wounded in the legs.
Thus, much of A Farewell to Arms’ emotional energy was taken from his own experiences.
The author portrays a sophisticated, intimate, caring relationship between Frederic and Catherine; a relationship entered into without the benefit of marriage. In the 1920s this was unheard of. The novel, in many other ways as well, helped break new social and literary frontiers, with its economical style and emotional understatement. The prose is terse, in characteristic Hemingway style, and the evolution of the love story is no exception.After reading Robin Cook extensively, Hemingway’s description of medical professionals was excellent. ---
After reading The Old Man and the Sea, a Farewell to Arms was quite refreshing and romantic.
Pradeep Ratnaparkhi – 19 Sep 2005