...15 September 2015 Symbol of Rain in A Farewell to Arms In A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, Hemingway expresses the struggle of letting go through the theme of rain. It seems as if whenever there is the slightest bit of hope for Catherine and Henry’s relationship, it is destroyed by a disaster. In several instances, including the trip to Milan and Henry’s walk back to the hotel, rain haunts the characters and predicts misfortune. Throughout A Farewell to Arms, rain tends to destroy any happiness felt between Catherine and Henry, as it foreshadows tragedy to come. One night, while Catherine and Henry are enjoying their time together in Milan, Catherine confesses that she is frightened by the rain. Catherine asks Henry if he will always love her, even in the rain, because she feels that it is “hard on loving” (Hemingway 104). Because she claims to fear rain for the reason of seeing herself and Henry dead in it, it foreshadows her death to come. In this case, rain is symbolizing Catherine’s fear of commitment. She worries that with rain comes sadness and anger, which could cause Henry to leave her. To Catherine, rain is a barrier that can separate her from Henry if he does not truly love her. Henry’s walk back to the hotel in the rain symbolizes the distress that the weather has brought to both him and Catherine. In parts of A Farewell to Arms, where loneliness is felt, rain plays a significant role in the falling out of events. When Henry chooses to walk...
Words: 598 - Pages: 3
...Mohsen Jamal Mr. Andrews ENG3U1 22 March, 2016 Ineffective Writing Style in Farewell to Arms World War I was one of the most desolating tragedies that the human race ever faced. The novel, Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, is one of many famous and historic novels that date back to World War One. Farewell to Arms is a well-known novel solely based on the content inside of its covers, and it has also been ‘labelled’ as one of Hemingway’s greatest novels. Although the novel is famous for its interior content, the introductory chapters in the novel are ineffective and misleading. The chapters lack relevant information, and they are abundant in insignificant amounts of material which leads the reader to struggle when understanding the plot. For example, the first two chapters spend more time explaining the surroundings and settings of the novel, rather than providing valuable information that would assist in comprehension of the novel so far. The first two chapters take place in the small Italian village where Henry lives in. Also, Hemingway struggles to express the story through the novel medium, the novel spends many chapters repetitively explaining the same event or conflict. For example, the novel spends three chapters describing Henry’s encounters with Catherine Barkley on his way to work every day. Moreover, during these encounters, no new information or drama is presented. Finally, the novel hesitates to describe characters thoroughly, and it gives a very feint interpretation...
Words: 1810 - Pages: 8
...The book A Farewell to Arms, written by Ernest Hemingway, is a classic about the love story of a nurse and a war ridden soldier. The story starts as Frederick Henry is serving in the Italian Army. He meets his future love in the hospital that he gets put in for various reasons. I thought that A Farewell to Arms was a good book because of the symbolism, the exciting plot, and the constant moving of the main The symbolism in A Farewell to Arms is very much apparent. Ernest Hemingway has always been one who is big on the symbolism of night as being bad. To the main character in Hemingway's novels, nights have always been a sign of death, or something negative to happen. Another one of the symbolisms in A Farewell to Arms is when Henry tries to escape from the Italian army by jumping off one of the ships the army was traveling on and running away from the army. This symbolism was the water that he jumped into was a symbolism of the new, clean life that he was going to live from now on. At this time, Henry goes off The plot in A Farewell to Arms was always active. They were never staying in one place too long. It had a very good story line, which was a love story that ended up in a tragedy. The main character's wife got pregnant and she was off to have her baby when problems started occurring. They had to have a caesarean, and the baby dies, and when the mother of the child starts to hemorrhage Henry knows...
Words: 503 - Pages: 3
...A farewell to Arms The novel A Farewell to Arms possesses a circular plot. This is because in the beginning Henry is alone and he is still alone in the end. Another reason is because the first chapter reports the death of soldiers whereas at the end the novel deals with Catherine’s death. A sense of somberness runs through the whole novel (Merklein 2003). The main theme that stands out in this novel is that of a flattering perception of love and a negative perception of war. The novel is neither a love story nor is it entirely an anti-war piece. This paper explores Hemingway’s use of symbolism in the novel and some of the criticisms that concerning his use of this literary tool. Symbolism The author, Ernest Hemingway, effectively uses a variety of symbols to represent abstract concepts or ideas. It will be observed that there are some key symbols running throughout the novel. They are; mountains, rain and plains. The first chapter introduces mountains which recur throughout the novel. They signify dignity, love, good life, happiness and health (Dahiya 1992). Further on, they symbolize respect to God and a sense of worship to Him. In contrast, plains serve to signify suffering, death, irreligiousness, war, obscenity, disease and indignity. In the novel, the priest talks of his Abruzzi, his homeland. He tells Henry how it is a place with natural beauty, hospitality, polite and kind people and surrounded with mountains with snow. In this context the mountains are contrasted to...
Words: 969 - Pages: 4
...A FAREWELL TO ARMS BOOK ONE 1 In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves. The plain was rich with crops; there were many orchards of fruit trees and beyond the plain the mountains were brown and bare. There was fighting in the mountains and at night we could see the flashes from the artillery. In the dark it was like summer lightning, but the nights were cool and there was not the feeling of a storm coming. Sometimes in the dark we heard the troops marching under the window and guns going past pulled by motortractors. There was much traffic at night and many mules on the roads with boxes of ammunition on each side of their packsaddles and gray motor trucks that carried men, and other trucks with loads covered with canvas that moved slower in the traffic. There were big guns too that passed in the day drawn by tractors, the long barrels of the guns covered with...
Words: 88508 - Pages: 355
...Cailyn Newell The End? Trauma affects everyone differently, but the one thing that unites all victims of scarring events is the recovery process. Although each person’s process may slightly differ they all possess similar symptoms: repression, denial, displacement, projection, regression, and sublimation. In the novel A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, Frederic Henry suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; Henry’s honest narration of the novel reveals his struggle with the different stages of defense mechanisms with his completion of the novel itself being the ‘final’ stage in order to show how recovery is a never ending process. The initial reactions to deal with trauma are repression and denial. Furnham defines repression as “the...
Words: 1293 - Pages: 6
...For my Lit Bit paper, this semester I have chosen to read A Farewell to Arms, a novel published in 1929 by legendary American author Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway, who is arguably one of the most famous authors in history, lived from July 21st, 1899 to July 2nd, 1961, and published many novels, short story collections, and nonfiction books during his lifetime. Along with A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway is most well-known for his works For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea, and The Sun also Rises. He got inspiration to write A Farewell to Arms after he served in the Italian Army in World War 1, and many of the things experienced by Frederic Henry, the main character, are taken straight from Hemingway’s past. It is written in a first person “stream of consciousness” style, along with Hemingway’s classic brief and journalistic approach to writing. The story itself takes place in the early 1900’s during World War 1, and centers around Frederic Henry, an American ambulance driver enlisted in the Italian Army. After he is injured by a mortar bomb, he begins a relationship with his nurse Catherine Barkley, and they (eventually) fall in love. Just before Henry must go back to front, Catherine reveals she is pregnant: Unfortunately, tragedy ensues. Henry is believed to be a traitor, and to avoid certain death, he must flee the military and head...
Words: 1184 - Pages: 5
...Hemingway in his novel, A Farewell to Arms, makes a statement about the relation of religious beliefs to the war. Catherine tells Frederic, “You’re my religion. You’re all I’ve got.” (Chapter 18). Henry implies that he has no religion. The priest advocates religion under very difficult conditions and admits he is hopeless. Through the characters of the novel a portrait of religion is provided. Frederic Henry, the narrator of the story, describes his experience in the war. Henry portrays himself as a man of duty. He attaches to this understanding of himself no sense of honor, nor does he expect any praise for his service. Even after Henry was severely wounded, he discourages Rinaldi from pursuing medals of distinction for him. Time and time again, through conversations with the priest, Henry distances himself from abstract notions of faith. Faith means nothing to him beside such concrete facts of war as the...
Words: 581 - Pages: 3
...2. Frederic did not feel any actual love for Catherine until he started to grow closer and closer to her. First of all, Frederic loved Catherine for what she looked like and saw their relationship as a silly love game when they first met. He told Catherine that he loved her but did not mean it and compared their relationship to a bridge game. Next, as Frederic started to get to know her more, he gained actual feelings for her. For example, he thought of her when he went out on the field and felt lonely and hollow without her. Lastly, Frederic came to accept that he was in love with Catherine when she visited him in the hospital in Milan. The quote, “God knows I had not wanted to fall in love with her. I had not wanted to fall in love with any one. But God knows I had” (Hemingway 93), shows that he saw that their game was turning into an actual passion. 3. Frederic fell victim to an explosion that ruined his leg and changed his behavior and mindset. First of all, before his injury, Frederic was strongly against giving up in the war. The quote, “It would only be worse if we stopped fighting… Defeat is worse” (Hemingway 51), shows how he did not believe in defeat when there was a conversation on whether or not the Italian army should stop fighting. Second, Frederic’s injury was wounded in an unglamorous way that blew out his knee. He was not rushing into a battle or anything of that heroic sort, but was simply trying to get some cheese. Lastly, Henry stopped believing in wining...
Words: 594 - Pages: 3
...Blurred Morality in “A Farewell to Arms” by Ernest Hemingway and TS Eliot’s “Wasteland” Morality, as defined by Microsoft word, are principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior. Mortality, or the state of being subject to death, is also something most people see as straight forward. These definitions and most people’s general knowledge would make it seem as all decisions are either right or wrong and all behavior is good or bad but both “A Farewell to Arms” by Ernest Hemingway and “Wasteland” by TS Eliot blur these defined lines. Ernest Hemingway uses a combination of detached prose, random changes from first to second person viewpoint and from the events taking place to keep the reader from questioning the morality of his actions. Henry’s relationship with Catherine is what initially causes his morality to be called into doubt. The loss of Catherine’s fiancé makes her desperate for some type of love again which leads to the first questionable moral act by Henry. After just their first few meetings Catherine asks, “You did say you loved me, didn’t you?” Henry replies “yes” but follows it by thinking “I knew I did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards.” (Hemingway, 30) Whether he was unsure of his true feelings or they changed rapidly is unknown but within just a few short chapters any free time he has while away from Catherine...
Words: 1594 - Pages: 7
...War has existed since the dawn of time and, since the beginning, has impacted humanity in various ways. While wars do mold and transform nations, more importantly, wars have had and will have a great impact on soldiers, those willing to sacrifice their lives for their country. The novels A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway and The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien give us a glimpse into how war has impacted soldiers and those close to them. The novel A Farewell to Arms talks of a man who falls in love with a woman he works with, a nurse in the hospital, Catherine Barkley. The narrator, Frederic Henry, meets the nurse while he is working in the army. They soon begin a romantic relationship. One day, around the same day that Catherine gives him her Saint Anthony necklace that serves as a good luck charm,...
Words: 612 - Pages: 3
...Melvin Aponte 1/30/18 Honors American Literature In “A Farewell to Arms”, the main protagonist Lt. Frederick Henry, an american, is working in the Italian army as a paramedic on the front lines. The story begins with Henry being introduced to a girl by the name of Catherine Barkley by his dear friend Rinaldi. Henry really doesn’t want anything serious with Catherine, although as time passes, their feelings for each other begin to grow. Soon, Henry is sent to the front lines and gets injured by a mortar shell explosion. He is sent to receive medical care in a hospital in Milan where, coincidentally, Catherine is also being sent to. During the summer that Henry is there recuperating, he and Catherine spend much more time together and begin to get even closer. During that summer, they fell so in love...
Words: 678 - Pages: 3
...This essay is an attempt to examine A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, within the critical theoretical framework of Chris Weedon’s essay, ‘Feminism and the Principles of Post Structuralism’. At the heart of feminist post structuralism lies the theory of post structuralism itself. The theory offers a way to study the conditions of how knowledge is produced. To understand an object it is necessary to study both the object and the systems within which it is produced and lives. Post-feminist structuralism seeks to examine the production of knowledge as it impacts on gender. The pervasiveness of male discourse is a particular target for post-structuralist feminism. What I hope to achieve is an analysis of the theory in relation to the character of Catherine Barkley and her romantic relationship with the novel’s narrator and protagonist Frederick Henry. For poststructuralist theory the common factor in the analysis of social organization, social meanings, power and individual consciousness is language. Language is the place where actual and possible forms of social organization and their likely social and political consequences are defined and contested. Weedon in Storey, ed. (555) However, within Hemingway’s novels language is used to different effect, or rather the omission of it is. Hemingway’s aversion to theory is discussed in Owens-Murphy’s essay on pragmatism. She quotes Scott Donaldson as saying both Hemingway and his characters...
Words: 3227 - Pages: 13
...A Farewell to Arms By Ernest Hemingway Book Summary Next About A Farewell to Arms A Farewell to Arms begins in the Alps around the frontier between Italy and present-day Slovenia. Allied with Britain, France, and Russia against the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany, Italy is responsible for preventing the Austro-Hungarian forces from assisting the Germans on the war's western front, and Russia in the east. The novel's narrator and protagonist is eventually identified as Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American who has volunteered for the Italian army because the United States has not yet entered the war. Henry supervises a group of Italian ambulance drivers. After a wintertime leave spent touring the country, Lieutenant Henry returns to the captured town at the front where his unit lives. One evening his roommate, a surgeon and lieutenant in the Italian army named Rinaldi, introduces Henry to two British nurses: Catherine Barkley and her friend Helen Ferguson. Catherine and Henry talk of the war and of her fiancé, killed in combat the year before; clearly she has been traumatized by the experience. On his second visit to the British hospital, they kiss. When Henry again visits Catherine, she tells him that she loves him and asks whether he loves her. He responds that he does. One night, Lieutenant Henry and his fellow ambulance-drivers settle into a dugout across the river from the enemy troops. While the drivers are eating, the Austrian bombardment wounds Henry in the leg...
Words: 772 - Pages: 4
...Rehana Malikovski ENG3U Mr. Thompson May 25, 2016 World war 1 has made changes in the world, and towards how one would think, read, and wright. Two novels, A Farewell to Arms and Everything is Illuminated. Have very similar and very different ideas of writing. Comparing the two will give you an idea of how people would visualize and live then and now. Gruesome reality of war. When living in the suspense between life or death, everyone has to defend for themselves. “War is behavior with roots in the single cell of the primeval seas. Eat whatever you touch or it will eat you.” (Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune). In the novel A farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway we see Lieutenant Fredric Henry have many experienced with this theme. Henry's shooting of the innocent engineer for rejecting to help pull out the car from the mud makes the reader deliberate about the darkness of the cold reality of war. Considering the violent act that Henry was brought upon doesn’t fit with his persona, and how it occurred in a setting that steals it of its moral significance. The killing of the engineer appears reasonable because it is an unavoidable by-product of the true violence and selfishness of the reality of war. The decisions you choice have to be cruel remembering the number one rule to surviving war is selfishness. As Frank Herbert states “Eat whatever you touch or it will eat you” goes hand in hand with Henry’s choice. The novel overall gives a great representations of the conflict's...
Words: 1469 - Pages: 6
