A Farewell To Arms Essay

982 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Literary impacts of world war 1

Ernest Hemingway wrote this novel ‘A Farewell to Arms’ as a semi-autobiographical response to his own experiences working as a volunteer ambulance driver for the Italian Army during world war I and describes the historical and geographical background of war. In book one The novel's narrator and protagonist is eventually identified Lieutenant Frederic Henry. Henry supervises a group of Italian ambulance drivers, begins the story by describing his life at Italian village in summer during world war I with troops and cars of officers frequently passing on the roads to fight on nearyby mountains.Showcasing that the wet April as cruel and rains as sterlity and destruction. After a wintertime leave spent touring the country in the spring, Lieutenant …show more content…

Henry headed to Bainsizza controlled by Austrians.The rain started made the traffic immobile. The Austrians bombard on the Italian army and eventually break through the lines and bridges near the town of Caporetto. Henry and the other ambulance drivers retreat with the rest of the Italian forces in a long, slow-moving columns of troops and vehicles. They found two passengers Italian engineer-sergeants. Who helped them to pull off the ambulance to main reoad from muddy roads. the two sergeants refuse to assist in the effort to dislodge it and disobey Lieutenant Henry's order to remain with the group. He fires at them, and eventually on was hit, another ambulance driver Bonello then uses Henry's pistol and says he will finish off the other seargent. Henry, the three drivers and the two girls abandon the ambulances and set out on foot for the Tagliamento River,which is more safer …show more content…

Catherine Barkley and Helen Ferguson are absent from the hospital, having gone on holiday to the Italian resort town of Stresa. So Henry travels via train to Stresa, where he finds Catherine and Helen. Catherine was overjoyed to see him but Helen called him a sneaking American Italian. Both of them left to live in hotel,spent lovely time togethere. One late night barman informed about his danger to be arrested as a deserter in the morning, Henry and Catherine quickly prepare to escape into Switzerland. Through the stormy night, they travel in a small, open boat across Lake Maggiore.They rowed constantly all night to reach Switzerland safely by morning The following day they are arrested and briefly detained by Swiss officials, after which they are released just because the had passports and sufficient amount of money to spend in

Show More
Related

  • Red Badge of Courage

    872 Words  | 2 Pages

    The regiment marches for several days until they are finally faced with a real engagement by the enemy ( confederate soldiers). Henry is surrounded by his fellow union soldiers, so he begins to fire his gun as the other members of the regiments but ultimately he scared in the midst of battle. Eventually the union soldiers prevail over the confederate soldiers as the victors and begin to congratulate one another, shortly after Henry decides to take a nap. Henry is awaken by the sound of the confederate soldiers attacking his regiment and fear ceases him and causes him to run away from the battle. While walking across the fields Henry tries to reason with himself and convince himself that there was no way that his regiment could have won so he was right to run away and save himself, because staying would have been like committing suicide. After a while Henry encounters a commander talking to a general and overhears that his regiment was able to hold back the confederate charge. This comment further depresses Henry but he still tries to console himself by holding on to the belief that all he did was preserve himself.

    Read More

  • Ernest Hemingway Soldier's Home

    798 Words  | 2 Pages

    Thesis: Ernest Hemingway depicts the disillusionment that many felt post World War I in his short stories, “In Another Country” and “Soldier’s Home”. Hemingway’s story, “In Another Country”, showcases a soldier accompanied by other soldiers, who had all been wounded in the war. The narrator is an American and the other men are Italian. He does not fit in for a multitude of reasons, but the first reason is how he received his medals.

    Read More

  • The Reflection Of Fredric Henry's A Farewell To Arms

    797 Words  | 2 Pages

    Abandoning and serving in the war has left Henry with an ongoing train of worry for the remainder of his life. The train he takes to Milan resembles his future struggle with posttraumatic stress disorder and the after affects of being exposed to such vivid war imagery. Italy is now a broken and corrupt landscape, which also resembles the personality change in the character’s lives, as they will attempt at leading normal lifestyles but will never again be the same. The train is a calm and peaceful setting, where a soldier may reflect on the journey thus far. There are only a few places considered to be safe for reflection or breakdown. Bars are for deep thoughts; hotels are for loneliness; hospitals are for escape through death, or illness, etc. This explains why Henry is constantly found ...

    Read More

  • Comparing A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises

    522 Words  | 2 Pages

    "After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain" (332). This last line of the novel gives an understanding of Ernest Hemingway's style and tone. The overall tone of the book is much different than that of The Sun Also Rises. The characters in the book are propelled by outside forces, in this case WWI, where the characters in The Sun Also Rises seemed to have no direction. Frederick's actions are determined by his position until he deserts the army. Floating down the river with barely a hold on a piece of wood his life, he abandons everything except Catherine and lets the river take him to a new life that becomes increasing difficult to understand. Nevertheless, Hemingway's style and tone make A Farewell to Arms one of the great American novels. Critics usually describe Hemingway's style as simple, spare, and journalistic. These are all good words they all apply. Perhaps because of his training as a newspaperman, Hemingway is a master of the declarative, subject-verb-object sentence. His writing has been likened to a boxer's punches--combinations of lefts and rights coming at us without pause. As illustrated on page 145 "She went down the hall. The porter carried the sack. He knew what was in it," one can see that Hemingway's style is to-the-point and easy to understand. The simplicity and the sensory richness flow directly from Hemingway's and his characters' beliefs. The punchy, vivid language has the immediacy of a news bulletin: these are facts, Hemingway is telling us, and they can't be ignored. And just as Frederic Henry comes to distrust abstractions like "patriotism," so does Hemingway distrust them. Instead he seeks the concrete and the tangible. A simple "good" becomes higher praise than another writer's string of decorative adjectives. Hemingway's style changes, too, when it reflects his characters' changing states of mind. Writing from Frederic Henry's point of view, he sometimes uses a modified stream-of-consciousness technique, a method for spilling out on paper the inner thoughts of a character. Usually Henry's thoughts are choppy, staccato, but when he becomes drunk the language does too, as in the passage on page 13, "I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you

    Read More

  • Ernest Hemingway’s Life Compared to A Farewell to Arms

    1212 Words  | 3 Pages

    A Farewell to Arms has many similarities between Henry and Hemingway; the first noticeable one is that Henry, like Hemingway, was an American in the Italian army. Henry was an ambulance driver for the Red Cross, just like Hemingway was. Thomas Putnam stated in his article on Hemingway that "during the First World War, Ernest Hemingway volunteered to serve in Italy as an ambulance driver with the American Red Cross. In June 1918, while running a mobile canteen dispensing chocolate and cigarettes for soldiers, he was wounded by Austrian mortar fire." This is comparable to Henry’s experiences in A Farewell to Arms. Anders Hallengren drew the connection that both men, real and fictional, were one of the first Americans wounded in World War I. "There is a parallel in Hemingway's life, connected with the occasion when he was seriously wounded at midnight on July 8, 1918, at Fossalta di Piave in Italy and nearly died. He was the first American to be wounded in Italy during World War I." A...

    Read More

  • Free Essays - Escape from Reality in A Farewell to Arms

    790 Words  | 2 Pages

    Escape from Reality in A Farewell to Arms & nbsp; In Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, Fredric Henry gets involved with Catherine Barkley to escape the insanity of war. Frederic loves Catherine. Catherine loves Frederic. The extreme situation of war and fate allowed both of them to be thrown together and fall in love.

    Read More

  • A Comparison of Hemingway and Frederic in A Farewell to Arms

    1706 Words  | 4 Pages

    Bloom, Harold. Introduction. Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea, 1987.

    Read More

  • The Symbolism of Water in A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

    599 Words  | 2 Pages

    The trip down the river gives him time to think about his future life with Catherine, even though he is uncertain if there will ever be a future between them again. The river eventually takes him to a railroad where he makes the decision that he is done with the war and that he made his "farewell to arms". Hemingway uses water as a metaphoric cleansing for Frederic’s past experiences. When Henry emerged from the river, it was as if he was reborn.

    Read More

  • Progression of Love in Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms

    1314 Words  | 3 Pages

    Henry¹s failure to remember his appointment with Catherine because he was drunk shows that he did not regard Catherine too seriously. However, his surprising sorrow when she is unable to see him shows tha...

    Read More

  • The Motif of Ernest Hemingway´s A Farewell to Arms

    1083 Words  | 3 Pages

    The world contains many recurring events that remind humans of morals or things that are important. In the novel “A Farewell to Arms” many events come again and again. Usually, these events that repeat or come again have a deeper message inscribed in the text. This is not unlike the novel “The Great Gatsby” which has weather that unfailingly matches up with the tone and mood of the text. Author Ernest Hemingway has created “A Farewell to Arms” with a motif that is very precise.

    Read More

  • Frederic Henry: Code Hero

    847 Words  | 2 Pages

    He enrolls in the Italian army just because he is there when they enter the war. He meets Catherine about the fate of the British nurses being stationed at his unit’s hospital. When Frederic is injured by an Austrian fire, it is simply luck that Catherine is transferred there as well. Fate sends Frederic back to the front into a retreat, and fate brings him to the checkpoint that endangers his life. The men are executing officers for abandoning their men, so Henry jumps into the river and fate is what keeps him alive.

    Read More

  • Themes of Love and War in A Farewell to Arms

    2035 Words  | 5 Pages

    Theme is a literary element used in literature and has inspired many poets, playwrights, and authors. The themes of love and war are featured in literature, and inspire authors to write wartime romances that highlight these two themes. Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms deals with the collective themes in the human experience such as love and the reality of war. A Farewell to Arms is narrated from the perspective of Fredric Henry, an ambulance driver in the Italian army, and pertains to his experiences in the war. The novel also highlights the passionate relationship between Henry and Catherine Barkley, a British nurse in Italy. Henry’s insight into the war and his intense love for Catherine emphasize that love and war are the predominant themes in the novel and these themes contribute to bringing out the implicit and explicit meaning of the novel. Being a part of the Italian army, Henry is closely involved with the war and has developed an aversion to the war. Henry’s association with the war has also made him realise that war is inglorious and the sacrifices made in war are meaningless. Specifically, Henry wants the war to end because he is disillusioned by the war and knows that war is not as glorious as it is made up to be. The state of affairs and the grim reality of the war lead Henry towards an ardent desire for a peaceful life, and as a result Henry repudiates his fellow soldiers at the warfront. Henry’s desertion of the war is also related to his passionate love for Catherine. Henry’s love for Catherine is progressive and ironic. This love develops gradually in “stages”: Henry’s attempt at pretending love for Catherine towards the beginning of the novel, his gradually developing love for her, and finally, Henry’s impas...

    Read More

  • The Anti-War Novel

    895 Words  | 2 Pages

    Written just after the first global war, Hemingway delivers a subtle anti-war novel. World War I ended in 1918; A Farewell to Arms was published eleven years later. Although eleven years seems as if it would be enough time to forget, no time span can allow Hemingway to forget the effects of World War I. After World War I, Hemingway is struck with countless nightmares. Hemingway uses these nightmares and flashbacks to write A Farewell to Arms (Analysis 1). When reflecting on the novel, a blogger writes, “A Farewell to Arms is a war novel, not in the sense that it glorifies the war, but as all know, it describes the cruelty, madness of the war which deprives human life and happiness” (Analysis 1). During the novel, Hemingway displays his anti-war message by showing how the characters indulge in distractions to escape the reality of war. Love and sex, alcohol, and religion are all ways characters distracted themselves.

    Read More

  • Modern Features of "A Farewell to Arms" Viewed Trhrough the Main Characters of the Novel.

    1643 Words  | 4 Pages

    A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway is considered one of the great novels of World War I. It introduces the theme of love, while war occupies all of Europe. It is a complex novel with many characteristic aspects of modernism. After looking into Hemingway's biography, the reader can tell that he included details from his personal life in his novel. He based the main character Frederic Henry upon his own experience as an ambulance driver during World War I.

    Read More

  • Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms as an Anti-War Novel

    907 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...aught you off base they killed you” (314). Henry sees clearly the tight connection between love and war, as shown when he compares the dying of his beloved with the dying of his combat friends: ”Or they killed you gratuitously like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldi. But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you” (aa).

    Read More

More about A Farewell To Arms Essay

Open Document