I have read the book ”A Farewell to Arms” written by Ernest Hemingway in 1929. Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899 in Illinois, USA. When he was young the First World War broke out and he decided to join the Italian army as an ambulance driver. After the war he worked as a correspondent in Europe. As a correspondent he visited France, Spain and Greece, and among other things reported from the Spanish Civil War. He stayed in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. In addition to his work as a journalist he began writing books. Ernest Hemingway’s first literary work, “Three Stories and Ten Poems”, came out in 1923. The breakthrough did not come until three years later with “The Sun Also Rises”. Ernest Hemingway is considered as one of the greatest modern writers and got the Nobel Prize in litterature in 1954. Hemingway travelled a lot and has lived all around the world, for instance in Paris, in Florida and on Cuba. He devoted himself a great deal to hunting and fishing, and also enyojed bullfighting. Food and drink were other things that he appreciated in life. His extensive consumption of alcohol probably was the cause of the mental disturbances (like paranoia and depression) which hit him when he got older. In 1961 he shot himself in the head with a rifle.
This book is about an american named Frederic Henry. He has joined the Italian army and serves as an ambulance driver. His roommate and best friend, Rinaldi, is fond of a British nurse, Catherine Barkley, who works at a nearby British hospital. Henry visits the hospital with Rinaldi and finds Catherine very attractive. Rinaldi notices the attraction between them and leaves them alone. At first Henry just wants a physical relationship with Catherine. She realises it and indirectly explains that she does not approve of it. She has lost her husband during the war and are afraid of being abandoned once again. Nevertheless Henry manages to convince Catherine that he loves her.
An approaching offensive dispatches Frederic Henry back to the front. While he is sitting with his men in a dugout eating, a trench mortar shell suddenly explodes and blasts open the shelter. Many men are killed and Henry’s both legs are severly wounded. At first he is taken to a field hospital where he meets Rinaldi. A few days later he is transfered to an american hospital in Milan.
The autobiography Night by Elie Wiesel contains similarities to A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. These works are similar through the struggles that the main characters must face. The main characters, Elie Wiesel and Lieutenant Frederic Henry, both face complete alterations of personality. The struggles of life make a person stronger, yet significantly altering identity to the point where it no longer exists. This identity can be lost through extreme devotion, new experience, and immense tragedy.
For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway, was published in 1940. It is a novel set in the Spanish Civil War, which ravaged the country in the late 1930’s. Tensions in Spain began to rise as early as 1931,when a group of left-wing Republicans overthrew the country’s monarchy in a bloodless coup. The new Republican government then proposed controversial religious reforms that angered right-wing Fascists, who had the support of the army and the Catholic Church. Hemingway traveled extensively in Spain, and grew very interested in Spanish culture. Specifically, he writes about bullfighting, not only in this novel, but also in his other works as well. While Hemingway’s novels carry a common theme, For Whom the Bell Tolls is no different. In the form of suicide, inevitability of death, and sacrifice, death is the major theme that wraps around this story.
The novel, The Sun also Rises, was written by Ernest Hemingway and published in 1926. It tells a story of the 1920s, also known as the Lost Generation. World War I affects all of the characters in this book and plays a large role in their love lives. In Ernest Hemingway’s novel, Lady Brett Ashley is an attractive woman who uses her beauty as advantage towards men. Brett is involved in many different affairs and has many different relationships. Mike Campbell, Pedro Romero, Robert Cohn, and the most Jake Barnes. Brett is very powerful in these relationships, causing them to be very destructive to both Brett and the men. A group of American and British citizens travel from Paris to the festival of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain, where their true characters are exposed through their drunken interactions. Throughout this novel, love is a major theme that is constantly affecting all of the characters involved.
Henry is a very disciplined and courageous young European boy that discovers love with Catherine Barkley, an American nurse whose fiancé was killed during a battle between Germany and Italy during World War I. Frederic Henry is an immature, troubled young man, caught in a terrible war.... ... middle of paper ... ... He also lies about his family’s background history and about his College years, where he went to Oxford College where he earned many badges for many European Countries.
The reflection, which takes place during Fredric Henry’s train ride to Milan in A Farewell to Arms, proves to show the impact the war has had on his psychological instability through the battle of love. In other words, the war has left him frightened with anxious thoughts constantly running through his mind. There is no escaping the war, or the feeling of having to run for the sake of one’s life. The battle is no longer physical, but rather an eternal battle to refrain from insanity. This novel takes on a chaotic style where the pieces of Frederic Henry’s mental standing slowly reveal themselves through his lover, Catherine Barley as the war deepens. Not caring about the way he is perceived, the narrator takes on a confessional and honest tone, by telling his journey through the war in all truth. While this passage shows Henry’s need for Catherine’s affection and escapism of his own mind it proves that Henry will forever be at war with himself.
Ernest Hemingway used his experiences from World War I to enhance the plot of A Farewell to Arms. Parallels can be drawn throughout the entire novel between Henry's and Hemingway's experiences. Both were Americans serving in the Italian army; both were wounded and went to Milan; both fell in love with a nurse. These many similarities, however, also contain slight differences. There is no real question that Hemingway based events in the novel off of his real experiences, but A Farewell to Arms is by no means an autobiography. The book does not focus on the experience of war. Instead, it is more focused on the after-effects. Minor changes to the events themselves make the novel unique, while the factual basis strengthens the plot with authentic feeling.
Schneider, Daniel. "Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms: The Novel as Pure Poetry." Modern Fiction Studies, 14 (Autumn 1968): 283-96.
Works Cited and Consulted Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. Simon & Schuster, Inc.; New York, NY; 1929. The Cambridge Companion to Ernest Hemingway; edited by Scott Donaldson; Cambridge U. P.; New York, NY; 1996. Mandel, Miriam B.; Reading Hemingway: The Facts in the Fictions; The Scarecrow Press, Inc.; Metuchen, NJ; 1995.
This is an essay on the short story “Soldier’s Home” by Hemingway. Will the life of a soldier ever be the same after returning from war? Many generations of young adults have gone from their homes with tranquil settings to experience war and come home to a different world. Many have witnessed the devastations and atrocities that occur with war. Harold Krebs, a young man from a small town with a loving family is no different from those before him and those to follow. The anguish of what war is however cannot dispel the thoughts and memories of what many young men come home to face in the real world. Many have trouble coping in the new world known as home.
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.
Some people will go far in order to get what they want, but how many individuals would be willing to die for the sake of creating their own fate? Deciding one’s meaning of life with sincerity and passion is the core of existentialism. This philosophy plays an integral part in Hemingway’s writing, as well as his personal life. Paradigms of existentialism appear often in Hemingway’s book, The Old Man and the Sea, especially when Santiago, the old man, is determined to fell the great marlin he pursues, wants to prove to Manolin how much of a strange old man he is, and contends against the brutal sharks when there is little chance of him succeeding.
The story goes on to show that very little agony that was created by the war, with the ones affected. Among the soldiers, Henry’s time with the priest, he forgets all the bad things the war can have on him, and the soldiers. Even the love covers all reality to remove it all from the mind of the lovers, by this I mean all the things that happened in the war. The army is still waiting for some action to come by while the men are waiting, being bored they are drinking and seducing women to ease the time.
... much to be learned about the deeply troubled and equally enthusiastic Ernest Hemingway. From thrill-seeking to several failed marriages nearly every aspect of his life shines through into his style, attitude, and life choices most clearly of all his writing both professional and informal. The straightforwardness and simplicity of his prose ushered in a new style drastically different from the flowery, embellished descriptions and drawn out stories from the previous century. Ultimately Ernest Miller Hemingway will forever be a timeless, classic American writer who succeeded despite his alcoholism, faltering health, intimacy issues, and presumed psychological disease which is most likely the perpetrator creating both his risky escapades and adulterous rendezvous in addition to his debilitating bouts of depression, bitterness, and eventually suicidal behaviors.
“A Farewell to Arms Essay – A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway.” Twentieth Century Literary Criticism 115 (1929): 121-126. JSTOR. Web. 19 Feb. 2014.
Earnest Hemingway's works began appearing in the mid 1920's. He appeared in the time of Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others of the sort (Salter). Having befriended them, he later "broke with almost all his literary friends" (Salter). Hemingway's writing was so highly acclaimed that he was considered the voice of his generation. In relation to his works, what should be noted of his biographical background is a short list of rather important events. Hemingway's whole life, he seemed to be constantly depressed. His father was "a highly principled doctor", and both his parents were very "religious and strict" in his upbringing (Salter).He traveled to Europe and in 1918 where “Hemingway volunteered as a Red Cross ambulance driver to do service on the front lines of World war I” (Akers). When he assisted in the war in Italy, he had been severely injured aiding an injured man (Akers).According to Akers his experiences deeply impacted him and his work greatly. Another fact to keep in mind is his unsuccessful attempts at maintaining love, seen through his various marriages and divorces. “When he married Hadley Richardson in 1921 and the couple move...