A Farewell to Arms Setting Theme

458 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Critical analysis of the novel Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

A Farewell to Arms Setting Theme

Rain, like water, is often times used in literature as a symbol of a new life, or a fresh beginning. But in the novel A Farewell to Arms, Ernst Hemingway uses rain in a totally different, non-traditional way. In this novel, Hemingway uses rain to establish a negative, depressed tone, to warn of future unfortunate circumstances, and to accompany scenes which death occurs in, to add to the horrid situation.

Hemingway uses rain in the scene when Henry leaves the train station to go back to war. In the book, it rained the entire night that Henry left. “Outside the mist turned to rain and in a little while it was raining hard. We heard raining on the roof.”

The use of rain in this scene causes the reader to feel drained and unhappy. By using rain in this specific part of the book, it makes the tone more emotional, and depressing which is exactly what the author was trying to achieve. Hemingway also uses rain as apart of the scene before Catherine and Henry are about to find out about some terrible news. Before the barman entered their hotel room, Hemingway desribed the weather outside as violent and stormy. “That night there was a storm. I woke up to hear rain lashing the window-panes. It was coming through the windows.” The use of rain in this scene is a warning of the imminent negative news Henry was soon to discover. He received the knowledge that the Italian Army was going to arrest him before and during when it was raining it outside. Therefore, the rain played a substantial part in establishing this scene.

Rain also accompanies and surrounds the death of Catherine, and their stillborn child. It was raining before Catherine went into labor, the whole time she was in the hospital giving birth, and after both her and her child’s death. The setting outside while Catherine was in labor was dark and dreary. “I could see nothing but the dark and the rain falling across the light of the window.”

Again rain was used in this part of the book to add to the already terrible situation, and made the reader really see and feel the total distress of this scene.

Show More
Related

  • Loss And Renewal In Beloved, By Toni Morrison

    703 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout the entire chapter, Morrison uses the rain as irony to depict the nature of loss and renewal through Paul ‘s experiences while in Alfred Georgia. At Sweet Home, Paul D

    Read More

  • Symbolism In The Sidewalk Bleeding Andy

    584 Words  | 2 Pages

    The rain used in the beginning of the story symbolizes sadness. The drunk man thought Andy was drunk laying in the alley. But Andy was really stabbed. "The boy laying in the rain bleeding. He was 16 years old," (1). The rain symbolizes sadness, and it is sad when the drunk man is too drunk to help Andy. If the drunk man wasn't drunk and would've helped Andy it would've prevented murder. The sidewalk is a

    Read More

  • What Does The Water Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

    922 Words  | 2 Pages

    One example of this, from many, is Gatsby and Daisy’s reunion, for which it begins pouring with rain showing the awkward gloomy time they started to have but as their love starts to blossom again the sun begins to come out. On the hottest day of summer the weather foreshadows Tom and Gatsby’s showdown and Daisy’s reaction. The weather symbolises the atmosphere between the characters.

    Read More

  • Use of Weather in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

    557 Words  | 2 Pages

    On the other hand, poor weather in the novel was used to foreshadow negative events or moods.  In the opening of the novel, when Jane was living in Gateshead, she was reading while an unpleasant visit of John Reed was foreshadowed:  “After it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud: hear, a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub” (2).

    Read More

  • A Farewell To Arms - Imagery Paper

    1603 Words  | 4 Pages

    Ernest Hemingway used an abundant amount of imagery in his War World I novel, A Farewell to Arms. In the five books that the novel is composed of, the mind is a witness to the senses of sight, touch, smell, hearing, and taste. All of the these senses in a way connects to the themes that run through the novel. We get to view Hemingway’s writing style in a greater depth and almost feel, or mentally view World War I and the affects it generates through Lieutenant Henry’s eyes.

    Read More

  • Charlotte Chopin The Storm Analysis

    456 Words  | 1 Pages

    “The Storm” was corresponded to each stage of story, and it symbolized the sexual desire of Calixta as she expected the passion from affair. Chopin stated the sky “began to grow dark” (Chopin 111) and then “the big rain drops began to fall” (Chopin 11). Accompanied with the description of the atmosphere, Alcee “went inside, closing door after him.” (Chopin 111) The rising action was that Alcee walked into Calixta’s house to escape the storm and the rain drops began. Alcee maintains his manner and being polite to Calixta at the beginning. Along with “the rain beat upon the low, shingled roof with a force and chatter that threatened to break an entrance and deluge them there” (Chopin111), the setting change to “her bed room” (Chopin 111) which indicated there would be a further development among Alcee and Calixta. The air in the room seemed to become more nervous and odd. Suddenly, “a bolt struck a tall chinaberry tree at the edge

    Read More

  • Popular Mechanics by Raymond Carver

    729 Words  | 2 Pages

    Firstly, the narrator gives little detail throughout the whole story. The greatest amount of detail is given in the first paragraph where the narrator describes the weather. This description sets the tone and mood of the events that follow. Giving the impression that a cold, wet, miserable evening was in

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Rain By Robert Creeley

    1025 Words  | 3 Pages

    Right after the line, “final uneasiness.” (16) the poem’s intended audience changes. The audience shifts from lovers and their experience with love to a more specific person/intended individual love to him. This is important to understand because it further demonstrates the emotions the speaker has. After the shift, the speaker says “Love, if you love me,/….Be for me, like rain,” (17-19). In this he is demanding that if someone wants to love him or be with him they need to be like rain. The image of rain falling outside is something simple and beautiful. Rain, to some people can be a calming sensation to feel on their cheeks. It is interesting how rain is used in a positive light to describe love because rain is not something one would typically assimilate to love. Rain is beautiful, like love, but to compare the two to illustrate a meaning is thought-provoking. Why would the speaker use rain to describe love? Possibly because it is beautiful like love and has characteristics one may desire in love? This may be true, but conversely it can be assumed that love is difficult to comprehend and that through the use of something out of the ordinary maybe some understanding of the abstract emotion can be facilitated. At the end of the poem the speaker leaves his intended audience with the final phrase of “Be wet/ with a decent happiness.” (23-24). This final phrase is significant because it tells the audience and those who desire

    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

  • Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    1518 Words  | 4 Pages

    The weather is also important in the novel as it adds to the atmosphere. For instance on a ‘dreary night of November’ (p38 Frankenstein) the creature is born and during ‘a heavy storm of rain’ where the wind ‘rose with great violence’ (p164 Frankenstein) Elizabeth is murdered. The connection between the two is that the reader can sense when something bad/traumatic is going to happen due to the weather alone. However doom and gloomy weather does not fill the entire novel. When Spring is present the creature feels ‘emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within [him]. Half...

    Read More

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

    599 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...o be correct. Hemingway uses rain as a sign of death, sadness or to give one of his characters the state of being afraid. The despair brought by rain, Frederic says „ good-bye to [Catherine], and then „[leaves] the hospital and walk[s] back to the hotel in the rain". The rain described as he walks home represents again a cleansing in which Tenente will be forced to start a whole new life now.

    Read More

  • Gifts of Rain

    804 Words  | 2 Pages

    Although the title of the poem gives a positive feeling, the opening line Cloudburst and steady downpour now for days" gives the effect of a monotonous image and depressing persistance. He begins to sense weather by his skin" portrays nature and the sense of a survivor. The animal-like image continues for the rest of the first section and the rest of the second section. movement of that animal continues as the animal goes "uprooting" which gives the sense of nature being destructive. Heaney may have included this deliberately to show that nature is not as angelic as people may think.

    Read More

  • The Character of Macbeth in William Shakespeare's Play

    943 Words  | 2 Pages

    confounded by the rain and storm. This turns out to be fore - taste of

    Read More

  • Symbolism in Cat in the Rain by Ernest Hemingway

    1295 Words  | 3 Pages

    Then this isolation is accentuated because of the weather, it is raining. The rain is part responsible for the fact that they have to stay in their room. Nevertheless, the rain has a symbolic meaning together with the description of the public garden. It represents as suggests the critic

    Read More

  • Themes of Love and War in A Farewell to Arms

    2035 Words  | 5 Pages

    middle of paper ... ... so provided the reader with realistic descriptions of the warfront. Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms realistically explores the inglorious and brutal truths of war, and idealistically analyzes the power of true love. Works Cited “A Farewell to Arms Essay – A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway.”

    Read More

More about A Farewell to Arms Setting Theme

Open Document