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

1643 Words4 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. He made him a hero who develops and changes throughout the novel. Henry's relationship with British nurse Catherine Berkeley is based on Hemingway's faded love affair with the beautiful American nurse he met while recovering from his wounds at a Milan hospital just like his main character Henry.

One of the modern features demonstrated by A Farewell to Arms is the style used by Hemingway. His modern style forces the reader to look for hidden truth while reading the text which contains some unclear and very long passages. The author tries to master the chaos of two worlds: a world of war and a world of love by creating his own, self-sufficient, and symbolic work. When one theme moves into the foreground, the other one recedes into the background. The sequence of action runs parallel in both themes, so the reader gets the feeling of reading a single main theme rather than two. He leaves for the reader the freedom of judging and deciding what is right or wrong. Hemingway does not spend a lot of time directly dealing with the emotions or thoughts of characters. He tells the story in many long uninterrupted dialogues and actions using this dry sort of tone. He omits describing facial gestures and emotions in his text. That gives the sense of boredom and monot...

... middle of paper ...

...plies Henry's despair and emptiness. He says farewell to "Arms" as weapons and also, to Catherine's "arms." He loses everything but he lives.

The rich and complex characters of Hemingway's novel, Henry and Catherine very well illustrate Hemingway's modernist views. The pressures of war tear away the initial impressions the reader had of those two and transform them into completely different characters. Their love story involves the rejection of all social formalities: duty, marriage, and religion. "Marriage" becomes a value of love rather than legal formality; religion becomes a form of personal devotion rather than a social ritual. Catherine and Henry struggle to survive but they both lose the battle; they are both taken apart into pieces.

WORKS CITED:

Hemingway, Ernest A Farewell to Arms. 1929

Reprint: New York; Scribner; Edition 2003.

Show More
Related

  • 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

  • Analysis Of A Farewell To Arms By Ernest Hemingway

    2941 Words  | 6 Pages

    Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. His mother, Grace Hall, was a trained opera singer and later on, a music teacher. His father, Clarence Hemingway, was a doctor and an avid naturalist ("Ernest Hemingway: An Inventory”). Just after graduating high school, at the age of eighteen, Hemingway enlisted in the army to fight in World War I ("The Big Read"). After being severely wounded in the war, he moved to Paris in 1921, and devoted himself to writing fiction (Baker). It is said that, “No American writer is more associated with writing about war in the early 20th century than Ernest Hemingway” (Putnam). Hemingway’s book A Farewell to Arms was published in 1929, and was based off of the events that happened to him in the war and what happened in his love life. Fredrick Henry, the protagonist, is an American ambulance driver fighting for the allies during World War I. He is introduced to a nurse named Catherine, who he later on falls in love with. Henry was hit by a trench mortar shell and was very badly injured. He is then sent to Milan, where Catherine later on comes to help nurse him to health. The two fall in love and Henry no longer is involved with the war, so they try and have a child, but both Catherine and the child die during labor, and Henry is left alone. Psychoanalytical approach views the psychological motivations of characters, which refer to the dynamics of personality development and behavior based on the unconscious motivations of a person ("Psychoanalytic Theory”). Hemingway’s writing was greatly impacted by his real life tragedies, which consist of witnessing the gruesomeness of war and his discovery and loss of love, this helps exhibi...

    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

  • Use of Heroes in A Farewell of Arms by Ernest Hemingway

    644 Words  | 2 Pages

    Hemingway characterizes his heroes as people with strength, courage, and bravery, but even heroes have their flaws. For example, Frederic Henry, the protagonist of A Farewell to Arms, survives an artillery bombardment that kills one of his own men and badly injures him. Hemingway shows the strength of this character through his survival of the bombardment and full recovery of his wounds. Hemingway portrays Frederic as a hero through this strength. In addition, Fredric, being fully aware of the dangers from both the enemy and the Italian's, who mistake him and his drivers for German's, kill one of them, and then threaten to execute Frederic, who escapes. In this daring escape, Frederic presents his courage and bravery in a dangerous situation. Hemingway demonstrates that although one of Frederic's men dies, he is still courageous in that his escape was successful. Frederic Henry's potential as a hero is shown by Hemingway's illustration of events that depict Frederic's use of his strength, his courage, and his bravery (Lewis 46).

    Read More

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

    1212 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    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

  • Ernest Hemingway and Masculinity

    2244 Words  | 5 Pages

    Ernest Hemingway, viewed as an American hero of his time, wrote novels that enrich the minds' of his readers, creating a lasting image that goes far beyond the actual content of the story. But while reading Hemingway, I learned that his style was far from complex. Through pre-meditated sentence structure, he creates a rhythm that parallels the action in the story. He wants the sentences themselves to be easy to understand, so the reader can use more energy focusing on the symbolism Hemingway's stories create. He skillfully places symbols and metaphors throughout his novels. In his own writing, Hemingway doesn't explain in detail his metaphors. Rather, he forces the reader to discover the deeper meaning hidden in his stories. His use of the "Tip of the Iceberg Theory" leaves the reader searching deeper into Hemingway's writing to find its true meaning. [VGC1]

    Read More

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

    1706 Words  | 4 Pages

    Schneider, Daniel. "Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms: The Novel as Pure Poetry." Modern Fiction Studies, 14 (Autumn 1968): 283-96.

    Read More

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

    599 Words  | 2 Pages

    A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway, is a story about love and war. Frederic Henry, a young American, works as an ambulance driver for the Italian army in World War I. He falls tragically in love with a beautiful English nurse, Miss Catherine Barkley. This tragedy is reflected by water. Throughout the novel Ernest Hemingway uses water as metaphors. Rivers are used as symbols of rebirth and escape and rain as tragedy and disaster, which show how water plays an important role in the story.

    Read More

  • A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

    1777 Words  | 4 Pages

    Ernest Hemingway's WWI classic, A Farewell to Arms is a story of initiation in which the growth of the protagonist, Frederic Henry, is recounted. Frederic is initially a naïve and unreflective boy who cannot grasp the meaning of the war in which he is so dedicated, nor the significance of his lover's predictions about his future. He cannot place himself amidst the turmoil that surrounds him and therefore, is unable to fully justify a world of death and destruction. Ultimately, his distinction between his failed relationship with Catherine Barkley and the devastation of the war allows him to mature and arrive at the resolution that the only thing one can be sure of in the course of life is death and personal obliteration (Phelan 54).

    Read More

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

    1314 Words  | 3 Pages

    When the two first meet, Catherine is still dealing with the death of her fiancé in battle. This presents her as a woman who knows the dangers and possibilities of war. As a nurse physically present during the war, she is rightfully not perceived as grieving and mortified by her fiancé¹s death. She did not marry him because he wanted to enlist in the war, ³I would have married him or anything ... But then he wanted to go to war and I didn¹t know² (Hemingway, 19). Typically, many women married their sweethearts in lure of the war. She goes onto say that she ³didn¹t know anything then,² but the fact that she did know that the war was not an excuse to get married presents her as perceptive and intellligent (19). The war alone could not justify her love for her life long friend and fiancé. This tragic event explains her confusing emotional behavior towards Henry at first.

    Read More

  • Themes of Love and War in A Farewell to Arms

    2035 Words  | 5 Pages

    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

  • Ernest Hemingway, His Life and His Works

    1553 Words  | 4 Pages

    Ernest Hemingway was a famed U.S. author who wrote many novels which was strongly influenced by the World War One and World War Two. As he participated in the both major wars, the first hand experience of the brutal war is conveyed with great detail and with heartfelt feelings. His works were majorly on the effects of wars on human beings and the men’s sense of honor and pride. Ernest Hemingway was inspirational writer of men’s ideals, especially during war, who clearly had uncommon experiences in his life, such as going through both World War One and World War Two, which was reflected upon most of his literary works.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Sun Also Rises By Ernest Hemingway

    1133 Words  | 3 Pages

    Hemingway’s involvement in warfare provided many of his works with a central—or at least a supporting—theme. In The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway used war as a major theme such as the effects of World War One, the gruesome reality of war, and the loss of innocence during the war, respectively. He devoted his life to write authentically on every piece of his work including and particularly the subject of warfare and its effect during his time period. Although his literary works are not primary sources of the war experiences during the early half of the Twentieth century, they provide close to the truth surrounding those wars as accurately as possible.

    Read More

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

    907 Words  | 2 Pages

    Book II describes a slight transformation when Henry, wounded, spends time in hospital. He is suddenly more involved with the war, but, as a release from the war, he now acknowledges his great love for Catherine. The war is never far away, though. Protest riots take place in Rome and Turin and there are intimations that the war is becoming a stalemate, the army disillusioned; ”there was a great contrast between his world pessimism and personal cheeriness” (127), the prospects of victory evaporating; ”the war could not be much worse” (129).

    Read More

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

Open Document