Humans are a complexity that has continued to intrigue the world for centuries. Throughout history, multitudes of people dedicated to unravelling the mystery of why humans react as well as how they respond to certain experiences in life. A Farewell to Arms written by Ernest Hemingway is a book is created that explores the understanding of Frederick Henry’s mind and what effects result from his experiences. Furthermore, love is an important aspect in everyone’s life. Whether it is romantic or maternal, everyone needs nurture in order to develop properly and maintain their sanity. Frederick Henry, while serving as an ambulance driver during the war, is constantly exposed to the hardships of war, including life or death situations. Love is replaced …show more content…
Throughout the book, he repeatedly mentions aspects of her beauty: “she was very beautiful and I took her hand” (Hemingway 24). Frederick Henry’s love for Catherine becomes an obsession, and this affects him tremendously. The natural love he had for Catherine has transformed into him glorifying her, “Frederick Henry is idealizing Catherine” as an escape from himself (Cain 377). Once again, this inner battle is always present in his mind. Catherine’s beauty helps rid those thoughts and unpleasant ideals. His obsession escalates when he admits, “When I saw her I was in love with her. Everything turned over inside of me” (Hemingway 84). His love for her and her stunning beauty is remarkably strong; it had psychological effects on him that alter his choices throughout the …show more content…
Some say things happen for a reason, and for Frederick Henry, this statement rings true. After Henry discovers Catherine is pregnant, he is overjoyed with the great news. He is always on the lookout for Catherine and baby. Unfortunately, his happiness, childbirth is hard on Catherine and plans do not go as envisioned: Henry is destroyed when Catherine dies from childbirth because she is no longer there to comfort him (Cain 381). He feels lost and empty as if the wind was taken out of him. He “cannot prevent the loss of Catherine from continuing to embody him” (Dodman). Catherine’s death thoroughly consumes him, and he can never forgive her for leaving him or the pain her death brought him. His love is so deep that in an article by William E. Cain, he states that Henry would kill his own baby so that he and Catherine could still be together (Cain). They need each other desperately, almost to an unhealthy amount. In addition to the distraught feeling Frederick Henry experiences from Catherine and his new baby’s death, he feels even worse about falling in love with her: “When he fell in love with Catherine, Frederick made his separate peace. She gave him someone to care about; he never cared about the war. The irony is that loving her was an assault on her, a declaration of war: his love sentenced her to death” (Cain 382). Loving Catherine made her die because of the consequences that come with falling in
"Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while." This quote summarizes Catherine and Henry's love for each other. Even though Catherine died, Henry had a huge space of emptiness left in his heart. Marriages in today's society are very serious relationships although some people don't seem to take them so seriously. Take for example Dennis Rodman, who married Carmen Electra and they divorced a week later. This shows how men are sometimes over powered by looks. My essay contrasts the relationships in Hemingway's Farewell to Arms to the relationships in Steinbeck's East of Eden. E. Hemingway displays a sense of respect for couples whereas J. Steinbeck portrays that women are venerable can't hold a steady relationship. Abra gradually fell in love with Cal and eventually cheated on Aron with his brother Caleb. Cal slowly tries to ruin Aron. Cal influences Abra's thought of Aron by saying sweet things to her. Adam smiled at her. "You're pink as a rose," he said. (590) The passage shows that Cal is trying to romance Abra. He knows Abra is venerable because Aron is away in the army and she misses him. By Aron absent, Abra needs a man and she turns to Cal.
Catherine Barkley is Frederick’s true love. “I felt damned lonely and was glad when the train got to Stresa…I was expecting my wife…” (Hemingway 243-244). This quote shows the physical and emotional yearning that Catherine inspires in Frederic. This desire for her is what helps him through the war. Eliezer’s love, on the other hand, is directed towards his father.
As a first hand observer of the Civil War, the great American Poet, Walt Whitman once said,"The real war [of the mind] will never get in the books."Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a horrible mental ailment that afflicts thousands of soldiers every year. Besides the fact that it is emotionally draining for the soldier, it also deeply alters their family and their family dynamics. Ernest Hemingway’s “Soldier's Home” illustrates how this happens. Harold Krebs returns home from World War I. He has to deal with becoming reaccustomed to civilian life along with relearning social norms. He must also learn about his family and their habits. The ramifications of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder have a ripple effect on the lives of not only the victim, but also the friends and family they relate to.
Hopeless Suffering in A Farewell to Arms Near the end of A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway has Fredrick Henry describe the time he placed a log full of ants on a fire. This incident allows us to understand a much larger occurrence, Catherine's pregnancy. Combined, both of these events form commentary on the backdrop for the entire story, World War One. After he finds out his son was stillborn, Lt. Henry remembers the time when he placed a log full of ants on a fire.
Throughout the 20th century there were many influential pieces of literature that would not only tell a story or teach a lesson, but also let the reader into the author’s world. Allowing the reader to view both the positives and negatives in an author. Ernest Hemingway was one of these influential authors. Suffering through most of his life due to a disturbingly scarring childhood, he expresses his intense mental and emotional insecurities through subtle metaphors that bluntly show problems with commitment to women and proving his masculinity to others.
War, no matter what the size or the reason for fighting, effects people in many different ways. In Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls the novel about the Spanish Civil War, digs deep into the reality that comes with warfare. This novel really focuses on how being in a war can idealize the “perfect love”, forces the act of killing whether it is believed in or not, and how war can consume anyone brining out the barbaric side in some people. There are many examples throughout the novel that shows how the characters and even how Ernest Hemingway was effected by the war.
In the start of the novel, Frederick Henry was into over- sensual pleasures and could not control himself until he had spent much time with Catherine and learned how to discipline himself. Henry "had drunk much wine" and roamed from whore house to whore house near the beginning of the novel. He had no control over himself nor could hold his liquor or contain himself from easy women during this time. Henry finally disciplined himself near the end of his stay at the Ospidale Maggoire. The nada concept had been a part of Henry's life from the beginning. Henry stood up nights because the night is a representation of evil and death to him. If he is not asleep, he can avoid having to deal with it. Henry also is accompanied by Catherine during nights at the Ospidale Maggoire. To Henry there "was almost no difference in the night except that is was an even better time" with Catherine. Catherine, who is already a code hero...
The first, most obvious trait of Catherine’s heroism is that she values human relationships above materialism. Nothing is more important to Catherine than her lover, Henry, and as the novel goes on, her baby. When Henry is injured and sent to Milan, she has no trouble transferring to the new hospital there. Catherine loves Henry and would drop anything to be with him. Nothing material holds her back from being with him. Even when they live in Switzerland, they don’t have many material possessions. They live very simple lives because all the couple really needs is each other. In chapter forty, Henry describes their time together with this quote, "When there was a good day we had a splendid time and we never had a bad time. We knew the baby was very close now and it gave us both a feeling as though something were hurrying us and we could not lose any time together." Catherine obviously values her time with Henry more than anyone else, but it isn’t the physical aspect of getting out and doing things that satisfies her. What satisfies Catherine is the extra time she gets to spend with the love of her life b...
"All fiction is autobiographical, no matter how obscure from the author's experience it may be, marks of their life can be detected in any of their tales"(Bell, 17). A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway is based largely on Hemingway's own personal experiences. The main character of the novel, Frederic Henry, experiences many of the same situations that Hemingway lived. Some of these similarities are exact, while some are less similar, and some events have a completely different outcome.
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).
...ar, O’Brien was able to turn his pain into a life purpose by immortalizing his loved ones. On the other hand, Bowker was not able to cope and resorted to taking his own life. In high-pressure environments such as war, instinct is the dominating force behind one’s actions. It is something inherent and extremely difficult to change for it corresponds with the person’s deepest desires. Therefore, instinctive reactions are accurate portrayals of a person’s inner identity and character. The cases of Bowker and O’Brien prove that it is the discovery of oneself during war, and not war itself, that has a profound impact on the human spirit.
In his novel A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway transfers his own emotional burdens of World War I to his characters. Although considered to be fiction, the plot and characters of Hemingway’s novel directly resembled his own life and experience, creating a parallel between the characters in the novel and his experiences. Hemingway used his characters to not only to express the dangers of war, but to cope and release tension from his traumatic experiences and express the contradictions within the human mind. Hemingway’s use of personal experiences in his novel represents Freud’s Psychoanalytic theory regarding Hemingway’s anxieties and the strength and dependency that his consciousness has over his unconsciousness.
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... ...
...ne show his sensibility. His imagination and creativity motivate him to read Gothic romances and to indulge in the effects that his inventive tales produce. His decision to marry Catherine is motivated by feelings of love that further exemplifies his sensibility. Throughout the novel the readers see an excellent display of Henry's ability to maintain equilibrium between the two qualities. He passes his knowledge onto Catherine to help her to become a better person. At the end of the novel it is apparent that Henry has taught the keys of his success to Catherine.
There are indications in each of the novel’s five books that Ernest Hemingway meant A Farewell to Arms to be a testament against war. World War One was a cruel war with no winners; ”War is not won by victory” (47). Lieutenant Frederic Henry, the book’s hero and narrator, experiences the disillusionment, the hopelessness and the disaster of the war. But Henry also experiences a passionate love; a discrepancy that ironically further describes the meaninglessness and the frustration felt by the soldiers and the citizens.