A Farewell to ArmsERNEST HEMINGWAY

A Farewell to Arms

Frederic Henry, and architecture student in Italy, has enlisted in the Italian army for reasons even he doesn’t know. He is in the ambulance corps.

Catherine Barkley evolves into a powerful love that changes his life.

In both facets of the story, death is universal, unavoidable, inexorable, as it is in real life.

War seems to be a perennial of human history.

A Farewell to Arms

There are five books that blend the two stories, one of war, and the other love.

Book One – Focuses on the war

Book Two – War moves to the background for the love story.

Book Three – War becomes dominant again.

Book Four – Balances both stories.

Book Five – Frederic feels alienated from war – like someone at a football game at another’s college.

Book One

Frederic Henry is faced with a choice of a disciplined existence or a life of sensuality, and for a time he chooses the latter.

From Miss Barkley we see the romantic notion of war in her past fantasies about her fiancé.

The contrast between romance and reality is vividly apparent.

Ernest Hemingway

Son of a doctor and musician.

Never went to college

Rejected for army service – bad eye

Worked in journalism with much success.

Married four times

Man of action – stereotypically male

In 1954 Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature for “Forceful style making mastery in the art of modern narration.”

Committed suicide in July 1961.

Ernest Hemingway – Prose

His prose is quite direct. It has been described as hard hitting, compact, disciplined, masculine, stoic, action-centered.

The Hemingway hero is “all-man,” but with a vulnerable side which he seems determined to disregard.

He rewrote the ending thirty-nine times.