Bradshaw 1 Michelle Bradshaw Mrs. Ross AP Literature 7 April 2011 A Farewell to Arms There is nothing to writing.

All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed (Ernest Hemingway 4). In 1929, I cut deep. A Farewell to Arms was published, which was well received putting me further into the limelight. This novel focuses around the Great War and what critics have coined a Hemingway code hero. [It] also gave rise to the infamous myth of [me] as the epitome of American machismo (A Farewell to Arms). Men must live with honor, courage, and endurance if they are to have any hope of being victorious in this world. As Ezra Pound told me one should write what they know, for this makes things believable, and never use extra words, for they make things unbelievable (Jones 9). Before I can discuss why I wrote this book it therefore becomes necessary to give a summary so that you may know about the things I know. Tenente Frederic Henry, an American, is serving in the Italian army as an ambulance driver. His friend, Rinaldi, introduces him to Catherine Barkley, a nurse with the American Red Cross. Catherine, a lonely woman after losing her fianc in the war, is quick to build a relationship with Frederic. This marks the first time Frederic has felt anything since the start of the war. While at the front, Frederic is injured after he gets some cheese for his pasta. He is first taken to a field hospital and then transferred to an American hospital in Milan. Catherine is soon transferred to the same hospital but the two keep their relationship a secret. Doctors inform

Bradshaw 2 Frederic that he must wait six months before getting knee surgery so he has another doctor come. Dr. Valentini agrees to operate the following day. Catherine cares for Frederic while he recovers, and their relationship intensifies. Frederic receives a letter stating he is to return to the front in three weeks, but he comes down with jaundice. The head nurse is angered by this for she believes he is trying to delay his departure. Frederic and Catherine spend their final night together in a hotel where she announces that she is pregnant. Back at the front, ground is lost daily. German and Austrian forces break through Italian lines and a massive retreat begins. During the resulting traffic jam, Frederic picks up two engineering sergeants and two young, frightened girls. The ambulance drivers decide it will be faster to take back roads and leave the giant column of traffic which has hardly moved since the downpour began. One of the cars gets stuck in the mud and the two sergeants refuse to push. Frederic shoots one of them while the other runs off. He sends off the girls and the drivers continue on foot to Udine. The terrified rear guards of the Italian Army accidentally shoot a driver and another runs off to surrender to the Germans. The next day, the two drivers meet up with the retreat where the carabiniere are killing their own officers who they believed were German agitators or were separated from their troops. Frederic is pulled out of the column but dives into the river to escape. After floating for awhile he jumps onto a train headed for Milan where he borrows civilian clothes from a friend and learns that the nurses are in Stresa. After finding Catherine the two check into a hotel. During a rainstorm that night the hotel bartender warns them that the authorities will be coming in the morning to arrest Frederic for deserting. They borrow the bartenders boat and row all night to Switzerland. There they are arrested but are soon released since they have a fair amount of money and passports. The two spend the winter in an alpine

Bradshaw 3 cabin. With Catherines due date approaching they check into a hotel near the hospital in Laussane. Early one morning Catherine goes into labor. It becomes evident that she is unable to give birth naturally so she has a cesarean section. When Frederic sees the baby he has o feelings for it, and realizes it is dead. The nurse suggests that he gets something to eat. When he returns he learns that Catherine is hemorrhaging. Her condition worsens and the two say goodbye shortly before she dies. Frederic exits the hospital into the rain heading back to the hotel alone. Now we can really start speaking of the inspiration for the novel. It is fair to say that the events of the story reflect events from my own life. I was an American serving as an ambulance driver in Italy during World War I (Ernest Heming Biography). I was severely injured at the knee while at Fossalta di Piave (Cooke). From there I was brought to a hospital in Milan and I kept a secret stash of alcohol too (Bloom 20). I fell in love with a wonderful nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky, and I planned to marry her back in the states (Bloom 21). She wrote me a letter in March of 1919 saying she had met someone else and just like that it was over (Bloom 22). The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those it will not break it kills. But this story is not a case of the uncertainty that a soldiers life, it is a Romeo & Juliet style tragedy (Bloom 75). The couple is detached from the emotions of the war, yet love and pain are never far. Rain will always fall. Nothing is safe from it. Throughout the novel I took rain, something that is conventionally used as a metaphor for purification, and made it an omen. Rain falls on everyone with no reservations much like death. From the start of the book I employ this idea. At the start of winter can the permanent rainin the end only seven thousand died of it in the army. The understatement in the closing paragraph in the first chapter gives the brutal reality of war in Italy (A Farwell to Arms). Catherine fears the rain, saying it is, very hard on loving. She admits that she can see herself and Frederic dead in

Bradshaw 4 it. The almost constant rain during World War I reminds Catherine of death. It was raining during much of the Battle of the Somme where her fianc had died. The rain connects Catherine to the war she desperately wishes to escape. After Catherine announces her pregnancy, it begins to rain. The downpour prophesizes the death of Catherine via the pregnancy and a sense of doom begins as it becomes time for Frederic to return to the war. As the couple part at the train station it is raining. It continues to rain in Gorizia as the major tells Frederic that it had been a bad summer. At Bainsizza, the Italian front, it storms and the Italian line breaks. A steady rain falls as the slow retreat begins. The men begin to erode and chaos erupts. The rain represents the grim truth of the war. There was nothing romantic, heroic, or even rational about it. The retreat shows that. Everyone just wanted to get out the rain to safety. Frederic breaks from the army feeling no more commitment to it and begins his search for Catherine. His life with Catherine is happy until the labor starts. Catherine dies and Frederic walks back to the hotel in the rain. He is powerless to death for there is no permanent shelter from the rain. In a more traditional approach, which I had already used, I turned the river into a purifying experience for Frederic (Bloom 95). After the retreat he feels that there is nothing left for him in the army. Anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation. The immersion in the river allowed him to make a farewell to arms. It is his rebirth into a short but happy life with Catherine in Switzerland. With the ironic differences between the river and rain one can also look at the relations between the two kinds of arms. Purification leads to the end of violence while death leads to the end of romanticism. In the end the winner takes nothing, because nothingness is all there is (Bloom 70). Frederic cuts off the stars on his uniform as the idea of bravery becomes meaningless. War has become void and Frederic must leave it for Catherine.

Bradshaw 5 If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it (Ernest Hemingway 4). Nothing is permanent. He truly falls in love with Catherine while in Milan after being severely injured. Returning to the war Frederic can see that it has become much darker since he was last there. Just as his love intensified, so did the war. Water plays an important role in both. In the war he floats down the river and to escape all horrors of war he and Catherine spend the whole night rowing across a lake to Switzerland. The happiness that the couple find in the snow covered mountains is only temporary. The rain must return, and it does in the spring. As Catherine, dies it is raining. Its realistic rather than pessimistic to say that love and pain are intertwined permanently in a world that is temporary. Catherine refused to break and thus was killed while Frederic became stronger at his broken places. For Frederic nighttime is when he thinks because there is nothing left to distract him. He cannot even sleep due to all the thinking. Night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. Frederic claims that Catherine makes the night better but in the end she dies at night. He must walk back to his hotel alone in the rain. The hopelessness of the night makes Frederic religious. Rather he only thinks of God at night when his loneliness is so overpowering that it threatens to consume him. In Milan his relationship with Catherine grows at night. They occupy each others loneliness. When he leaves for the front Frederic resolves to only think of Catherine at night. This way he can distract himself from the reality of war that is worse than ever before. At the wars worst moment, the retreat, it is nighttime. As Catherine is dying Frederic says that he doesnt want to love anyone else. Catherine then promises to spend nights with him. Without her he will be back to the same place he was before. Drinking and going out just so that he wont have time to think or have nightmares.

Bradshaw 6 Just as night can be both good and bad for Frederic, so can the mountains. The AustroItalian front is being fought in the mountains. Much death occurs there. Later Frederic and Catherine escape the war by going to Switzerland. There they spend a happy winter in a cabin in the mountains. However, it is merely the snow which covers the mountains that keep the couple happy. They believe that the remote location takes them away from the fighting below but it actually forces them to fight a different war. Snow covers everything but only temporarily. As spring comes Catherine dies. The war for love ends as badly as the real war did with the retreat. One night on the front, the enemy breaks Italian lines, forces that include Germans. The idea of fighting the Germans frightens the Italians. The despair of the night leads to a massive retreat. It is slow moving in neat columns as the rain falls. The ambulance drivers are continually stopping. The column becomes jammed so they deicide to take back roads where the cars get stuck in the mud. At this point the grimness of war is fully realized. Rain predicts death and mud coats morals. The car sinks in the mud and there is nothing the men can do. When Frederic shoots one of the engineers for not helping push the car one sees how irrational even the normally calm Frederic can be. As the men move on they are shot at by their own army who as terrified and willing to shoot anything that moves. Then Bonello abandons them. Returning to the columns chaos has erupted. Officers are being shot for deserting. The true senselessness of war is epitomized. Everything has become morally ambiguous. Frederic feels nothing for the war which is clearly pointless. War embodies all that is unromantic and illogical. It may appear otherwise but once one is there it is evident, just as the structure of the retreat fell apart. I use war to exhibit tragic elements and probe the depths of despair and nothingness (Bloom 69). Absolute chaos takes over, and Frederic is certain he must make a farewell to arms.

Bradshaw 7 The transformation of Frederic Henry is the main focus of A Farewell to Arms. At the start of the novel he is American serving in the Italian army, out of place and without passion. His life thus far has centered around many women and drinking like the other men. He goes on leave and returns to find that perhaps he isnt as important as he thought he was. Nothing happened while he was away and nothing got worse either. Then he meets Catherine. Their relationship is merely a game to him. Still feeling indifferent to the war he is injured after getting some cheese; an inglorious wound for a war equally as jaded. Frederic feels lonely without Catherine but is not in love with her until spending the summer in Milan recuperating. Their love puts the war more into his subconscious. When he must return to the front he is depressed at having to leave Catherine behind. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the names of villages, the number of roads, the names of rivers, the number of regiments, and the dates. The disillusionment is heightened during the retreat. By shooting the engineer Frederic, who is normally logical and calm, is taken over by his emotions. The war is frustratingly irrational. Now is the time for him to get out, for there is no place here for him anymore. The plunge into the river ends his direct connection with the war and from here on Catherine is the most important thing to him. With the couples escape to Switzerland, Frederic has become a fully committed man. The war is forgotten. Frederic has made a separate peace with both war and love. However, nothing is permanent. Catherine dies bravely, only crying at the idea of hurting Frederic. As a selfless woman she would not break by getting married or having an abortion to fit the social norms. For this she must die. One cannot have a separate peace. Love and pain are always connected; there is no way around it. But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed

Bradshaw 8 but not defeated (Ernest Hemingway 1). Frederic is completely destroyed by Catherines death, but he is strong. He is not defeated. While many view A Farewell to Arms as my finest work there are others who are bothered by the vulgar diction. Henry Hazlitt wrote that I was, the single greatest influence on the American novel and short story (A Farewell to Arms). Much praise was given to this work and I am grateful for it. Honestly though, The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other (Ernest Hemingway 4). Feminist critics had become rather upset by my work though, claiming that I made Catherine one-dimensional. Thankfully she is currently regarded as a more complex figure, as I intended (A Farewell to Arms). For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can. (Ernest Hemingway 2). War is a crime. It is unjust, pointless, and filled with pain. Frederic Henry comes to see this by the end of the novel. He also experiences that love, no matter how true, cannot last. My point is that despite everything that may occur, the winner takes nothing. In this sense we can understand that love and pain are deeply intertwined. At the end of the day we must all walk back to the hotel, alone.

Bradshaw 9 Works Cited "A Farewell to Arms." Novels for Students. Ed. Diane Telgen. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1997. 158-179. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 26 Feb. 2011. Bloom, Harold. "Ernest Hemingway." Bloom's BioCritiques. 'Ed'. Harold Bloom. Broomall, PA: Chelsea House Publishers, 2002. Print. Cooke, Douglas. "Hemingway, Ernest (1899-1961)." St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. Ed. Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast. Vol. 2. Detroit: St. James Press, 2000. 386-389. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 26 Feb. 2011. "Ernest Hemingway Biography." 2011. Biography.com. Web. 23 Feb. 2011. "Ernest Hemingway." BrainyQuote.com. Xplore Inc, 2011. Web. 5 March. 2011.