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Assignment
Submitted To:
Sir Agha Masood Ahmad
Submitted By:
Iram Idrees
MAENE-023R18-14

Submitted By:Iram Idrees

MAENE-023R18-14
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Q: Symbolism in a Farewell to Arms

While Hemingway avoids the sort of symbol that neatly equates an object
with some lofty abstraction, he offers many powerfully evocative descriptions
that often resonate with several meanings. Among these are the rain, which
scares Catherine and into which Henry walks at the end of the novel; Henry’s
description of her hair; the painted horse; and the silhouette cutter Henry
meets on the street.

1. Rain
Rain serves in the novel as a potent symbol of the inevitable disintegration
of happiness in life. Catherine infuses the weather with meaning as she and
Henry lie in bed listening to the storm outside. As the rain falls on the roof,
Catherine admits that the rain scares her and says that it has a tendency to
ruin things for lovers. Of course, no meteorological phenomenon has such
power; symbolically, however, Catherine’s fear proves to be prophetic, for
doom does eventually come to the lovers. After Catherine’s death, Henry
leaves the hospital and walks home in the rain. Here, the falling rain validates
Catherine’s anxiety and confirms one of the novel’s main contentions: great
love, like anything else in the world—good or bad, innocent or deserving—
cannot last.

2. Catherine’s Hair
Although it is not a recurring symbol, Catherine’s hair is an important one.
In the early, easy days of their relationship, as Henry and Catherine lie in
bed, Catherine takes down her hair and lets it cascade around Henry’s head.

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The tumble of hair reminds Henry of being enclosed inside a tent or behind
a waterfall. This lovely description stands as a symbol of the couple’s
isolation from the world. With a war raging around them, they manage to
secure a blissful seclusion, believing themselves protected by something as
delicate as hair. Later, however, when they are truly isolated from the ravages
of war and living in peaceful Switzerland, they learn the harsh lesson that
love, in the face of life’s cruel reality, is as fragile and ephemeral as hair.

Snow
In A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway attempts to tell the unvarnished
truth about war — to present an honest, rather than a heroic, account of
combat, retreat, and the ways in which soldiers fill their time when they are
not fighting. Yet Hemingway's realistic approach to his subject does not rule
out the use of many time-honored literary devices.

For instance, weather is to this day a fundamental component of the war

experience. Hemingway depicts weather realistically in A Farewell to Arms,
but he uses it for symbolic purposes as well. Rain, often equated with life and
growth, stands for death in this novel, and snow symbolizes hope: an entirely
original schema.

In stories such as "To Build a Fire," by Jack London, snow and ice quite
logically represent danger and death. After all, one can freeze to death, fall
through thin ice and drown, or perish beneath an avalanche. In Chapter II
of A Farewell Arms, on the other hand, it is snow that ends the fighting
described in the book's first chapter. Thus snow stands for safety rather than
its opposite. (Note, though, that although snow covers the bare ground and
even the Italian army's artillery in Chapter II, stumps of oak trees torn up by
the summer's fighting continue to protrude — a reminder that winter is of
course not permanent but merely a reprieve from combat, a cease-fire.)
Shortly thereafter, Frederic Henry describes the priest's home region of
Abruzzi as a "place where the roads were frozen and hard as iron, where it
was clear and cold and dry and the snow was dry and powdery . . . ," and the
context leaves no doubt that this characterization is a positive one.
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Riding Crop
When Henry first meets Catherine, she is carrying the riding crop that
belonged to her fiancé, who was killed in the Battle of the Somme. The war
represents Catherine's inability to let her fiancé go. His sudden unfair death
in war informs her view, shared with Henry, that the world is a cruel place
that eventually crushes and kills people who have real courage.

Officers' Stars
The stars that military officers wear on their sleeves in A Farewell to
Arms represent competence and duty. When Dr. Valentini agrees to operate
on Henry's leg in Chapter 15, Henry is comforted not only by Valentini's
brash confidence but also by the stars on his sleeve that mark him as a major.
When Henry deserts and cuts off the stars from his sleeve to disguise himself,
he throws away his former identity and responsibilities.

3. Disillusionment
Many young men signed up to defend their countries when the the Great War
broke out in 1914, believing their valor would bring recognition and glory.
These bright-eyed men faced the horrors of war: senseless violence, horrific
living conditions, and terrible loss. These soldiers soon realized that they
were nameless, faceless bodies whose efforts amounted to little more than a
death toll. In A Farewell to Arms, brave men such as Passini, Rinaldi,
Bonello, and even Frederic Henry question why they joined the battle and
what they could possibly contribute.
The theme of disillusionment also plays out in Henry's struggle with religion.
At the opening of the novel, Henry is at a spiritual crossroads, unsure what,
if anything, he should believe in. Religious feelings flicker in him only briefly,
through his love for Catherine. When he discovers that death is
indiscriminate, killing the good and the bad, the brave and the cowardly, he
finds it impossible to believe in a higher power. By the end of the novel,
Henry, a brave and good man, has lost everything.

4. Escapism

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Life in the trenches is tough for the soldiers. The trenches are dirty and
crowded, supplies are difficult to come by, and there is the constant threat of
attack. On the battlefield losses are common, deaths are grisly, and
recoveries are painful. The men are given few opportunities to recover from
their daily stress, so they use base pleasures as a means of escaping their
realities. Throughout the novel Henry and other soldiers drink to excess to
forget where they are and what they have experienced. They frequent
brothels, using sex as a quick "feel-good" activity.
For Catherine and Henry, romance is a form of escapism. By conjuring a
fantasy with Henry, Catherine eases the heartache of her fiancé's death.
Throughout their relationship Catherine and Henry take every opportunity
to create a sense of adventure and civilian life, from dining out to socializing
to making love in the hospital bed in Milan. They believe that, as long as they
are "good," nothing bad can happen to them, even though bad things have
already happened. After deserting Henry and Catherine create "a separate
peace" in their isolated hotel and refuse to prepare for the child arriving soon.

5. Chance
Neither Henry nor Catherine believe in an all-powerful God acting out his
divine will through a master plan. For them life is a matter of chance, a
wonderful, complex game. The "game" begins when Catherine and Henry
first meet. Catherine feeds Henry romantic lines, and they play at being in
love. In Chapter 6 Henry compares their romance to the card game bridge.
The theme of chance is heightened when the couple travels to the racetrack,
taking great pleasure in placing bets on a horse on a whim. Throughout the
novel the narrator points out that soldiers are playing cards, a reminder that
life on the battlefield comes down to chance and luck, much like poker. In
the hospital Catherine's final words to Henry are "It's just a dirty trick,"
reminding the reader that life is a game that always ends with death.

6.Heartbreak of War
The setting reflects the idea that, for Henry, there is no glory in war, just an
endless slog through a dangerous landscape. Steep roads, gutted woods, and
crushed villages create the backdrop of the narrative. The mountains are
nearly impossible to defend or overtake for the countries on both sides of

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them. Chapter 27 merges the terrain with ideas of sacrifice and honor during
Henry's conversation with an Italian soldier named Gino.
The landscape plays a role in the retreat, which is a failure. The muddy field
swallows the troops' cars and Henry's sense of duty, and he flings himself
into the moving river, away from the current heartbreak of war into the final
heartbreak waiting for him.

Finally, when Henry leaves the hospital for lunch during Catherine's
protracted, agonizing delivery, "The day was cloudy but the sun was trying to
come through" — a literal ray of hope. During the operation, however, he
looks out the window and sees that it is raining. Just after the nurse has told
him that the baby is dead, Henry looks outside again and "could see nothing
but the dark and the rain falling across the light from the window." At the
novel's end, Henry leaves the hospital and walks back to his hotel in the rain.
In fact, the final word in A Farewell to Arms is "rain," evidence of weather's
important place in the story overall.

Submitted By:Iram Idrees

MAENE-023R18-14