‘A FAREWELL TO ARMS’: TEXT

INTRODUCTION

A Farewell to Arms is a novel written by Ernest Hemmingway set during World War
I's Italian campaign. This novel is set entirely during World War I, and it tells the
storey of a love affair between an expatriate named Henry and an English nurse
named Catherine Barkley. This was his first best-seller, and it was dubbed "the
premier American war novel from that calamity that was World War I."

Because this theme has so many focused aspects, it can be said to have many
contradictory themes, such as war and love, masculinity and femininity, and fear and
courage. Although the novel is set in a war environment, the characters are shown to
be able to overcome their fears, redefine gender roles, and fall in love with one
another.

Hemmingway describes the environment in the beginning of the novel, "The trunks of
the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops
marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves...", which are remarkably
precise details, indicating that he was precise and gave very minute descriptions.
There is also evidence of a link between love and war; war can easily put love in
jeopardy, make it unstable, and lead to strong disillusionment with love.

The way Hemingway presented the theme of violence and death to show that while
life is full of pain and suffering, the ills of life lose their sting when confronted by a
man of courage and strong willpower is also noteworthy. The war experiences of
Hemingway had a profound emotional and psychological impact on him.

Another peculiar aspect of this novel is the way he represents the Rain and Snow; rain
is often associated with life and growth, but here it represents death, and snow
represents hope, both of which are used differently by other authors.
As previously stated, there are many aspects of this film that are focused on and have
a contradictory theme, one of which is bravery and fear of death. Prior to the waves,
she (Catharine) smiles in between them, and we see how she bears the labour pain to
the point where, when it becomes unbearable, she says, "I'm not brave any longer
darling." I'm completely messed up. They've shattered me." It can be seen here how
she dealt with her grievances and how brave she was in her demeanour. In addition,
she says, "I won't die, I won't myself die," indicating her fear of death. This can be
interpreted in a broader sense as the way the students were brave and courageous
enough to deal with problems until the end of the war, and later as how people fear
death. Pregnancy images have been associated with war and death.

PLOT SUMMARY OF “A FAREWELL TO ARMS”

A Farewell to Arms follows a fairly straightforward plot. During World War I (1914–
18), American lieutenant Frederic Henry meets English nurse Catherine Barkley while
working with the Italian ambulance service. Catherine supports Henry's advances
despite her grief over the death of her fiancé, who was killed in the war. Henry is
taken to a hospital in Milan after being severely wounded by a trench mortar shell
near the Isonzo River in Italy. He is eventually joined by Catherine. She looks after
him while he recovers. During this time, their bond grows stronger. Henry confesses
that he is smitten with her. Henry soon becomes pregnant with Catherine, but she
refuses to marry him.

Henry is sent back to the front after the hospital superintendent, Miss Van Campen,
discovers that he has been hiding alcohol in his hospital room. Morale on the front had
deteriorated significantly during his absence. He deserts the army during the Italian
retreat following the disastrous Battle of Caporetto (1917), narrowly avoiding
execution by Italian military police. Henry returns to Milan in search of Catherine. He
soon discovers that she has been dispatched to Stresa, which is 95 miles (153
kilometres) away. Henry takes the train to Stresa. He reunites with Catherine there,
and the two flee Italy by crossing the Swiss border into neutral territory.

Henry and Catherine are apprehended by Swiss border authorities upon their arrival.
They decide to let Henry and Catherine stay in Switzerland, posing as architecture and
art students looking for "winter sport." In a wooden house near Montreux, the couple
spends several happy months. Catherine goes into labour late one night. To get to the
hospital, she and Henry take a taxi. After a long and painful labour, Henry begins to
wonder if Catherine will live. Unfortunately, their son was stillborn. Catherine begins
to bleed and dies soon after, with Henry by her side. He tries but fails to say goodbye.
In the rain, he returns to their hotel alone.

ALTERNATE ENDINGS

"I rewrote the ending to [A] Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times
before I was satisfied," Hemingway told George Plimpton of The Paris Review in
1958. He claimed he was having difficulty "getting the words right." Historians have
discovered that Hemingway wrote 47 different endings for the novel. The length of
the endings varies from a few sentences to several paragraphs. Some of the endings
are more depressing than others. "That is all there is to the storey," Hemingway wrote
in one particularly bleak ending, dubbed "The Nada Ending." "All I can promise you
is that Catherine died, that you will die, and that I will die." Henry and Catherine's
baby survives in a different ending. This was Hemingway's seventh conclusion,
appropriately titled "Live-Baby Ending."

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway's friend and fellow author, advised him on the ending.
Fitzgerald suggested that Hemingway conclude the novel by saying that the world
"breaks everyone," and those who "do not break, it kills." Hemingway ultimately
decided not to follow Fitzgerald's advice. Instead, he ended the book with the
following lines:
But it wasn't any good after I got [the nurses] out, shut the door, and turned off the
light. It was like bidding a statue farewell. After a while, I went out and walked back
to the hotel in the rain, leaving the hospital.

PUBLICATION AND RECEPTION

In 15 months, Hemingway wrote and revised A Farewell to Arms. Between May and
October 1929, the work was serialised in Scribner's Magazine in the United States.
Hemingway was reportedly paid $16,000 for the rights by Charles Scribner's Sons, the
most the magazine had ever paid for a serialised work. Scribner's Magazine had an
average annual circulation of around 70,000 in the late 1920s. Many subscribers
cancelled their subscriptions to the magazine despite the publisher's attempts to censor
Hemingway's work. They cancelled their subscriptions because of Hemingway's bad
language and "pornographic" depictions of premarital sex, among other things. The
magazine has been outright banned in Boston. The New York Times reported on June
21, 1929:

Because of objections to an instalment of Ernest Hemingway's serial, 'A Farewell to

Arms,' the June issue of Scribner's Magazine was banned from bookshops...by
Michael H. Crowley, Superintendent of the Police. It is said that some people found a
portion of the instalment to be obscene.

"The ban on the sale of the magazine in Boston is an evidence of the improper use of
censorship, which bases its objections on certain passages without taking into account
the effect and purpose of the storey as a whole," Scribner's defended Hemingway's
work. The work was neither immoral nor "anti-war," according to the publisher.

In September 1929, A Farewell to Arms was published in the United States as a novel.
An initial print run of about 31,000 copies was ordered by Scribner's. 510 first-edition
copies were numbered and signed by Hemingway. The novel was Hemingway's first
best seller, with 100,000 copies sold in the first year. Unlike the serial, the novel
received a positive response. "A moving and beautiful book," according to a New
York Times review. The London Times Literary Supplement described it as "a novel
of great power" and Hemingway as "an extremely talented and original artist" in
November 1929. The novel was described as "a first-rate piece of craftsmanship by a
man who knows his job" by American novelist John Dos Passos, Hemingway's
contemporary and sometime friend.

The novel's publication was not well received in Italy. Hemingway's (extremely
accurate) depiction of the Italian retreat after the Battle of Caporetto enraged many
Italians. The novel was banned by Benito Mussolini's fascist regime. According to
some scholars, the ban was imposed in part due to a personal feud between
Hemingway and Mussolini. Hemingway had interviewed Mussolini for The Toronto
Daily Star years before. Mussolini was referred to as "the biggest bluff in Europe" by
Hemingway in a 1923 article. It took until 1948 for A Farewell to Arms to be
published in Italy.

A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway, has been translated into many languages
since its publication in 1929, including Arabic, Italian, Japanese, and Urdu. Several
revised editions have been released. Scribner's published an edition of the novel in
July 2012 that included all 47 alternative endings as well as excerpts from early
draughts.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ELEMENTS

A Farewell to Arms has been praised for portraying war in a realistic manner. Its
realism has been attributed to personal experience: Hemingway's own wartime service
informs the novel in no small part. Despite the fact that Hemingway spent less time
and played a smaller role in World War I than his protagonist, the parallels between
their experiences are striking.
During World War I, Hemingway worked for the American Red Cross as an
ambulance driver. He, like Henry, served on the Italian front and was severely injured
during the Austro-Italian war. Hemingway was hit by fragments of an Austrian mortar
shell while handing out chocolate and cigarettes to soldiers on the night of July 8,
1918. His foot, knee, thighs, scalp, and hand were all wounded. He absorbed more
than 200 pieces of shrapnel in total—237 by his own count.

Following the explosion, the injured Hemingway is said to have carried a man to
safety. (For this and other acts of valour, he was later awarded a medal of valour.)
Hemingway was eventually admitted to a Red Cross hospital in Milan, where he met
and fell in love with Agnes von Kurowsky, a nurse. Von Kurowsky was seven years
his senior at the age of 26. Von Kurowsky liked Hemingway and enjoyed his
company, despite the fact that she did not fully reciprocate his love. On August 25,
1918, she wrote in her diary that Hemingway "has a case on me, or thinks he has."
He's a sweetie, and he's so cute about it..." After Hemingway's injuries had healed, the
two went to operas and horse races together. Von Kurowsky volunteered for service in
Florence during an influenza outbreak in September 1918, just two months after
Hemingway's injury. She and Hemingway corresponded on a regular basis. Von
Kurowsky referred to Hemingway as "Kid" in her letters. She was referred to as "Mrs.
Kid" and "the Missus" by him.

Milan, Italy, 1918, Agnes von Kurowsky and Ernest Hemingway.

Photograph Collection of Ernest Hemingway/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library

Hemingway's feelings for Von Kurowsky were never as strong as his feelings for her.
In a letter dated March 7, 1919, she ended the relationship, not long after Hemingway
returned to his home in Oak Park, Illinois. Von Kurowsky wrote in the letter that she
"remains very fond" of Hemingway, but "more as a mother than as a sweetheart."
Hemingway vomited after reading the letter, according to his sister Marcelline. Years
after his father's death in 1961, Jack Hemingway described the death of von
Kurowsky as the "great tragedy" of his father's early life.
Von Kurowsky was almost certainly the inspiration for the heroine in A Farewell to
Arms. "Let's get it straight—please," she said in 1976 when asked about Hemingway's
novel. "I wasn't the kind of girl who did things like that." She reacted angrily to the
suggestion that she and Hemingway were lovers, calling Catherine Barkley a "arrant
fantasy" and the hospital affair "totally implausible."

LANDSCAPE AND MASCULINITY IN ERNEST HEMINGWAY’S A

FAREWELL TO ARMS

Ernest Hemingway has occupied a space in the critical and cultural imagination as a
definitively "masculine" writer since his first works came to critical attention. In order
to maintain this characterization, his novels and stories feature male narrators in
difficult or extreme situations involving war, violence, and the natural world, and his
critical heritage has focused on these elements as well as Hemingway's personal life.
Recent feminist re-evaluations of Hemingway's works, on the other hand, have
resulted in new readings that complicate the issue of gender identity in his works and
serve as a springboard for new discussions of masculinity and the Hemingway hero
(Traber 28). Landscapes by Hemingway provide another lens through which to
consider these issues, as they, like the masculinities he explores in his works, cannot
be reduced to a single layer of significance or gender.

Robert Penn Warren popularised the concept of the 'code hero' in Hemingway's fiction
in his 1947 essay, 'Hemingway' (Beck 68). These heroes, Warren argued, "represent
some sense of a code, some sense of honour, which distinguishes a man from people
who simply follow their random impulses" (Warren 2). Following Warren's lead, a
number of critics have attempted to connect Hemingway's heroes to various masculine
literary traditions. [1] In A Farewell to Arms, these various incarnations of
masculinity and the sometimes-opposing ideals they embody compete to be the final
expression of the hero's masculinity. Indeed, the protagonist of the novel, Frederic
Henry, attempts to play a variety of masculine roles throughout the storey, including
war hero, romantic hero, man-in-nature, and modern cynic, all without success. [2]
Hemingway's narrative landscapes, which betray the male narrator's psychology,
present the male body as the host of an embattled masculinity, and ultimately push
back against an American pastoral tradition that codes nature as exclusively feminine,
can be used to explore these various masks of masculinity (Kolodny; Carpenter).

'The uniquely American "pastoral impulse"' has been coined to describe the coding of
nature as feminine (Kolodny 8). Annette Kolodny analyses the history of the
American pastoral mode as a literature predicated on a relationship between the
isolated male and a feminised nature, which, paradoxically, serves as both mother and
lover, in her hugely influential work The Lay of the Land. [3] Although it is widely
assumed that Hemingway accepted and continued this correspondence (Romesburg
146), I hope to show how Hemingway manipulates and subverts the pastoral mode's
expectations by rejecting the idea of an exclusively feminised nature and instead
fostering links within the narrative between the landscapes and various masks of
masculinity. My goal here is not to completely refute these interpretations of a
feminised nature in Hemingway's novels, but rather to question that feminization
where it appears, and to uncover the precise nature of the relationship between
landscape and gender in A Farewell to Arms. As a result, I demonstrate that
Hemingway's use of gendered landscapes, as well as his representations of gender in
the novel as a whole, are not as straightforward as they appear at first. It's worth
noting, though, that whether these landscapes are depicted as masculine or feminine,
they're still subject to the male agency of both Hemingway's narration and Frederic's
experience, albeit with different performative effects.

TERRITORY AND THE MALE BODY

The first way Hemingway's use of landscape in A Farewell to Arms complicates this
reading is through his depiction of wartime territories. At first glance, Hemingway's
territorialized landscapes—landscapes presented as parcels of land to be won or lost—
appear to be just more manifestations of the patriarchal impulse to dominate: 'There
was fighting for that mountain, too' (4). What's interesting about these landscapes is
that they invite a single-gendered reading, but they're not easily reduced to it. The
tension between viewing A Farewell to Arms as a 'love storey' or as a narrative
of'masculine self-fashioning' is at the heart of the gendering of these landscapes
(Stychacz 3). The underlying expectations of narrative tradition, both in terms of the
pastoral mode and the romance genre, would combine in a love storey to support the
gendering of these territorialized landscapes as feminine; after all, love is a battlefield.
However, because the landscape is a storey about conflicted masculine selfhood, the
"body" of the landscape must be male. From this perspective, the novel's territory is
Frederic himself, who is engaged in an internal struggle for self-realization.

The connections drawn between these landscapes and the male body make the idea of
Hemingway's landscapes as a metaphor for masculinity explicit: 'The forest had been
green in the summer when we had come into the town, but now there were the stumps
and the broken trunks and the ground torn up' (6). The'stumps' and 'broken trunks'
refer to the male body, and more specifically, the injuries and amputations that
occurred as a result of fighting in the war. The phrase 'ground torn up' takes this
relationship between man and nature beyond the physical and into the psychological,
implying a sense of dislocation, anguish, and groundlessness. The war-torn landscape
can be interpreted in conjunction with representations of the actual male body in
Hemingway's text, and suddenly we were in it and it was snow [...] the bare ground
was covered, the stumps of trees projected, there was snow on the guns, and there
were paths in the snow leading back to the latrines behind the trenches' (6).

The description of Frederic's anaesthetized leg later in the novel is as precariously

calm as the peaceful snow-covered landscape that has brought the war to a halt:

He used a local anaesthetic called'snow,' which froze the tissue and prevented pain
until the probe, scalpel, or forceps reached below the frozen portion. The
anaesthetized area was clearly defined by the patient, and the doctor's delicate
delicacy wore thin after a while (86).
The landscape's snow reflects the anesthetic's deliberately named'snow.' This
connection casts doubt on the novel's opening assertion that the war is winding down.
The snow, like Frederic's leg, has only temporarily numbed the area, and the war is
still raging beneath it. Hemingway uses this dual underpinning to reinforce key
narrative moments by connecting the male body to the landscape.

LANDSCAPE AND MALE EMOTION

A Farewell to Arms (1932), a film adaptation of Hemingway's novel that focused on

the romance narrative, featured Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes in territorialized
landscapes.

The projection of Frederic's thoughts and emotions onto the landscapes he narrates is
perhaps the most fundamental way Hemingway links his landscapes to a sense of
masculine identity. Hemingway's characters, according to literary scholar Cecilia Farr,
"affirm that by "telling" the landscape in which we live, we, indeed, construct
ourselves." (163). 'The fields were green and there were small green shoots on the
vines, the trees along the road had small leaves, and a breeze came in from the sea,' he
writes after returning to the front after a break (10). The rejuvenating effects of
Frederic's time away are projected onto the scene he describes at a time when the
war's realities are still far away. This sense of Hemingway projecting Frederic's
emotions onto the landscape is most noticeable when the description of the same
landscape changes dramatically within a few pages. Reunited with Catherine, Frederic
narrates the landscape from the window, emphasising the civilised gardens with which
Catherine has been associated since the novel's first appearance:

Catherine was sound asleep, and light streamed in through the window. I stepped out
of bed and across the floor to the window as the rain had stopped. The gardens, now
bare but beautifully regular, the gravel paths, the trees, the stone wall by the lake, and
the lake in the sunlight with the mountain beyond were all down below (222-23). We
can infer that his private thoughts are at that moment of Catherine by highlighting
what he associates with her. When you're not with Catherine, and you're looking at the
scene from a different angle, it becomes haunted and ugly: From the lake, 'Stresa
appeared to be deserted. There were long stretches of bare trees, as well as large hotels
and closed villas (226). This account paints a more realistic picture of Stresa during
the war, as well as revealing a lot about Frederic's mental state after his desertion. The
desolate landscape can be read as a metaphor for his disconnection from the war
effort's camaraderie, as well as the empty shells of the various masculinities he has
found lacking and abandoned by this point. These psychological landscapes allow
Hemingway to reveal some of Frederic's more private thoughts and emotions in a
storey that frequently elides the deeply personal, at least on the surface.

MASCULINITY AND THE NATURE/CULTURE DIVIDE

The conflict between the natural and the mechanical or technological is one of the
most significant conflicts for any masculine identity. 'Men have traditionally been
associated with machines, from gun to plough, from bulldozer to fighter jet; and yet
men have also been taught to venerate wilderness, which is usually harmed by those
machines,' writes English scholar Mark Allister (2). The tensions Hemingway
introduces between the earth as a maternal, and thus feminine force, containing what
Kolodny describes as "the hope of rebirth and regeneration" (189), and the war-torn
landscape as an externalisation of both the male body and the soldier's psychology are
explored in Hemingway's novel. Through his work as an ambulance driver, Frederic
Henry is linked to technology and modernity, as well as pastoral nature, as evidenced
by the brief moments of respite he enjoys throughout the storey.

The most peaceful scenes in A Farewell to Arms are those in which Frederic connects
with nature during a brief respite from the war: 'The earth of the dugout was warm and
dry, and I leant my shoulders back against the wall, sitting on the small of my back,
and relaxed' (45). Landscapes that occupy the middle ground of Marx's 'pastoral ideal,'
set between the over-civilized nature of manicured gardens and the true wilderness of
the mountains, facilitate these moments:

There were villas with iron fences, large overgrown gardens, water-flowing ditches,
and dust-covered green vegetable gardens. We could see farmhouses and lush green
farms with irrigation ditches across the plain, as well as the mountains to the north
(115-16).

We move into the past as we gaze into the distance in this passage, which describes
both a temporal and spatial regression. The wild mountains and once-kept gardens
contrast with the farm's centralised idyll due to the landscape's layering. The
overgrown, neglected garden, with its overflowing ditches, is a commentary on the
true value of the wealthy villas' 'civilised' nature. The speed with which it has begun to
revert to its wild, overgrown state exemplifies modern civilization's frailty. The rich
farmland, with its meticulous irrigation ditches, remains fertile against this backdrop
of ruined grandeur. The relationship between man and nature, which for Hemingway
comes together in the age of pre-industrial agriculture as exemplified by farmland, has
cultivated a rich oasis in which masculinity and nature can thrive together, it would
appear.

This relationship, on the other hand, cannot exist in the present. During the retreat
later in the novel, the novel emphasises the importance of this way of life as firmly in
the past. Frederic comes across a barn that he thinks would be a good place to live. He
has another moment of temporary respite once he arrives:

The hay smelled nice, and lying in the hay in a barn took away all the years [...] The
barn was no longer standing, and the hemlock woods had been cut down, leaving only
stumps, dried tree tops, branches, and firewood in their place. You couldn't go back in
time (192).
The pastoral longings of Frederic Henry's past self create a double sense of distance,
which is then severed by the reflections of his 'present day' self when he returns to the
scene later. 'The juxtaposition of the narrator's memories and his present thoughts
allows us to measure the impact of Catherine and the war in him,' says literary scholar
Joyce Wexler (121). The desertion of the landscape in the "present" lends a sense of
finality to the idea that this kind of masculinity is no longer possible in the modern
world.

Whereas "natural" masculinity is represented in the pastoral nature of retreat in A

Farewell to Arms, "modern" masculinity is represented in both the mechanised war
and the militarised landscapes it traverses, as well as the urban spaces that provide a
counterpoint to the novel's pastoral use. The military's representations in Hemingway's
novel cast doubt on the war-hero as a viable masculine ideal in today's world:

Troops marched past the house and down the road, and the dust they kicked up
powdered the trees' leaves. The trunks of the trees were too dusty, and the leaves fell
early that year, and we saw the troops marching along the road, the dust rising and the
leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling, and the soldiers marching, and then the road was
bare and white except for the leaves, and the soldiers marching (3).

This description's layering of clauses resembles the layering of dust on the trees it
describes. The repetitive 'and the' reflects the monotony of marching as well as the
constant accumulation of filth from the war until we reach 'the road bare and white
except for the leaves.' The dirt and dust from the road has shifted to the surrounding
environment, leaving the road as white as the pebbles from the idyllic stream in the
novel's first paragraph. The tension between the "natural" environment and the
destructive war that tarnishes it is highlighted in this description. 'Except for the
leaves,' the afterthought given to the fallen leaves, suggests the insignificance of
natural life, and by extension, human life, in this modern war. Faceless 'troops' are just
another facet of the global war machine.
Frederic Henry's role as an ambulance driver for the Italian army connects him to
modern warfare's technology and mechanisation. Frederic's sense of emasculation in
his role reflects the uneasy relationship between this new way of waging war and the
masculine ideal of the soldier: 'It's not really the army.' It's just the ambulance,' says
the narrator (17). These modernised elements deprive the war hero of his romantic
status; Catherine laments, "He didn't have a sabre cut." They blew him up completely'
(19). Frederic not only believes he is unheroic—as evidenced by his farcical
undermining of the circumstances in which he received his medal: 'I was blown up
while we were eating cheese' (59)—but also that his contribution to the war is equal
to, if not less than, that of the vehicles he conflates himself with: 'I went out where we
washed the cars to take a shower' (34-5). Modern warfare has trampled Frederic's
idyllic landscapes, and it has also destroyed another traditional masculine ideal, the
soldier-hero.

Hemingway explores the possibility of a new form of intellectual cynicism as a

masculinity for the age, alongside the defunct pastoral ideal and the modern war,
which undermines traditional narratives of the soldier-hero. Set against traditional
masculinities, this cynicism is a reaction to the fractured and uncertain times rather
than a pursuit of an ideal. According to Charles Hatten, Frederic's two friends, the
priest and Rinaldi, are "linked to traditional ideals and modern cynicism, respectively"
(88). It is possible to see how Frederic rejects both forms of masculinity on the basis
of this demarcation. The priest wants him to go to Abruzzi, a wild, mountainous
region in central Italy where 'good hunting is available,' but the other officers
disagree: 'He doesn't want to see peasants.' Allow him to visit cultural and civilization
hotspots' (8). The divide between nature and culture that is at the heart of these
competing versions of masculinity is set up by the difference between these locations,
rural and urban. 'Where it was clear cold and dry and the snow was dry and powdery
and hare-tracks in the snow and the peasants took off their hats and called you Lord
and there was good hunting,' Abruzzi is depicted as another pastoral idyll (12-13). The
feudal echoes of the address 'Lord' demonstrate that it is limited to the past, and the
other soldiers dismiss it as such.
Frederic's decision not to visit Abruzzi temporarily aligns him with the drunken
officers' cynical conception of manhood, as well as the city of Milan: I had gone to no
such place as the smoke cafes and nights when the room whirled and you needed to
look at the wall to make it stop, [...] and the world all unreal in the dark and so
exciting that you had to resume again unknowing and uncaring in the night, sure that
this was all and all a Suddenly, to care a lot and to sleep with it, to wake up with it
sometimes in the morning and everything that had been there gone, and everything
sharp, hard, and clear, and sometimes a cost dispute (13).

The inadequacy of this cynical response to modernity, and the individual male's
position within that society, is demonstrated by Frederic's disorienting experience in
Milan. 'Everything sharp and hard and clear and sometimes a dispute about the cost,'
he writes in this passage, juxtaposing emotions and sensations with objects and reality
in a startling juxtaposition. His objective reality is obfuscated, ostensibly by the'smoke
cafes' and the drinking, but also by the mental anguish of giving in to a failing
masculinity. The confused and frightening sensation of being in an urban environment
without a suitable form of expression for his masculine selfhood is reflected in
Frederic's inability to find a centre to his narrative thread in this section.