A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway |

Summary,
A Farewell to Arms is neatly divided into five books like a
five act drama. Book one sets the scene, introduces the characters
and gives an idea of what is to happen.
BOOK 1
It is the summer of 1916 and the scene is the Italian front, war
is going on and the mood is gloomy. The narrator tells us how the
permanent rain came in the winter and brought cholera and killed
seven thousand men in the Army. Fighting is suspended. The
narrator is to go on leave. The priest wants him to go to Abruzzi a
place of peace and calm. But Henry returns having visited all the
big cities, indulging in wine and women, when he returns he is sorry
that he didn’t go to Abruzzi.
When he returns to the front he meets Catherine Barkley an English
nurse through his roommate Rinaldi. A kind of romance develops
between the two. Casual on Henry’s part and serious on Catherine’s
who is a bit crazy due to her fiance’s death. Henry is casual in his
attitude to both the war and to love. He however begins to feel
lonely at not being able to see Catherine and performs his duties
conscientiously. Henry is wounded severely in his legs as he was
sitting in a dug out with his drivers during the offensive. He comes
face to face with the horror of war. He is transferred to the field
hospital. Rinaldi comes to meet him and talks of casual sex and the
priest also comes but he gives the definition of ideal love. Then
Henry is to be transferred to the American Hospital in Milan.
BOOK 2
Henry’s wound serves as a means to open his eyes about the
war. Especially more so when he is told that he will get an award for
bravery. It also serves as an excuse to take the lovers away from the
scene of war to another where the love theme can be developed.
Henry is now at the American Hospital in Milan. And Catherine too
is transferred there. On seeing her, Henry realizes that he had truly
fallen in love. Earlier, love had been just a game like bridge played
for status. But now he is very much in love. As he recuperates from
his wounds their love affair blooms. They lead a nice life during that
summer. But Henry has to return to the front. Catherine also tells
him that she was pregnant. She had tried everything but nothing
worked and she was pregnant. Henry offers to marry but she refuses.
The lovers part in the rain and the book ends on this gloomy note.
BOOK 3
In Book III we are back at the war front. Things have changed
for the worst. Most men are depressed. Rinaldi, the major, the priest
all express their feeling of despair. The unspoken wish is for the war
to end.
The written Book in then devoted to the Caporetto retreat
which happens soon after Henry returns. The Italian offensive has
been a failure and their army has been routed by the Austro-German
forces. An order to retreat is given. There is also some patriotic talk
and Henry expresses that for him words like ‘sacred, glorious and
sacrifice and the expression in vain’ were rather embarassing. He
says, ‘He heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of
earshot, so that only the shouted words came through and had read
them…..the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices
were like the stockyards of Chicago if nothing was done with the
meat except bury it…..Abstract words such as glory, honour,
courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of
villages, the number of roads, the name of rivers, the number of
regiments and the dates”.
It is the retreat that opens Henry’s eyes in the reality of war. As it
becomes chaotic and confused from the ordered style that it had
started out as. He sees the disorder and disarray the whole country
and the army is thrown into. Henry is forced to abandon his cars,
shoot at the sergeants, and run for his life. In the process Bonello
leaves to give himself up and Ayno is killed by the Italian rear
guard. Henry observes the Battle police summarily executing
officers suspected of deserting their post. He himself is under threat
of being executed. In a split second decision, he jumps into the
Tagliamento river and escapes. Officially he has deserted the army.
He gets into a freight train and having bid farewell to the war thus,
makes his way towards love and Catherine.
BOOK 4
This book opens with Henry coming to Milan in search of
Catherine. He is out of uniform and he does not want to talk about
the war with anyone. He finds that she and Ferguson has left for
Stressa. He takes the help of Simmons, a student of music to dress
in civilian clothes and takes the train to Stressa.
 In Stressa the lovers are united. A very pregnant Catherine is
ecstatic to see him whereas Ferguson is unhappy that Henry might
leave her or that they might never get married etc. However, both
Henry and Catherine assure her of their love and wish to stay
together. This section also serves as a brief interlude of love. The
lovers have a lovely time together. Sometimes, Henry is consumed
by guilty thoughts about the war. He still has no inclination to talk
about the war but at times he thought about Rinaldi and the priest
and others and he feels like an errant school boy wondering of what
may be happening at the certain have he had played truant. The
lovers are forced to flee thick idyll when the barman at the hotel
they are in wakes them up during the night with the information that
they were going to arrest Henry in the morning as ‘they’ know
Henry to be an officer and now he was out of uniform. He offers
them his boat so that they can row across the lake and escape to
Switzerland. Henry and Catherine take up this offer. They simply
walk out of the hotel and go to the lake. There the barman gives
them some sandwiches and brandy and instructions as to how to
reach Switzerland. The rest of the chapter is about how Henry rows
throughout the night and finally arrive around down. They get into
Switzerland without much trouble and also get permission to stay
without any hardship
BOOK 5
The last book of the novel contains the final catastrophe. The
lull before the storm can be found in the blissful interlude enjoyed
by the lovers in the mountains of Switzerland. They are completely
isolated from the world and absolutely happy within themselves.
The weather is cold and dry, everything is beautiful. However, the
lovers are again forced to come down from their mountain retreat
and down to Lausame to be near a hospital as Catherine’s delivery
times are closing in. Henry has a subconscious feeling that time was
pressing on. He feels time’s winged chariot hurrying near.
Catherine goes into labour soon. But it turns out to be a long
protracted labour which proves immensely difficult and painful for
Catherine. After being in labour for a whole day the doctors decide
that a Caesarean operation is necessary. However, it proves useless
because the baby is stillborn though it was a big, healthy looking
boy and Catherine herself succumbs due to one internal hemorrhage
after another. She had wanted so much for things to be okay and she
had fought as much as she could but she dies. All this while Henry
numb, had been wandering up and down and thinking. He thinks
about the baby wishing it had been baptized even though he wasn’t
religious. For the time he prays to God, he prays that if God spared
her, he would do anything, Henry undergoes a lot of turmoil in his
mind. At one point he feels that Catherine was dying as a result of
all the happy nights they spent in Milan and says that dead was the
end of the biological trap. Then he rants that the only thing that ever
happened was that one died. He is not proud of his son because he
nearly killed his mother but he feels sorry that he choked to death.
When he learns that Catherine is dead he drives all the nurses away
from her. But it was like saying goodbye La statue. He then walks
out and walks back to his hotel in the rain.
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway | Analysis

A Farewell to Arms Analysis

By 1930, Hemingway had already published his major novels
The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms. He met instant
success and he was generally accepted as a leading interpreter of the
post war age of disillusion. Hemingway dealt with characters who
were principally men who put their faith only in violence, sexual
passion and the ritual of such sports as bull fighting and in food and
drink. However, they are also men influenced by the war in one way
or another, the war had taught them to anticipate doom and disaster
with as much composure as they could contrive. They are men who
flirt with death at every step and feel its presence intimately and as
such nothing but death seem real and imminent to them.
When A Farewell to Arms was published in 1929, it
immediately went to the top of the bestseller list. Reviewers
referred to it as the new masterpiece. Readers found the novel
fascinating as it dealt with a tragedy, a tragedy of man’s broken
hopes and his farewell to everything that would count as important
in one’s life. Its theme of universal loneliness in the midst of war,
left an indelible mark of overwhelming emotion, severely controlled
and conveyed with the fewest possible words. This was quite typical
of Hemingway s best works.
His style is stripped clean for action and terse dialogues, leaving
everything to implication and suggestion.
Autobiographical Elements
Hemingway has based the character background, the story
itself on his personal experiences during the First World War. The
war which forms the background of the story was fought from
(1914-1918) between the so called central powers comprising of the
countries, Germany, Austria Turkey and Bulgaria, and the Allies
which comprised of the states of France, Great Britain, Russia,
Japan, Belgium, Serbia, Romania and Portugalete. The Allies were
later joined by the United States of America.
This war in which Henry participated as a non-combatant in the Red
Cross ambulance unit forms the backdrop of the novel. The novel
deals with the theme of war and love through the protagonist Henry,
based on Hemingway himself. Like Hemingway, Henry is an
American and he has joined the war as a non-combatant, as a
lieutenant in the ambulance unit of the Italian army. The other
protagonist Catherine Barkley is based on an American nurse Agnes
Kurrowsky with whom Hemingway falls in love, proposes
marriage, is refused and he falls into depression. In the story Henry
also falls in love with a nurse, Catherine, who is a English nurse and
the novel is about their love and escape from war.
The Caporetto Retreat which Hemingway describes so vividly
and realistically in the novel is also based on his personal
experience. He had joined the war in 1918 and the Caporetto retreat
was already over by then. But he had witnessed the Retreat of the
Greek army from the Turks. It is during the Caporetto Retreat that
the hero Henry witnesses the brutal reality of war and decides to
abandon and desert the army. Other autobiographical details used
are Hemingway’s wound and his second wife Pauline’s long labour
pain which ended with a caesarean section.
A Farewell to Arms Synopsis
Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American is so the war
serving the Italian army for no concrete reason. He meets Catherine
Barkley an English nurse who is trying to come out of the grief of
having lost her fiance in the war. He begins a very casual affair with
her later falling deeply in love with her. Henry later realizes the
brutality and horrors of the war and is forced to desert the army in
order to save his life. He is reunited with Catherine and together
they flee to Switzerland where they enjoy an idyllic life waiting for
such a long time. However, Catherine dies in childbirth and the
child himself is still born. Henry is left with nothing. He had bid
farewell to war and come to love. But again he is forced to say
goodbye to love. He is a man trapped biologically and socially. He
can never win, one can only die. There is no other way apart from
dying.
Hemingway’s Style
Hemingway’s literary style as evident from the novel is lean
and stripped of all trimming. His prose is aggressively colloquial
and nonliterary in its rhythms and textures. The sentences are short
and declarative. The diction and structure are ultra simple giving the
effect of crispness and clarity. He uses dialogues which are again
colloquial, laconic and stripped of inessentials ideas His clean prose
results in realism and his characters come to life instantly and ring
true. The novel itself is built with scrupulous ideas Structured like a
five act drama; the novel begins with short expository chapter
which presents an ominous combination of images of rain,
pregnancy and death. These images set the mood for the action that
is to follow.
As the title suggest there are two themes in the novel, Love and
War and the action of the novel is tied with dexterous skill to bring
out the two themes perfectly tied together. The two themes progress
parallel to one another creating the impression of one theme one
story. Both in the theme of love and in the theme of war,
Hemingway takes us through six parallel phases-in war, from a
casual participation to serious action, and a wound, and then his
convalescence in Milan to a retreat, which leads to his desertion and
carefully interwoven into this is his relationship and love affair with
Catherine, again in six phases from a trifling sexual affair to actual
love, and her conception, which goes on to her confinement in the
mountains of Switzerland and then Lausame and a trip to the
hospital, which leads to her death in childbirth. Henry takes farewell
of his beloved as he had earlier taken farewell of the war and by the
end of the novel the two stories are brought into one, it becomes
man’s struggle against life both socially and personally in which no
one win except nature overcomes man.
Idea of Negation and Affirmation
However, the surface narration is not all that the novel contains and
a short account cannot indicate the greatness of the novel. In the
first instance is Hemingway’s use of symbols, the concept of Home
and Not-home in these symbols i.e. mountain and plain and
the symbolism of death in rain. Then there is Hemingway’s
technique of crowding a large number of minor details to achieve
realism. And then there is the concept of the Hemingway hero, and
therefore the status of Frederic Henry. Henry is more than a
protagonist, he stands for men, he stands for the experience of his
country. American could read its own history in Henry’s progress
from a casual attitude, then complicity, bitterness and escape from
war. Henry’s action of jumping into the river, his expression of his
disillusionment with the ideals of war, his desertion of the army all
summed up the contemporary feeling of the nation. The negation of
war therefore found an echo in the people of America.
On the other hand, positive values are also portrayed, such as
Henry’s evolution from sordid love to a deep love, the distinguition
he gives between competent and incompetent people, the
disciplined and un-disciplined people are moral values on which the
book is structured. The book there fore has negations and
affirmations but ultimately ends in a pessimistic and tragic note. A
despair of any conception of a possible justice is the machinery of
the universe.
Significance of the Title A
Farewell to Arms
Introduction
In the title of the novel, A Farewell to Arms, the word ‘arms’
responds to two diverse meanings which are in keeping with the
themes of the novel. The novel is concerned with the theme of war
and the theme of love. Accordingly the word ‘arms can be
interpreted to mean the weapons of war and on the other hand the
arms of a human being here of course the arms of Catherine, the
protagonist’s beloved. The novel thus discusses how the hero,
Frederic Henry bids farewell to the first arms i.e. war and then
how he bids farewell to the woman he loves. In both cases he bids
farewell due to an external compulsion. He feels disillusioned with
war due to the disorder and chaos of the retreat and is forced to flee
to save his life from the Italian battle police. Again his farewell to
his beloved is forced by a cruel fate. She dies in child birth, made
difficult by the narrowness of her hips.
The Theme of War in A Farewell to Arms
In the novel, Hemingway first introduces the theme of war. It
is the Italian front and the war is raging between the Italian and the
Austrians. Frederic Henry, the protagonist is an American. He is a
Lieutenant in the ambulance unit of the Italian army. However, the
reason behind his joining the war is never made explicit in the
novel. He is not fired by any passion for freedom or democracy or
any other cause’. He has no ideals of any kind. Maybe some
humanitarian instinct led him to join considering how he tries to
help the soldier who had deliberately wounded himself to avoid
going to the front.
However it also reveals him casual attitude to war. He is a non-
combatant. He is not in danger of dying and he is unconcerned. He
muses,
“Well I knew I would not be killed. Not in this war. It didn’t have
anything to do with me. It seemed no more dangerous to me
myself that war in the movies.”
This casual attitude is reinforced by his wishing that the war were
over. However it does not imply that he is not conscientious. He
performs his duties efficiently and meticulously. He does not
neglect his duties or evade his responsibility so much so that when
he returns from his casual leave to the front and finds everything in
good working order, he is rather disappointed that he was not
indispensable and that it hardly seemed to matter whether he was
there or not. Moreover, in spite of being at the front where the
offensive was going on he seems to be having rather a fine time.
Eating, drinking and being merry in the officers mess or else
indulging in casual sex with the girls in the officer’s brothel. He
also goes away on leave during the winter during which he visits all
the big cities of Italy having a good time indulging in wine and
women to a large extent.
The Brutal Reality of War
However as the novel progresses Henry comes in closer
contact with the grim reality of war. Henry, after coming back to
the front has to go to where the offensive is going to take place.
While in a dugout with his drivers he gets severely wounded as an
Austrian trench mortal shell explodes. Passini dies of his wounds
right before his eyes. He
sees the large number of wounded in the dressing station, the
soldier in the ambulance being transferred with him bleeds to death
etc. The horror of the war is further manifested in the other patients
of the hospital in Milan and in the train where Henry has to sleep
on the floor of the corridor crowding with other soldiers. The
numbing affect of war can also be seen in the way it has depressed
the ever cheerful Rinaldi and the store priest. The havoc created by
the war is referred to in tiny tit bits through the novel. Henry then
learns through a Major that the Italians had lost one hundred and
fifty thousand men on the Bainsizza plateau and another forty
thousand on the Carso. Thus along with Henry, the reader also gets
to know the seamy side of war better.
The Retreat
In the presentation of the horrors of war, the Caporetto retreat
is the climax. The Italians have been defeated and a retreat is
ordered. It begins in an orderly fashion as orderly as the offensive.
However, it slowly disintegrates and it becomes one disorderly
chaotic mass of people as the whole country was moving. It was a
gigantic retreat and Henry recounts –
“in the column there were carts loaded with household goods. On
some carts the women sat huddled from the rain and others walked
besides the carts keeping as close to them as they could”.
Further, Henry comes across two army sergeants who refuse to help
when their ambulance car gets stuck in the mud and he is forced to
shoot at them. He hits one and with his consent Bonello kills him
off. Then their tortuous journey across country when even the
Italian rear police fire at them, in fact killing Piani, then their search
for food and shelter, Bonello’s leaving to surrender etc. etc. The
chaotic horror is at its climax as Henry facing possible execution at
the hands of the Italian Military police and he jumps into the
Tagliamento river to escape them.
Henry’s Discretion of the Army
Henry, as he gradually develops from a casual on looker to an
active participant is disillusioned and forced to desert the army.
Evidence of his coming disgust can be seen in his conversation with
Gino and the other drivers wherein he expresses that he was rather
embarrassed by words such as “sacred, glorious, sacrifice and the
expression in vain”. He feels that such words are lacking in dignity
as compared to the names of places. Words such as glory, honour,
courage or hallow are abstract and obscene words and only the
names of villages, roads and names of rivers etc. had any value or
dignity. Henry is compared and contrasted in their view with the
patriot Gino who is full of nationalistic fervor. His disillusionment
is complete by the time he meets the Battle police. As he jumps into
the Tagliamento river to save his life and escapes, he has bid a final
farewell to the army. This swim in the river has washed away
bisanger and any kind of obligation that he has towards the army
He now wished to have nothing to do with the army and the
war. He made ‘a separate peace’ He is “thorough” with the war it is
no more his concern. He doesn’t even want to think about it. But,
Henry is constantly reminded of the war and a feeling of guilt
pervades these thoughts at Milan, where he comes in search of
Catherine, he refuses to talk about the war with the owner of the
wine shops, then Simmons who helps him by giving him civilian
clothes to wear and later the barman of the Grand Hotel at Stressa
and Count Greffi. Yet, he keeps thinking of the war, and ponders
over the fate of Rinaldi, the priest etc. He has the feeling that he
was like a school boy playing truant then wondering what might be
happening at the particular hour that he was away from the school.
He has however, no intention of going back to the war. When he
escapes to Switzerland with Catherine the break is total and
complete.
The Theme of Love in A Farewell to Arms
The theme of love also follows a pattern similar to the theme
of war. In the beginning when Henry is introduced to Catherine by
Rinaldi he has a casual attitude to her and love. He comes to see
because it was better than going to the girls in the brothels and
making loves to her is simply a game to him. His realisation of true
love is a slow progress as was his realization of war. He begins to
feel a little for her, but it is only in the hospital at Milan that he
realizes that he truly loves her. He says,
“God knows I had not wanted to fall in love with her. I had not
wanted to fall in love with anyone. But God knows I had,”
 Henry calls her a ‘lovely girl’, a ‘grand girl’, ‘a fine simple
girl’. They have a lovely time together in the hospital throughout
the summer. He even wants to marry her, but she refuses. He then
leaves a pregnant Catherine as he returns to the front after his
period of convalescence is over. He is however, fully committed to
her. Later, after he deserts the army, he can think only of Catherine
and comes looking for her. He finally finds her in Stressa and the
lovers are re-united. Henry is guilty about having deserted the army
but Catherine re-assures him. Henry is deeply in love with
Catherine by now so is she.
As Catherine expresses how she was one with him, he also says that
without her he was nothing and he loved her so much that he felt
faint with loving her so much. In answer to Count Greffi as to who
he values most in life, Henry answers “Someone I love clearly
Catherine and Count Greffi tells him that his love was a religious
feeling. However, their stay in Streesa comes to an abrupt end as
one night they are informed that Henry may be arrested in the
morning. In the middle of the night they take a boat and row across
the lake towards Switzerland. But this leads to their idyll in the
mountains. Henry and Catherine builds an isolated romantic idyll in
the mountain of Montreux, They are completely happy in each
other’s company, neither want the company of other. For the first
time in the novel even the winter is free from gloom it being dry
and white with snow. The nights are ‘grand’ because they are alone
and together and are ‘one’ Henry at this stage feels that without
Catherine his life would be meaningless and they feel that they are
husband and wife without ceremony
Another Goodbye
The mountain begins to wear a bleak look with the advent of
the rains. It is also time for Catherine’s delivery so they come down
to Lussane. She however faces problems in her delivery due to her
narrow hips. She suffers a long and difficult labour pains. In the end
the doctors declare that a cesarean is necessary. However, the child
had already died and is still born. Catherine herself undergoes one
internal hemorrhage after another and she soon succumbs. Henry’s
thoughts a Catherine lay in labour and later as she was dying are
bitter. He thinks that all the problems that she was facing was a
result of the nights they had spent together in Milan. In desperation
he prays to God asking him fervently to spare Catherine ‘Oh, God,
please don’t let her die. Please, please, please, dear God don’t let
her die. However, Catherine dies in the end. Henry drives away all
the nurses to be with her but it was useless. It was like saying
goodbye to a statue. But Henry who had run away from the arms of
war, and into Catherine’s arms for solace finds that he had to say
goodbye to his beloved. As he was compelled by circumstances to
flee the war, there being nothing he could do, so he is forced to see
Catherine die. There was nothing he could have done to avoid it.
Conclusion
Thus, the appropriateness of the title can be clearly
deduced. Henry bids farewell to arms both as in war and in love.
However an ironic interpretation would also be valid.
Henry tried to escape the impositions and obligations associated
with life. He did not wish to fall in love but he did. He ran away
from the war and yet he felt like a truant school boy and felt guilty
because of it. Their mountain idyll is a life complete devoid of
conflict. It is as though both Catherine and Henry had bid Farewell
to a life of action and struggle. Both just when it seemed that they
had really escaped, they are thrown into the midst of conflict as
Catherine struggles to give birth to their love child. Seen from this
point of view, the title can be seen as an ironic comment on the
message of the novel that one cannot be the abolition of actions.
One cannot sign a separate peace and stay away from the
impositions of lire and the world. One has to learn to tolerate and
live with live. Hemingway’s title is therefore immensely
significant. It truly carries the gist of the whole novel.