A Farewell To Arms Rhetorical Analysis

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Within Ernest Hemingway’s semi-autobiographical fiction A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway’s ironic devices and tone maintain a particular consistency throughout the novel. Hemingway’s writing style is very straightforward, constantly leaning away from being ambiguous, though there is still a sense of situational irony, coupled with a straightforward tone constantly found within the story’s plotline. Painstakingly simple and general, Hemingway does little to embellish and cover-up the brutalities of war, but instead prefers to offer his own perspective of it through his characters in its raw, and sometimes graphic, form. There is little to note on the story’s ironic devices besides the fact that Hemingway focuses mainly on using situational irony …show more content…
Most of the examples featuring Hemingway’s use of a straightforward tone are typically found within Frederic Henry’s description of the setting and events occurring around him. “The dead were off to one side. The doctors were working with their sleeves up to their shoulders and were red as butchers. There were not enough stretchers. Some of the wounded were noisy but most were quiet,” (Hemingway). There is little to no fancy figurative language that dresses up the battlefield. There are no comparisons of explosions to thunder bolts or ocean wave clashes. All descriptions of war are kept as they are with bullet wounds being bullet wounds and death being the end of life and nothing more. Really, it 's Hemingway 's use of straightforward descriptions and words through Frederic Henry’s eyes that contribute to the straightforward tone throughout the story in general. Though not truly focusing on Frederic’s character or the audience, the use of straightforward tone is mainly dedicated to the subject of war. Hemingway shares with the reader his feelings of war through how he conveys his straightforward outlook on the subject. Notably, most of the sentences, when it comes to description, are very short and straight-to-the-point. “To Rome, I said. No, to Milan. To

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