A Farewell To Arms Catherine And Henry's Relationship

In the novel “A Farewell to Arms” Frederic Henry is an American lieutenant in the Italian army. He drives an ambulance, taking injured soldiers from the battlefield to a hospital. He is a young, wild, womanizer, who uses alcohol and women to escape from his reality. Henry soon comes to hate his job and what he sees on a daily basis. Frederic takes a trip to Italy where he parties, drinks, and seduces women as daily tasks. Once he returns he tells his friends about his trip and the events that occurred. Henry finds himself hating the war more and more, the only things that keep him going are his friends, his women, and his alcohol. Rinaldi is a surgeon in the Italian army and one of Henry’s closest friends. Their relationship is very open and they can talk about love, religion, or anything else with each other. …show more content…
Catherine and Henry’s relationship is not like your stereotypical fairy tale love story. This may not even be a “love” story. After the death of Catherines finance she is heartbroken, devastated, lonely, and depressed. Henry on the other hand is looking for a distraction to keep his mind off of the war going on around him. He and Catherine soon figure out that their love is not like anyone else’s and Catherine even says that they’re not your typical married pair when she and Henry pass a happy couple. She states, “We’re not like them.” Their love story is just in fact a story, the love was missing. Catherine and Henry possibly loved each other by the end of the novel, however it is unlikely. Henry would rather be drinking and with his friends than spend the day with a pregnant wife, considering he spends most of their final days in Milan fishing with the bartender. Catherine would rather be with her friend Helen and drinking beer than with Henry. Although they claimed to miss each other, was it really a true yearning or was it just a missed feeling of not being