Rhetorical Devices In A Farewell To Arms

Joe Haldeman once said, “No person can escape Einsteinian relativity, and no soldier or veteran can escape the trauma of war's dislocation” (“Joe Haldeman Quotes.”). This means that the trauma of war is as inescapable as Einstein’s laws of relativity. The authors of these books explore the inevitability of war’s trauma throughout their works. In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, the authors use the rhetorical devices of imagery, similes, personification, and arrangement in order to achieve their purposes of demonstrating the destructiveness and terrible reality of war; saying that it is worse for the mental than the physical health of people. Kurt Vonnegut uses the sense of sight in the imagery …show more content…
The reality is that shots are still being fired across the river at Frederic, but he cannot move to protect himself from being shot. Frederic is physically wounded, but mentally he is affected more greatly because he cannot move or do anything to prevent himself from being further wounded or even killed. “… A Farewell to Arms nonetheless testifies to the persistence of wounds, both visible and invisible. Frederic's particular narration of the events and experiences that mark his wartime years must be understood in such terms - no “ordinary delivery” - inscribes a continued struggle with the debilitating after effects associated with shell shock” (Dodman 95). The visible wounds of this event are understood when Frederic is unable to move, but the invisible wounds of this event show the trouble Frederic has when dealing with the trauma he undergoes. Frederic suffers from “shell shock” and is traumatized by this horrible event because of all of the things he hears and sees when he is