The setting of Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” is crucial to the reader’s understanding of the various complications that war brings. The novel’s protagonist and narrator, Frederic Henry, is an American who has joined the Italian ambulance corps as a volunteer. He eventually falls in love with an English nurse named Catherine Barkley, and after that he intends to lead a life away from the tragedies of war. It is the middle of World War I, and the days that Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley spend together grow shorter and shorter each day. Hemingway uses the setting of war, highlands and lowlands, and weather symbolism to foreshadow future outcomes in the story.
The story is set in the early twentieth century in Italy. World War …show more content…
Rain symbolizes death, while snow symbolizes hope. Rain is indeed a recurring symbol of death in “A Farewell to Arms”. From the rain that kills 7,000 soldiers that is linked with cholera, to the rain that is pouring outside the hospital where Catherine has died, the reader is reminded that during wartime, tragedy can fall as randomly and unstoppably as rain. In chapter 19, Catherine says, “I’m afraid of the rain because sometimes I see me dead in it,” which basically makes the symbolism of rain explicit to the the reader. Furthermore, as Matthew J. Bruccoli reiterates, “The most obvious connection, of course, is rain and death. But, Hemingway at his best doesn’t use these things blatantly. He doesn’t erect a billboard announcing Five Miles to the Next Symbol. Where his symbols work best, they work organically: they emerge naturally from the material as part of the material - so naturally that you don’t have to see them as symbols.” Snow symbolizes hope and safety which definitely contradicts the idea of rain. “The sow slanted across the wind, the bare ground was covered, the stumps of trees projected, there was snow on the guns and there were paths in the snow going back to the latrines behind trenches” (Hemingway 6). Snow being on the artillery symbolizes that the war stops during the wintertime which brings us back to the point, where there is snow, there is peace. The
The story is set in the early twentieth century in Italy. World War …show more content…
Rain symbolizes death, while snow symbolizes hope. Rain is indeed a recurring symbol of death in “A Farewell to Arms”. From the rain that kills 7,000 soldiers that is linked with cholera, to the rain that is pouring outside the hospital where Catherine has died, the reader is reminded that during wartime, tragedy can fall as randomly and unstoppably as rain. In chapter 19, Catherine says, “I’m afraid of the rain because sometimes I see me dead in it,” which basically makes the symbolism of rain explicit to the the reader. Furthermore, as Matthew J. Bruccoli reiterates, “The most obvious connection, of course, is rain and death. But, Hemingway at his best doesn’t use these things blatantly. He doesn’t erect a billboard announcing Five Miles to the Next Symbol. Where his symbols work best, they work organically: they emerge naturally from the material as part of the material - so naturally that you don’t have to see them as symbols.” Snow symbolizes hope and safety which definitely contradicts the idea of rain. “The sow slanted across the wind, the bare ground was covered, the stumps of trees projected, there was snow on the guns and there were paths in the snow going back to the latrines behind trenches” (Hemingway 6). Snow being on the artillery symbolizes that the war stops during the wintertime which brings us back to the point, where there is snow, there is peace. The