How Is Hemingway's Life Reflected In A Farewell To Arms Romanticism

Throughout time, there has been one thing present in every culture that never ceases to linger over the heads of humans: love. The twentieth century marks a huge transition in how the human race lives, in physical ways like technology and transportation, but also in how they feel or how they think they should feel. The people that walk this planet do not have the same mindset as those who are alive in the nineteenth century and prior to then. The idea of love- a fundamental motif in every person’s life- has evolved dramatically with the evolution of the rest of the world. Changes in society are most clearly visible through art and literature of the time period. The modernist movement is both a cause and an effect of the the overall transformation of romanticism, as Ernest Hemingway’s work, A Farewell to Arms, and his life depict.. Love changes people, and people naturally change their conception of love to fit their lives. In the twentieth century, the concept of …show more content…
Henry’s actions towards Miss Barkley. He tells her at one point that he loved her, and then says to himself that he does not. He is saying what she wants to hear rather than what he feels. He plays with the idea of love, which exemplifies the changing viewpoint of many people. For most of human existence, love is not something that people “played with”. It is not until people realized that they could play with it and they could divorce and remarry without consequences that they began to care less about the future and care more about the present. They care about the “modern time” in this modern world that rose up around them. People fuel the change while going along with what they feel is the easiest way to live. The easiest way, however, is neither the traditional way nor the moral way. A new set of morals forms- morals revolving around a type of love that would be the only love that anyone could imagine to be