The Importance Of War In A Farewell To Arms

In the novels A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway and All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque the different possibilities of the effects war have on an individual are displayed distinctively. In A Farewell to Arms Henry realizes he is losing himself in the war and tries to find an escape through love. In All Quiet on the Western Front the way Paul views himself changes and puts a perspective not only on the present but on his past and his future too. In these two novels the characters question their selves and their experiences in the war due to all the tragedy that they have been through along the way. In Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Frederic Henry is an ambulance driver how is serving in the Italian Army during World …show more content…
Paul notices changes occurring within himself. Which makes it hard for him to be able to relate to his life before he came to war. His thoughts and feelings while at war are vivid which has him fearing how war is going to affect him and his thoughts/feelings in the future. Paul thinks he will be changed forever and that he will never be himself again. It shows tremendously how much things change for Paul and his friends throughout the …show more content…
These feelings are shown in many different situations in the book the first being at training camp. In Chapter Eight when one of the Russian prisoners finds out that Paul plays the piano he decides to sit by the fence and play his violin. Paul gets saddened by this because of the music sounds thin and lonely in the night air. This is one of few instances that Paul displays emotion throughout the novel. Baumer doesn’t know any major details about the Russian prisoners or why they are prisoners, but he does understand the feeling of suffering because he himself has felt that feeling in the trenches. When Paul does show emotion, it enforces the proposition Remarque has made that there is something diverse in humans that outweighs all the said differences people