A Farewell to Arms

All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” - Ernest Hemingway It has been brought to my attention that the English Department is questioning the importance of teaching about Ernest Hemingway, who they say is a “simplistic” writer. A Farewell to Arms is an example of a novel Hemingway wrote which mirrors his life and many of his own experiences during the time he spent in World War I. He is familiar with the settings of his novels because he once lived within them. As a result of writing…

1) The novel gives a brief description of the lives of Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley before they come to Italy. Frederic used to be a student of architecture back in America. He volunteers to join the Italian army as an ambulance driver. Proof of this is when Catherine asks, “You’re the American in the Italian army” (Hemingway 22). Before Catherine comes to Italy, she had a fiance who had unfortunately passed away. They grew up together for eight years. She is an English woman who is a V.…

The negative events in someone’s life can change them and even push them to their breaking point. In A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, the main character, Henry, had a life full of negative events. He was an ambulance driver for the Italian army in WWI. He fell in love with a British nurse, named Catherine. But, it seemed like everything that he had in his life eventually turned into something that would hurt him. The war and loss that shaped the development of Henry’s character showed how…

Sage Young Mr. Rooks English 1A 29 November 2015 Ernest Hemingway After reading Ernest Hemingway’s biography and his famous novels that he wrote, he was an intelligent author, and did other amazing work outside of his career. He was born in Oak Park, Illinois, from 1899 and passed away on 1961. In the beginning of his profession, he started as a writer in a newspaper office in Kansas City at age seventeen. Also when the United States entered the World War 1 era, he wanted to fight in the war,…

The Accordion’s Role in The Book Thief In the novel, The Book Thief, Hans Hubermann’s accordion plays a very important role. Hans received this accordion and learned to play the accordion from Erik Vandenburg, Max’s father. Hans and Erik quickly became good friends during their time serving in France during World War I. In Part four Chapter one, we learn that Erik was killed during the fighting in World War I. “When he tracked down the family of Erik Vandenburg in Stuttgart upon his return,…

Ernest Hemingway’s novel, A Farwell to Arms, exploits Catherine’s situation as a means to draw parallels to the unfortunate setting of the novel better known as the war. Throughout the novel, Hemingway takes a liking to the mounting relationship between Catherine and Frederic Henry, the protagonists of the novel. A Farwell to Arms shadows Henry’s journey to escape from the war as well as appease Catherine, who eventually transforms into the love he so desires. Desperate to preserve his…

Fight or Flight In In Our Time, Ernest Hemingway writes stories in which various characters experience and cope with loss. Set around World War I, the stories’ characters usually only appear once, except for one. Nick Adams appears multiple times throughout the collection, and seems to age as he does so. The first few stories describe his boyhood, and later ones, his transition to manhood. In depicting Nick’s mindset during his youth and young adulthood, Hemingway accurately illustrates the…

Hemingway utilizes the motif of rain to illustrate Frederic’s developing realization that death is inescapable and to remind readers of the transient nature of life. Rain, an uncontrollable element of nature, is associated with death numerous times in the novel. The author chooses rain to symbolize death in order to emphasize the futility of attempting to escape death. Rain as a representation of death is first introduced when Frederic narrates, “At the start of the winter came the permanent…

It’s said that his writing was “a plain, forceful prose style it was simple sentences and few adjectives or adverbs. He wrote in exact descriptions of place and things.” His most famous novels were his early works ‘The Sun also Rises’ and ‘A Farewell to Arms.’ He received the Nobel Prize in 1954 for his literature. He won a Pulitzer Prize for the novel ‘The Old Man and The Sea’ in 1952. “Hemingway was famous for his colorful life style and his extreme concern with presenting a tough masculine…

Throughout A Farewell to Arms, Catherine Barkley is frequently critiqued as being a static character. She lacks complexity and individuality. This characterization often analyzes her as being two- dimensional. Her manin role throughout the novel appears to be some sort of motivation to keep Henry’s mind from the war. As a reader, it is unclear exactly what Catherine’s thoughts are. Although she is discussed a lot in the book, we do not know much about her. She never undergoes any major…