In the Throes of War

Why did you choose this particular book? Typical reasons might be:

1. I read the Chinese version of the book in my middle school and it left a deep first impression on me.

2. I read the English version again and have sought the distinctive and overwhelming feelings towards it.

3. It is a masterpiece by the famous author Ernest Hemingway who I appreciated all the time.

4. The theme on the brutal of the war touched me a lot. Especially in current society, wars and insurgents still breaks out now and then, viciously destroying the stability of the world and betraying the doctrine of humanitarian.

5. I am inclined to the subjects and this kind of book

Title

Abstract：

     During a few decades of last century, two world wars broke out consecutively, under this background, Ernest Hemingway, one of the most famous novelists in the history of western literature, wrote his masterpiece in which the author deals with the war directly. Seeing from the human value scale, Hemingway examined the war as an outrage against humanity. Living in a chaotic and disorder world, people made great efforts to fight against their destiny, nevertheless, doomed to trap in the mire of pessimism and failure. This thesis focuses on analyzing Henry’s complex personality, the journey of Henry as well as the tragic ending from which we’ll form more profound ideas on Hemingway’s mysterious life.

Key word:  Hemingway; character; war; love; pessimism.

Title

1. Brief Introduction of Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American writer and journalist. He was part of the 1920s expatriate community in Paris, and one of the veterans of World War I later known as "the Lost Generation." He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Hemingway's distinctive writing style is characterized by short and terse sentences; simple diction often filled with emotion, vivid colloquialism and the simplicity of statements, and had a significant influence on the development of twentieth-century fiction writing. His protagonists are typically stoical men who exhibit an ideal described as "grace under pressure." Many of his works are now considered classics of American literature. In the war- torn forties, Hemingway worked as correspondent in china, and in the air over France, and on the Normandy beach, on behalf of anti-fascist causes. He came back to Cuba after the war, but the decade of the forties was one of silence until the publication of his text novel, Across the River and Into the Tress, which was less widely praised. His last work of fiction a poignant novelette in face, the Old Man and the Sea regained significantly in reputation and won for him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954 due to his “mastery of the art of modern narration.”  In his last years he wrote little except for a memoir of his early life in Paris, A Moveable Feast, posthumously published in 1964. when the Cuban revolution broke out, Hemingway left Cuba in November, 1960 for Ketchum, Idaho, the U.S.A. during the last eight months of his life he suffered both from serious illness and from emotional breakdown, which made him haunted by the impression that his inspiration had deserted him and his literary talent was nearly exhausted. On the early morning of July 2, 1960, following his father’s example, he shot himself with his favorite shotgun.

 2. Plot

Lieutenant Frederic Henry was a young American attached to an Italian ambulance unit on the Italian front. An offensive soon began, and when Henry returned to the front from leave he learnt from his friend Lieutenant Rinaldi, that a group of British nurses had arrived in his absence to set up a British hospital unit. Rinaldi introduced him to nurse Catherine Barkley. The two soon fell in love with each other. Before Henry left for the front to stand by for an attack, Catherine gave him a St. Anthony medal. At the front, as Henry and some Italian ambulance drivers were eating in a dugout, an Austrian projectile explored over them. Henry, badly wounded in the legs, was taken to a field hospital. Later he was moved to a hospital in Milan. During he was in hospital, Catherine often came to his word, which helped Henry getting rid of his restless and loneliness. After his operation, Henry convalesced in Milan with Catherine Barkley as his attendant. Together they dined in out of the way restaurants, and together they rode about the countryside in a carriage. Summer passed into autumn. Henry’s wound had healed and he was due to take convalescent leave in October. He and Catherine planned to spend the leave together, but he came down with jaundice before he could leave the hospital. Before he recovered and ready to leave for the front, Henry and Catherine stayed together in the hotel room, already she had disclosed to him that she was a pregnant. When Henry returned the battlefield, the war was going badly in Italy. The German troops forced a full-scale retreat. Then Henry deserted the war in a daring escape. He left and met Catherine in Stresa. The two went over to Switzerland where they spent an idyllic time waiting for the birth of their baby. Catherine had had a long and difficult labor. Their baby was delivered dead. Catherine died soon after from “one hemorrhage after another”. After Catherine‘s death, Henry left and walked back to his hotel.

3. Character Analysis

In order to make a better character analysis of Frederic Henry, I want to first briefly analyze other main characters that helped the development of the story and foiled the man in the novel.

Catherine Barkley: a British Voluntary Aid Detachment Nurse. She loves the males so much that she started to write a short story about her love affairs with her fiancé, who since has passed away. She volunteered in the war at the same time her fiancé of eight years joined the army. He was killed in the Battle of the Somme. She is originally from Scotland, emotional, and dependent upon Henry's love for her. Her sexual desires and her simple desire for companionship are sometimes at odds with her needs to tend to the ill. Like the code hero, she handles conflicting needs with grace, giving to both, but shorting none. Feminist thinkers will see in Catherine, Hemingway's perfect woman: wise and cynical in many ways, her wisdom cannot contain her desire. As Henry gives his health and youth to the war effort, Catherine's chief heroism is to accept the pain and death of childbirth stoically.

Rinaldi: a physician through whom Hemingway draws his idea of an Italian male. Rinaldi is unfailingly exuberant, ignoring small details that would stop his large and giving gestures. He loves women and alcohol, bearing a bottle of the latter and tales of the former to his friend Henry as Henry recovers from his wounds. He enjoys performing surgery, seeing it as an enjoyable challenge; he greets his friend Frederic Henry with a formal European-style kiss. He usually refers to Henry as "baby". Rinaldi is a form of the code hero as well. He allows Hemingway to explore another, non-Anglo-American, way of being male, of facing even a difficult world, an injured Italy, with joie de vivre, ignoring all danger, giving himself. Henry reunites with a tired and syphilitic Rinaldi in the middle of the novel, illustrating the flaws of this approach to the war and to life.

Helen Ferguson: Helen is Catherine’s friend. She is very protective of Catherine and is angry with Henry for getting Catherine pregnant. In the end, she accepts the union because it is what Catherine wants. Hemingway based her on Kitty Cannell (1891 – 1974), an acquaintance of his who was a Paris-based American dance and fashion correspondent for major U.S. papers and periodicals.

Now I should focus on the main character—Frederic Henry to express my own feelings.

Frederic Henry: He is an American volunteer on the Italian front. People with entirely different backgrounds from his own surround him. Even the woman he falls in love with comes from a culture very different from American culture. Henry is the first embodiment of what became known as Hemingway’s code hero: he is stoic when threatened or when in pain, he maintains his composure when under fire, he does his work with as little fuss as possible; he is a man’s man whose primary interests seem to be drinking and women. He participates in and seems to enjoy the banal, everyday conversation between the soldiers. He is attracted to the simple goodness of the priest, who, like Henry (who is not religious), sticks to his beliefs despite the war's constant presence. Henry is most characterized throughout the novel by his passionate love and dedication to Catherine Barkley.

4. Comment:

After reading the novel, a sense of sorrow stole over me. Catherine’s death of difficult delivery, Henry’s desperate figure walking through the pouring rain, all these scenes haunted me into deep thought: In the throes of war, how would we change. Everywhere we look, we see piles of rubble where houses used to stand and lifeless bodies that once moved around with the joy of life inside them. Everything onto our eyes is flowing with flooded blood and suffocated indifference. Everything falls on our ears is the sounds of bombs exploding, crippling those people on their way. The coldness of the captains, showing none of the sympathy for the life of innocent civilians, the indifference of the soldiers, slaughtering blindly without any consideration on human values, this is the battlefield flooded with merciless and bloodshed. No democracy, no compassionate heart, darkness overwhelmed the battlefront; sorrow enveloped the vicinity of the war. You never know whether you have received a one-way ticket to death, you never know whether you have another chance to experience the carefree lifestyle. Under the backdrop of the brutal war, Henry from an enthusiastic young people coming with an air of confidence and eagerness developed into a hopeless, desperate and pessimistic victim. He trapped into the deadlock of depression and confusion; he began to wonder why war has to be the way problems are solved. War just creates more problems. He can not figure out why the war was so rampant that everything seems to run into horrible hatreds. He can not understand when would be the end of the war since rains of combats and bombs had leaded people escape to nowhere but doomed to a sea of blood. He is too weak to stop the war; he is too insignificant to fight with the suck nightmare. “People like ants on a log, a fire, then one after another into the other end, finally perished in the flames.” This is the typical portrayal of the lost generation dropped into the mire of the abyss of the war. They tried, they made great efforts to find a way out, they kept their strong will and faith, they refused to abandon hope even in the despair, nevertheless, the war prevent them from moving forward with full of passion and hope. In the face of chaos and insurgency, even love withdraws in a timid gesture. Love is suppose to be the most powerful weapon to fight against with all the adversity and difficulties, but confronted with war; it seems the principle became an indefensible assumption.

In 1918 Ernest Hemingway went to war, to the “war to end all wars”. He volunteered for ambulance service in Italy, was wounded and twice decorated. Out of his experiences came A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway’s description of war is unforgettable. He recreates the fear, the comradeship, the courage of his young American volunteer and the men and women he meets in Italy with total conviction. But A Farewell to Arms is not only a novel of war; in it Hemingway has also created a love story of immense drama and uncompromising passion.

Thus the love between Henry and Catherine is another important line in the novel. The war has a great impact on changing of people’s personalities. At the very beginning, when Henry first meets Catherine, he is not looking for love, but rather something to pass the time and someone for him to care for. He is a naive young man and had no concept of what he is doing. So he pretends to love Catherine, he does this just because he needs someone to hold on and give him meaning. Later, when their relationship develops and Catherine becomes a pregnant and Henry deserts the army to reunite with her. When Catherine lies in pain in the hospital, he finally begins to see her as a human and realize that she is everything to him. This is when Henry realizes that she is all that he has. He realizes that she is the true meaning in his life. After they have undergone so many hardships, and overcome enormous adversities, the couple finally began to cherish each other as one. However, the novel seems to doom with a tragic ending, Catherine’s death and Henry walking back to the hotel in the rain permeated with sense of helpless and pessimism. Here, the rain may be interpreted as the powerful and indifferent universe. And the love between Henry and Catherine, although was also very powerful, but finally was defeated by it.

In a sense, the novels of Hemingway seem less important than his influence as a craftsman, for his style of writing is striking; characterized by short and terse sentences, simple diction often filled with emotion, vivid colloquialisms, and particularly the simplicity of his laconic statements like Mark Twain’s in Huckleberry Finn. Hemingway, to a certain extent, wiped out the demarcation line between journalism and literature. This laconic but expressive style Hemingway evolved on the basis of his belief that “the dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one eighth of it being above water” was well suited to evoke the stoical courage of his characteristic subjects: men who face lonely and thankless tasks, his subjects and his themes spoke for the lost Generation. Due to the profound impact of World War I, Hemingway’s works are cynical and disillusioned, his characters become involved in war, in the competitive games such as hunting or bullfighting which demand stamina and courage, and are “ tough”, courageous, and honest, but broken physically by the brutality of war and disillusioned by the insensitivity and hollowness of civilized society.

     The novel concerns itself primarily with the development of Hemingway’s philosophy of life; he believed that universe is unordered one. There is no god to watch over man, to dictate codes of morality, or to ensure justice. Instead, the universe is indifferent to man’s plight. In this novel, this indifference is best exemplified by the war. There are no winners in a war; there is no reasoning behind the lives which are taken. Even love can become a victim of the war. The novel has taken its toll on the ruthless of the war, which made me feel more appreciate on our current peaceful life and forged a more sorrow mind on the pain the people in Middle East has suffered from the endless precarious life. If only we were living in a world without the disturbance of insecure factors, but filled with love, peace and warmth. A farewell to arms, a newcomer of a hopeful world.

Conclusion:

Totally, A Farewell to Arms has two themes, one is war, the other is love, but, Hemingway didn’t divide them into two ways, he combined them. And the novel vividly presented the state of lost generation after the world war, who experimented on new modes of thought and expression by rebelling against former ideals and values and replacing them only by despair pr a cynical hedonism. Apart from that, another main thematic patterns of the work is the Hemingway Code Hero, those who survive and perhaps emerge victorious in the process of seeking to master the code with a set of principles such as honor, courage, endurance, wisdom, discipline and dignity are hailed as a hero. In the chaos and tension of the battles, Henry is always fighting desperately, which leaves a deep impression on readers’ minds of the image of the people in those arduous situations. A Farewell to Arms is really a masterpiece worth your in-depth reading and researching.