A Farewell to "a Farewell to Arms"

A Farewell to Arms hardly ends with a happy ending. We are confronted with such sadness in the harsh reality of how the war has affected Fredrick Henry’s life; his past, present, and future. In life though not everything is a Fairytale with grand endings and forever loves, that’s just the reality of it. Ernest Hemingway’s book is categorized fiction, but in something this complex and sad, we know that there is a biography being told, perhaps a moment of autobiography, because whether we want to like it or not, our heart is invested into the characters just like the author. Our investment makes us defensive, therefore I must justify Ernest Hemingway’s ending of A Farewell to Arms by showing the importance of expressing it’s theme of loss ness and in the hardships of reality, in his relationships with other characters, and his belief in faith. With this you will see that the ending is well justified as magnificent.

How do we know to truly appreciate something if we don’t know that it will come to an end? Can Fredrick Henry appreciate his own life and his relationship with Catherine Barkley without the present reality of death? The joy of all of what Catherine and life represented would be lost if death was not peering from around the corner like it does so much in the constant foreshadowing in this novel. Wallace Stevens, a poet, knew the importance of appreciating physical things because he knew that they would not be there forever, “Death is the mother of beauty, hence from her, / Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams / And our desires”. Ernest Hemingway knew this as well, and we see that expressed in the loss that Fredrick endures. In the first section of the book he is not affected by the war and seems rather disconnected from the reality that is the war. The story is written in first person narration and this brings us as the audience closer to the action of the story and lets us be emotionally connected or disconnected like Fredrick as well. We are Fredrick Henry: “You do not know how long you are in a river when the current moves swiftly” (116). It isn’t until Fredrick is injured that he begins to realize his involvement in the war and its potential to affect him. The naivetй about the war is explicit when Fredrick talks to Catherine about not being killed by the war: “Not in this war. It did not have anything to do with me. It seemed more dangerous to me myself than war in the movies” (37). Catherine knows that the war is very real as a result of losing her fiancй to the fighting. Fredrick learns that his detachment and lack of fear doesn’t mean that the realities and dangers of the war do not exist or that he is immune to them. He even talks abstractly about bravery but as a result of his own painful injury, the trauma of witnessing death, and being blood soaked by a dying soldier, “I tried to move sideways so that it would not fall on me. Where it had run down under my shirt it was warm and sticky” Fredrick was no longer able to deny his involvement in the war and his reality was becoming more apparent for him (61). Fredrick is no longer the man in chapter one where the war (troops, animals, trucks with weapons and supplies, and cars carrying important officials) moved past him while he remained stationary, he becomes a man greatly effected by the realities of war.

Fredrick Henry begins the book alone; not alone meaning no one around, but without true companionship. As the novel develops he has friends of course, but not friends that you see him sharing a genuine love for. There is an absence of family as well, he doesn’t have a family to be an example of family hood, friendship, how to provide, or anything; he speaks of being in touch with them but expresses it as an inconvenience to continue. His disillusionment of the war is not limited to himself, but also within other soldiers like the one in chapter seven who suggests a way to opt out of fighting. The relationships around him serve as an influence on his own outlook. Fortunately, Fredrick finds a companion in Rinaldi, who is a humanist that can be contrasted with the values of the priest. His relationship with Fredrick is warm, easy, and they express the same interests in beer and whores. They also share the same fear of an encounter with the opposite sex; Rinaldi and Fredrick have more then one drink of grappa before going to meet Catherine Barkley and her friend, Helen Ferguson. His relationship also changes with Rinaldi after he is injured, while Rinaldi is still able to be mobile and drink and find whores, Fredrick is in the hospital yearning for the one relationship that he has with Catherine, which Rinaldi warmly accepts and helps with by telling Catherine where Fredrick is. When Fredrick first begins his affair with Catherine he relates it to playing a game: “I did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge,” (30). He tells us