I frequently confess in these pages my bypassing of the great works of Western literature, of which A Farewell to Arms is undoubtedly one. In this case I think I have a good reason: my best friend in high school became a Hemingway fanatic, quoting from Carlos Baker’s collection of Hemingway letters, insisting that we couldn’t use straws to drink our Coke because that isn’t what a “Hemingway man” would do, pulling non sequiturs from the stories into our ordinary conversations. I dutifully read The Sun Also Rises for English class and completely didn’t get it, but I also knew I’d have to come back to Hemingway eventually. Then Stephen Colbert’s Book Club “did” A Farewell to Arms (satirically making the most of the same Hemingway cliches my friend was guilty of misunderstanding) and it reminded me of my long-standing obligation.
The book is set during the endless stalemate along the Isonzo River. Along with the unusual setting (few people paid attention to the Italian front), Hemingway took a further step into unexplored territory by giving his main characters a kind of ironic immunity to the war. Frederick Henry, a semi-autobiographical figure, is an American in the Italian ambulance corps, a witness to but a kind of bystander to combat. Catherine Barkley is a British volunteer nurse, physically protected from the worst of combat’s random destruction. Neither is unaffected by the war, but they don’t have the emotional patriotism that binds and drives the Italians.
Combat catches up with Henry, though not in the heroic manner he might have hoped. Catherine transfers to the hospital where he’s being treated and the two become tender and enthusiastic lovers. Then Catherine gets pregnant and the rehabilitated Henry is sent back to the front just as the Italians are routed in the Battle of Caporetto. Henry decides to desert to Switzerland, which proves a healing refuge for the two. Then both Catherine and the baby die in childbirth, and Henry learns that his “farewell to arms” does not render him immune from heartbreak and loss.
Superficially, this is a quick read. Hemingway’s famously terse language is on display, even in the most intimate moments between Henry and Catherine. His use of the word “fine” covers everything from Henry’s quarters to the wine they drink to Catherine’s idea of herself as wife and lover. Critics have written this off as Hemingway’s ideal of the taciturn alpha male and a docile female in his thrall, but it seems to me more an inability for either of them to articulate the depth of their love for each other because the war has taught them that their world is a tenuous place. But a passage where Henry describes taking Catherine’s hair down is rich in imagery and desire that he couldn’t have expressed aloud. I also doubt that a misogynist detached from his emotional life could have written it. A fast reader would miss the import of those flashes.
As far as readers go, I didn’t (and still don’t) believe that most high school students have the intellectual and emotional capability to understand the issues that writers like Hemingway wrestled with, and my high school friend was a perfect example of that. It is only in subsequent years as he’s experienced deep love and the loss of that love, death, disappointment, and the unexpected beauty of a world he did not know as a teen that I think A Farewell to Arms could have the emotional power I as an adult first-time reader experienced. I hope he finds that same power in the books he’s reading now.
Check the WRL catalogue for A Farewell to Arms
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While I wholly agree that most high school students don’t have the emotional depth and knowledge to fully understand this novel, I also doubt that I do.
Hemingway suffered his entire life. It is amazing to me how thoroughly he covered love and loss, the two fundamental conditions of human life, in this novel.
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assadada
Great!
Great review. This is one Hemmingway book that I have yet to read, but I have to say that I am a huge fan. His ability to express the deepest of emotions with the simplest language is awe inspiring. My favourite has to be ‘For Whom the Bells Toll’, for sheer emotional rollercoastering. Love it!
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This is one of my all-time favorite books and I completely agree with your comment about reading something like this in high school. When I re-read something from those years, I’m often embarassed to realize that I couldn’t have possibly understood what I’d been reading back then. Maybe that’s why classics like these endure – because there’s so much value in re-reading this type of book.
nice review, i will bought it this weekend
I read this as a teenager. I liked it back then, and I’m considering rereading it.
I wasn’t too familiar with Hemingway during my early years, but I did eventually read up on him, including this book. Catherine seemed very shallow as a character to me, but I did find the Italian army retreat scenes (shooting the officers) disturbing. Overall, I was deeply touched, but I didn’t mind it either. Some folks really dig Hemingway, and more power to them.
I also wrestled with the idea of Catherine as a shallow character, but I read a brief critical piece that suggests readers go back and look at which character is the most transgressive – who initiates the affair, who doesn’t want to get married, who seems to deny God. All of those things took a great deal more courage in the early 20th century, but she doesn’t drag out a soapbox and shout ‘Look, I’m being a BAD GIRL!” Perhaps too many modern readers have taken on that ‘me Tarzan you Jane’ dismissal of Hemingway and miss that subtlety. I certainly did.
And yes, the retreat scene is very powerful.
Those are good points, indeed. I think what got to me was her constant use of the word “darling” and clinginess by saying she loved him waaaay too quickly.
I agree that most highschool students wouldn’t be able to understand this, or for that matter most of the books we are told to read throughout highschool.
And we wonder why we can’t seem to write an essay regarding something we don’t understand.
I agree with you on the point that most high school students would not be able to understand A Farewell To Arms. In fact, they probably won’t understand most Hemingway. In my junior English class, we read The Sun Also Rises, A Farwell To Arms, and some short stories by Hemingway. Very few of us understood what we were reading. I think I understood The Sun Also Rises better than most; however, it was still difficult. I did appreciate that my teacher came right out and said that we may have difficulty with Hemingway’s works. He was right. With certain authors and books, you need to experience something to truly grasp what is going on. If you haven’t experienced real love, loss, heartbreak, and so on, you may never understand the story. In my freshmen college English Comp class, we went over more of Hemingway’s shorts. At one point, my professor said she didn’t understand what we were working on.