Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms is a very multi-faceted story. Specifically, there are two main entities that are the controlling factors throughout the novel: love and war. Love often represents all that is good: happiness, joy, intimacy, etc. War on the other hand always lends a negative connotation: pain, suffering, death, etc. Hemingway's inclusion of both aspects in one singular story indicates a theme of the direct correlation between love and war. In other words, love is often actually unforgiving and painful, just like war.
Think about war, there are ups and downs. Victories and defeats. More specifically, there is struggle and agony. The war is never considered as a positive by anyone in the novel, and is almost always the preeminent negative issue: "'There is nothing worse than war'" (50). Indeed, Frederic himself is a victim of a malicious mortar attack, which is so graphically disturbing that the reader feels the urge to wretch. Yet with this despair and negativity, there is always lingering hope. Hope of an end, even hope that someone will just "give up" as Catherine Barkley says (though Frederic often refutes this). Hope is what drives war, it is the motive to try to maintain or acquire a certain justice or freedom.
Love is extremely similar, as its motives are also predicated on hope: hope that a relationship is all it makes out to be, hope that a couple can live "happily-ever-after," hope of a fulfilling life. In fact, Hemingway sets the reader up to believe that Frederic and Catherine's marriage and subsequent life together will be essentially perfect; Then, the baby is stillborn and Catherine dies of a hemorrhage. Through this ending, Hemingway brings irony into play. And irony, as Foster says, trumps everything. this is a perfect example of such. The essential "destruction" of Frederic's love life is a reflection of the overall destruction of war. Even if a marriage lasts and seems perfect, there will always be some sort of impurity or impunity that brings it to a screeching halt, just as war takes a massive toll on those involved, whether that be the victors or the captives. it is Hemingway's use of irony throughout the novel that drives this correlation and makes it so relevant, especially in the modern age when marriage and love itself is seemingly more destructive than positive.
Frederic's genuine nature and Catherine's eventual domesticity are a perfect reflection of the correlation because of the notion that they would be a "perfect couple." From the outset, the two appear destined for marriage and a wholesome life together. They are everything a couple should be: loving, outgoing, genuine, etc. Yet, death claims their relationship for itself, and the whole thing essentially goes to hell. Similarly, the motives for going to war may be good and righteous, but the outcome (which is death, no matter how you look at it) is downright negative. In addition, the sentence structure (as talked about previously) resembles said correlation. The short and snappy sentences that succeed the long "run-ons" are always references to the long sentence beforehand. In essence, despite the juxtaposition, the two share similar motives or qualities. Love and War are juxtaposed in the novel, yet because of irony they are made to be similar.
Foster's theories are evident throughout this story. A Farewell to Arms actually shows some resemblance to Romeo and Juliet. There is a love story and a war (Montagues vs. Capulets for all extensive purposes), and neither end in a particularly positive fashion. Irony truly trumps everything, and is the reason that the juxtaposition between love and war is so relevant in the story. After Catherine dies, Frederic walks out of the hospital in the pouring rain. One would think he had been baptized, but the irony declares the opposite, that in fact Frederic's hope for a fulfilling life has been officially washed away by the rains. Prose's ideas were equally applicable. Reading line by line was essential in this story. That's the only way the reader may come across the sentence structure and comparison of the setting on the "front" with the war itself.
Personally, I think this is a fantastic read. It has elements of love, loss, and everything in between. The irony sets the reader up for some twists and turns, and Hemingway is brilliant in his style of writing. Sure some readers might think the novel is a little depressing, but all in all it is an excellent depiction of the traumatizing effects of love, war, and loss, and the relation between the three.
The way you describe the juxtaposition between love and war is intriguing. Normally, love and war are thought of as completely different things, if not polar opposites. The fact that Hemingway shows that these two things work in similar ways is eye opening. I wonder what this ironic relationship could mean, or if Hemingway could be sending a greater message? Perhaps love does not deserve all the hype that people give it? Usually, you can hear people talking about love among the things they want from life, but never war. Maybe Hemingway is offering some form of criticism of his society for placing love on such a high pedestal.
ReplyDeleteThe way you describe the sentence structure of the book sounds bizarre to me. I have never heard of an author actually breaking conventional grammatical rules in order to convey a message. I think this is extremely creative. Could the breaking of conventional rules be symbolic of the destruction and loss caused by love and war? This would be another way Hemingway is showing the same message. You are correct when you say the story is multi-faceted; it has several different messages, and several angles through which the messages are portrayed. This same style is used in The Iliad, which I read. In The Iliad, almost every single character portrays the themes related to fate differently, but the themes all tie in together to create a single universal message. Even in Jeckyll and Hyde, the duality of people is symbolized through the characters Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde and through the juxtaposition between the dark, creepy street where Hyde lives and the bustling, energetic streets surrounding it.
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ReplyDeleteI really loved the juxtaposition between love and war that you talked about. They seem like two ideas that are so different but at the same time so alike! And how you mentioned hope as a factor in both love and war. Maybe Hemingway is also trying to make a statement about hope with his comparisons of love and war. Also the relation to Romeo & Juliet is an interesting idea. It goes back to the idea Foster talked about in his "One Story" chapter. Everything derives from something one way or another. The idea of the sentence structure was a good observation. The way it was written sounds strange. Run ons are usually "frowned upon" by writers so Hemingway must have been making a point with it.
ReplyDeleteYou talked at length about Frederic and Catherine, each as separate characters and their relationship together and how it affected the plot. But were there any other characters who provided a lot to the plot? Like a soldier in Frederic's regiment. For example, one he would take a bullet for? It seemed as if there were only two major roles in the book; Frederic and Catherine, but the rest of them like Frederic's fellow soldiers sounded like they were just a mass of people, a backdrop, part of the setting just to propel the story along. If that's true, do you think there was a point to that or were there any "less important" that came into play who might give more insight to Frederic's character, or a message Hemingway was trying to convey.