A Farewell to Arms

1. A Farewell to Arms Ernest hemingway

2. A Farewell to Arms • Frederic Henry, and architecture student in Italy, has enlisted in the Italian army for reasons even he doesn’t know. He is in the ambulance corps. • Catherine Barkley evolves into a powerful love that changes his life. • In both facets of the story, death is universal, unavoidable, inexorable, as it is in real life. • War seems to be a perennial of human history.

3. A Farewell to Arms • There are five books that blend the two stories, one of war, and the other love. • Book One – Focuses on the war • Book Two – War moves to the background for the love story. • Book Three – War becomes dominant again. • Book Four – Balances both stories. • Book Five – Frederic feels alienated from war – like someone at a football game at another’s college.

4. Book One • Frederic Henry is faced with a choice of a disciplined existence or a life of sensuality, and for a time he chooses the latter. • From Miss Barkley we see the romantic notion of war in her past fantasies about her fiancé. • The contrast between romance and reality is vividly apparent.

5. Ernest Hemingway • Son of a doctor and musician. • Never went to college • Rejected for army service – bad eye • Worked in journalism with much success. • Married four times • Man of action – stereotypically male • In 1954 Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature for “Forceful style making mastery in the art of modern narration.” • Committed suicide in July 1961.

6. Ernest Hemingway – Prose • His prose is quite direct. It has been described as hard hitting, compact, disciplined, masculine, stoic, action-centered. • The Hemingway hero is “all-man,” but with a vulnerable side which he seems determined to disregard. • He rewrote the ending thirty-nine times.