In the letter, those were rooms 112 and 113 (in the play, 108-109); "It seemed eminently more sensible to live in a part of a hotel which you knew would not be struck by shell fire" the author wrote in the letter (Washington, 2009, p. 1). The point Washington makes vis-a-vis Column is that room 109 wasn't just a "safe" place, it was a place with "good things" like sex, perfume, alcohol, hot water, and yes, food.
The brilliance of Hemingway's narrative -- not just in war themes but also throughout his work -- cannot be over-emphasized. In A Farewell to Arms Hemingway uses the character Frederic as narrator, and Frederic's narration is mainly descriptive, but in its simplicity, it packs a punch. Critic Katie Owens-Murphy explains that when Frederick -- an ambulance driver, not a soldier -- is asked about the war by a bartender, he first replies, "Don't talk about the war," but in the narration, Owens-Murphy explains that he "…muses about it in stream of consciousness":
"The war was a long way away. Maybe there wasn't any war. There was no war here. Then I realized it was over for me. But I did not have the feeling that it was really over. I had the feeling of a boy who thinks of what is happening at a certain hour at the schoolhouse from which he has played truant"...
245) (Owens-Murphy, 2009), p. 3). The bottom line is characters in Hemingway's war-related books do talk about the war, but in very different ways. Meantime Hemingway's use of the
English language has had an impact on the Oxford English Dictionary; to wit, according to Charles M. Oliver there are "…39 entries crediting Hemingway with a word's first use in English, citing dates, titles, and quotations" (Oliver, 2007, p. 1). While that's not as many as Shakespeare (179), thirty-nine is impressive. And yes, some of those words to be first used in English are war-related, including "Whunk" ("…a dull hollow sound, as of a bullet striking something") ("We had both heard the whunk of the bullet") (Oliver, p. 3).
Conclusion
The critics and scholars that have mused, speculated, postulated and poked at Hemingway's many war-themed books and stories have not yet run out of approaches or ideas within that
genre. And because of the large volume of writing by Hemingway using themes that embrace armed conflicts -- and characters whose lives are changed by armed conflict -- there will never be an end to the subject potentiality therein. This paper has presented just a very few of the approaches to Hemingway's war-themed books, but the paper notes that variety of approaches to his war themes offers fresh interest and value.
Works Cited
Capshaw, Ron. (2002). Hemingway: a static figure amidst the red decade shifts. Partisan
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Fantina, Richard. (2003). Hemingway's masochism, sodomy, and the dominant woman. The Hemingway Review, 23(1), p. 84.
Hewson, Marc. (2003). "The Real Story of Earnest Hemingway": Cixous, gender, and 'A
Farewell to Arms.' The Hemingway Review, 22(2), p. 51.
Oliver, Charles M. (2007). Hemingway and the OED. The Hemingway Review, 26(2), p. 105.
Owens-Murphy, Katie. (2009). Hemingway's pragmatism: truth, utility, and concrete particulars in A Farwell to Arms. The Hemingway Review, 29(1), p. 87.
Timeless Hemingway. (2010). Ernest Hemingway FAQ. Retrieved June 6, 2011, from http://www.timelesshemingway.com.
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