Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway was indelibly impacted by his experiences both with war and romantic love, which is why love and war feature together prominently in novels like A Farewell to Arms. The double meaning of the title of this novel refers to the protagonist Lieutenant Henry's saying goodbye both to the arms of war and also to the arms of his love. In Henry's experience, both war and love are linked to death. ar and love make strange bedfellows, but each does bring out a mixture of hope and devastation. The confluence of love and war remains the prevailing theme in A Farewell to Arms. This theme creates opportunities for the main characters to grow and change, or to stagnate and die. In the case of Lieutenant Frederic Henry, war and death cause him to grow and change even though in the end he is left feeling bitter and…...
mlaWorks Cited
Benson, Jackson J. Hemingway: The Writer's Art of Self-Defense. University of Minnesota, 1969.
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. New York: Scribner, 2012 (1929)
Meyers, Jeffrey. Hemingway: A Biography. De Capo Press, 1999.
Oldsey, Bernard. Hemingway's Secret Craft.
Farewell to Arms," by Ernest Hemingway. Specifically, it will discuss rain throughout the story. ain and water are two reoccurring themes woven through the story. Hemingway uses water and rain as a subtle warning of the characters ultimate fate.
FAEWELL TO AMS"
Hemingway wrote "A Farewell to Arms" after his own service in World War I as an ambulance driver for the Italian ed Cross. Many people believe "A Farewell to Arms" is really his own story, for he spent some time in an Italian hospital after a bomb exploded near him, and he may have fallen in love with his nurse. "A Farewell to Arms" is more than a tragic love story, it is a story about the ultimate horrors of war, and how the people fighting do not really matter. "The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not…...
mlaReferences
Adair, William. "Hemingway's 'A Veteran Visits His Old Front': Images and Situations for the Fiction." ANQ 8.1 (1995): 27-31.
Bloom, Harold, and Ernest Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway's a Farewell to Arms. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
Dow, William. "Hemingway's a Farewell to Arms." Explicator 55.4 (1997): 224-225.
Hatten, Charles. "The Crisis of Masculinity, Reified Desire, and Catherine Barkley in a Farewell to Arms." Journal of the History of Sexuality 4.1 (1993): 76-98.
Farewell to Arms -- Hemingway
Hemingway's well-critiqued novel, A Farewell to Arms is always a subject of intense literary examination because the structure of the novel has great lessons and examples for the reader and the critic as well. The narrative structure of Hemingway's book is almost considered a textbook example of exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution / denouement. Those literary tools used by Hemingway will be presented in this paper.
A Farewell to Arms
There are many great novelists from English and American history and there are many even in contemporary society. Students that are studying literature and the tools that make good literature are often attracted to Hemingway because not only is he a worthy talent to learn from but his narrative represents different voices based on the conflict that is occurring, or on the character that is being developed. In A Farewell to Arms it is…...
And Catherine's pains during labor and her death, all show how misfortune, distress, and death particularly plague and affect these protagonists. They are fated to die and suffer because they cannot feel at home in military, in religion, or even in any particular state. Catherine cannot get over the death of her fiancee, just as Henry cannot get over the inability of Catherine to purely and totally give herself over to him.
Both Henry and Catherine are outsiders because they are always 'once removed' from society. Catherine is too much in love with the dead to be truly wed to Henry and truly part of his life. Henry cannot, despite his affection for some of his comrades, feel truly in touch with the army, because he always views his status as a national and as a soldier with a certain degree of distance and irony.
This is also true of both…...
mlaWorks Cited
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. New York: Scribner Reprint, 1995.
It is the climax and turning point in the novel because he is making his decision about whether to continue in the miserable war, or to stay with his lovely woman Catherine. Frederick shoots the Italian sergeant because the sergeant had deserted his unit, but ironically Frederick has made his climactic decision and he deserts as well. Clearly Frederick has become totally disheartened by the madness of this war; bravery on the battlefield can't possibly match the warm glow of his love for Catherine.
Readers experience the falling action in any novel after the climax has been reached. In the Hemingway novel, Frederick and Catherine have a lovely time in the Italian town of Stresa; this is in effect his reward for making the decision he did in the climax. He fishes, he has quality time with Catherine, and the relationship is a delight even though Frederick knows he could…...
2. Discuss the green light in The Great Gatsby and the rain in A Farewell to Arms as symbols of fertility and death.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, the green light represents hope, renewal, and (since Gatsby associates the green light with Daisy) Gatsby's desire for her, as well as (in Gatsby's mind) Daisy's fecundity and fertility. In nature, green is the color of life: trees, grass, and other living things. As such, the green light symbolizes Gatsby's own hopes and wishes for the future, which revolve around Daisy. Since Gatsby associates the green light so much with Daisy, it also represents for him a sort of beacon leading him toward her.
Although within The Great Gatsby the green light symbolizes hope, life, fecundity, and fertility, in Ernest Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms, rain, which occurs often, symbolizes the opposite: impermanence, dissolution, and death, thus foreshadowing Frederic and…...
Life sucks and then you die, is a popular saying among Gen-Xers to describe the futility of it all. The phrase may be original, but the sentiment certainly is not. Long before Generation X came on the scene, Ernest Hemingway was writing about heroes who faced the harsh unfairness of finite life with dignity and grace. This "grace under pressure" became known as the Hemingway Code.
Hemingway scholar Philip Young explains that the code "is made of the controls of honor and courage which in a life of tension and pain make a man..." (63). Feminist scholars have suggested that this definition of the code is sexist and that women in Hemingway's work, too, display honor and courage (Tyler 29).
Rovit and Brenner agree with Young's basic definition and add an additional component. Hemingway's code, they say, also has to do with "learning how to make one's passive vulnerability (to the dangers…...
mlaWorks Cited
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. 1929. New York, NY: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1995.
Nagel, James. "Catherine Barkley and Retrospective Narration." Critical Essays on Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. Ed. George Monteiro. New York, NY G.K. Hall & Co., 1994. 161-174.
Oldsey, Bernard. "The Sense of an Ending in A Farewell to Arms." Modern Critical Interpretations: Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. Ed. Harold Bloom. Modern Critical Interpretations. New York, NY: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. 77-96.
Rovit, Earl and Gerry Brenner. Ernest Hemingway. Rev. ed. Twayne's United States Authors Series. New York, NY: Twayne Publishers, 1995.
Hemingway is classified as a modernist in fiction. Modernism rejected traditions that existed in the nineteenth century and sought to stretch the boundaries, striking out in new directions and with new techniques. More was demanded of the reader of literature or the viewer of art. Answers were not presented directly to issues raised, but instead the artist demanded the participation of the audience more directly in finding meaning and in seeing the relationship between technique and meaning. In literature, writers developed new structures as a way of casting a new light on such accepted elements as character, setting, and plot. Much of modernist fiction shows this increased demand on the reader. Ernest Hemingway gives the illusion of moving in the other direction by simplifying language to the point where it seems ascetic, but in truth his language is complex in its way, building meaning into every word and the placement…...
mlaWorks Cited
Aldridge, John W. "The Sun Also Rises?
Sixty Years Later." The Sewanee Review XCIV (2)(Spring 1986), 337?45.
Baker, Carlos. Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969.
Baker, Carlos. Hemingway: The Writer as Artist. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956.
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 (ashington, 2009, p. 1). The point ashington 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…...
mlaWorks Cited
Capshaw, Ron. (2002). Hemingway: a static figure amidst the red decade shifts. Partisan Review, 69(3), p. 441.
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.
watching a James ond film, one often wonders. If the ond character were real, would he be able to experience a traumatizing situation -- killing a villain or escaping with his life -- and then straightening the lapels of his dinner jacket proceed to seduce a beautiful woman? While ond's celluloid heroics transport us as long as the movie lasts, we know that it is unrealistic, and comes from the imagination of Ian Fleming, who like most authors and novelists, probably sat at his desk tapping away at his Remington, letting his mind do the wandering or the conjuring, as was necessary for the plot.
Ernest Hemingway, we know, has lived his novels. He was larger than life, and he lived larger than life E.L. Doctorow, in a tribute to Hemingway, describes a day in Florida when Hemingway persevered after hooking a huge marlin to snag and capture it. ut…...
mlaBibliography
Baker, C. (1963). "Ernest Hemingway: The Writer As Artist." Princeton: Princeton
University Press. p. 127.
Contemporary Literary Criticism (2000). "Ernest (Miller) Hemingway: A brief review of the author's life, works and critical reception." Contemporary Literary Criticism
Gale Literary Database. Retrieved on 6 April 2000 at http://www.galenet.com/servlet/GLD/
Earnest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway may not have been a deliberate or conscious chauvinist but the manner in which he presented his characters suggests that the "Hemmingway hero" is the focus of all his stories and the 'heroine' is somewhat lost in the aura of the man. Though the women in his books re represented as having strong characters there is an inherent division between the two genders that identifies the hero as struggling for survival in hard world while the woman is merely a shadow in the background.
In a rapidly changing world it has been seen that Hemingway is treated as a misogynist as his woman are presented as a mere reflection of the men. Their characteristics come out when the men need the support and they develop through the experiences of the men. This suggests that Hemmingway did not support feminism. Yet, this statement could be wrong as we realize…...
mlaWorks Cited
1. Busch, Frederick. "Reading Hemingway Without Guilt." The New York Times Book Review. Jan. 12, 1992: pp. 1, 17-19.
2. Prescott, Jeryl J. "Liberty for Just (us): Gender and Race in Hemingway's To Have and Have Not." College Language Association Journal 37:2 (1993): 176-88.
3. http://www.teenreads.com/authors/au-hemingway-ernest.asp
4. Comley, Nancy R., and Robert Scholes. Hemingway's Genders: Rereading the Hemingway Text. New Haven: Yale UP, 1994.
He considers his nationality an asset and doesn't feel ashamed when British officers try to belittle him. "The English may have seen war, but I have lived with Pa, so I have seen Hell." But it all turns against him when he is accused of murder, rape and crimes he never committed. He is accused without any proof and even the ones he considered his friends side with the accusers. The whole war scene gets even more bleak and darker as Stanhope finds himself among enemies on his own front.
The story turns from depiction of external horrors to delusions of inner world that Stanhope experiences as war progresses. These delusions have a strong bearing on him as begins seeing an imaginary graveyard. The delusions turn even stranger when he notices that he is capable of seeing ghosts of dead soldiers that roam around in the battlefield not knowing they…...
mlaReferences
Patricia Anthony Flanders, Ace Publishers, 1998
He is more interested in "things," than what those things will bring. "Nick went over to the pack and found, with his fingers, a long nail in a paper sack of nails, in the bottom of the pack. He drove it into the pine tree, holding it close and hitting it gently with the flat of the axe. He hung the pack up on the nail. All his supplies were in the pack. They were off the ground and sheltered now" (as quoted in Vernon)
However, with time Nick is able to find some semblance of his early self. He overcomes challenges and moves forward the best he can. Despite the fact that he is walking uphill through burned land with a backpack that is too heavy, he is now in a familiar place and happy to be here:
Nick slipped off his pack and lay down in the shade. He…...
mlaReferences
Crane, Stepen. Red Badge of Courage. New York: Modern Library, 2000.
Hemingway, Ernest. Big Two Hearted River. In Hemingway, Ernest. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. New York: Scribner's, 1987.
O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Random House, 1998.
Stewart, Matthew. Hemingway and World War I: Combatting recent psychobiographical reassessments, restoring the war. Papers on Language and Literature. (2000) 36, 198-217
In Italy, Mussolini exploited the state of confusion and malaise to seize power. From this cradle, Fascism emerged into the world. In Germany, it morphed into Nazism, a more virulent and transformed fascism feeding upon race mysticism as well as extreme nationalism and dictatorship. Both countries took this highway to the Hell of World War II. During this second installment of Great War, European countries groaned under the Fascist boot heel and fought back under native partisan movements in the underground resistance.
Ironically, the European Federal movement was midwifed by Italian political theorist Alberto Spineless. After the Second World War, the people of Europe wanted human rights, an end to despotism against both and human freedom and dignity.
he Union of European Federalists was formed in December of 1946. In the wake of two world wars, theorists such as Spineless were convinced that Federalism in Europe would save Europe by transcending nationalism…...
mlaThe Union of European Federalists was formed in December of 1946. In the wake of two world wars, theorists such as Spineless were convinced that Federalism in Europe would save Europe by transcending nationalism much as the multinational Resistance had in World War II. In this movement, Communists, Socialists, and Christian Democrats resisted Fascisim in a united front. Spinelli and contemporary E. Rossi wrote the Ventone Manifesto, encouraging a federation of European States to make way for the European Union body. Union of European Federalist concluded that the existing political system could not creatre the new Europe. Federalist advocates thought that Europe integration was a process of building for the politics of a new Europe.
After achieving freedom from the Nazi tyranny, the people of Western Europe developed a consensus that a united Europe was the best way to bring peace and prosperity. Opposition forces like Resistance movement veterans thought they should overcome nationalism. Uniting Europe was the first task in its post war recovery. Federalism provided the theoretical basis of these for this movement. As the result, Federalism plans appeared as a blueprint to prevent future European wars.
The federal ideas were first concretely represented in the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951 in the Treaty of Paris. The ECSC paved the way for the integration of Europe, followed by the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957 and the European Union (EU) of 1993 based upon the Matriarchs Treaty. Transnational organizations now are paving the way for a Europe that will be one state.
Sentiments of the "Lost Generation"
Sentiments of "Lost Generation"
Before the beginning of the Great ar Era an optimistic attitude championing technological and educational progress was pervasive on a global scale. However, with the commencement of orld ar I, destruction was visited upon the world on a scale never before seen. In its wake, came a cultural realization that the progress made was not entirely for the good. This new sentiment is reflected in the poetry and literature of the time, a barometer for the true feelings of the "Lost Generation."
Many youths were drawn to the new war by a sense of adventure. Among them were many well-known poets and writers such as Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos. arfare (prior to and during the early stages of orld ar I) was viewed by many as "romantic and noble…a struggle for honor and glory." (Nash p. 750) A prime example of this…...
mlaWorks Cited
-- retrieved February 11, 2002http://ok.essortment.com/whatlostgenera_nkj.htm
Gary Nash & Others, The American People, Vol 2, 2nd ed., Harper Collins, 1990
Attributed to Gertrude Stein.
"essortment" ¶ 2.
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