Human Tragedy in the Great War

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

This, one of Hemingway’s first, is said to be the best American novel to emerge from World War I. Against the backdrop of a war-torn Italy and soldiers on the front-line tired of fighting, Hemingway presents a love story between Lieutenant Henry, an ambulance driver, and Catherine Barkley, an English nurse. What amazes me the most is the way Hemingway’s short prose manages to convey so much pain and anguish. The characters’ disdain for the war really does bleed through everything. And the prose never shifts its pace or diction – Hemingway uses the same short, descriptive sentences to describe a scene and to describe the death of a character.

I’m not sure I can see many weaknesses in this novel except one thing – the sheer annoyingness of Catherine. There were so many instances when I wanted to slap her for her constant repetitiveness. I would argue there are few heroines who come across as irritating on the page. And yet, regardless of this, you ultimately root for the two characters as they retreat from the on-coming German army and then flee into Switzerland.

I only wish more writers today were writing stories as wonderful (and ultimately tragic) as this one.

Some great quotes:

“You’re my religion. You’ve all I’ve got.”

“We never get anything. We are born with all we have and we never learn. We never get anything new. We all start complete.”

“No, that is the great fallacy; the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.”