Farewell to Arms celebrates the religion of death

His Knowledge of Death

Hemingway had the knowledge of death as a boy in the Indian camp in the company of his father. He has loved to portray death in his novels and short stones. He had seen death in the world wars and in the bull fights. The charge was levelled against him that he had sought death throughout his life. But the claim was rebutted by Hemingway himself. During his hunting in Central Africa, his “plane crashed and he was taken to be dead.” His assumed death was published in the newspapers. Hemingway escaping alive, refuted that claim, saying, “Can one imagine that if a man sought death all his life, he could not have found her before the age of fifty four. It is one thing to be in proximity of death to know more or less what she is; and it is quite another thing to seek her. She is the most easy thing to find that I know of.” He has, thus, shown a great awareness of violence, death and brutality.

Death in ‘A Farewell to Arms’

A Farewell to Arms portrays the life of Fredric Henry—the young American volunteer, serving in the Italian ambulance. He has borne the wounds of the battle as Hemingway himself did. An appropriate atmosphere of war has been created with the description of the troop movements, camouflage of guns, retreating soldiers and brothels. Henry has fallen in love with a V.A.D. nurse, Catherine Barkley. He later escapes to Switzerland to escape the punishment for having deserted the Italian army. Barkley did in the child-birth. The birth of the child and its mother’s death has aggrieved him most. He is disgusted with the chaos, killings and the confusion of the army. In their retreat, the Italians have killed their own men. Henry has then seen the ghastly savagery of war, as well as the infiltration of the German soldiers. The hero has participated in the war and has experienced despair, disillusionment, cruelty and barbarity.

Hemingway’s Injury

In A Farewell to Arms, the hero is Hemingway himself in another guise with his sense of suffering. Hemingway’s injury at Fossalta has background of this work. Hemingway himself had served in the Ambulance unit at Fossalta. Fredric Henry was also engaged in the war in Italy and had served in the Ambulance Unit. Henry narrates in A Farewell to Arms how he stayed in the main dressing room, and how the Austrian searchlights were moving over the mountains.

There was also a shell-burst while Henry was preparing to sit to eat. There was an explosion, Henry describes as:

“I ate the end of my piece of cheese and took a swallow of wine. Through the other noise, I heard a cough; then came the chuh…….chuh …….chuh…….chuh…….then there was a flash as a blast furnace door is swung open and a roar that started white and went red and go on and on in a rushing wind. I tried to breathe but my breath would not come out and out all the time bodily in the wind. I went out swiftly all of myself and I knew I was dead and that it had all been a mistake to think you just died. The I floated and instead of going back, I felt myself slide back. I breathed and I was back. The ground was torn up, and in front of my head, there was a splintered beam of wood. In the jolt of my hed, I heard somebody crying. I thought somebody was screaming. It was Passini and when I touched him, he screamed. His legs were towards me, and I saw in the dark and the light that they were both smashed above the knee. One leg was gone and the other was held by tendons and the part of the trousers, and the stump twitched and jerked as though it were not connected. He bit his arm and moaned—“oh, mamma mia; mamma mia………” Then “Dioti salvic Maria; Dioti salvi Maria.”

Fredric’s Experience

Fredric Henry’s “service in the ambulance corps, the shell-shock, the smashing of his friend’s legs by the fire, these experiences remind one of Hemingway’s own injury at Fossalta. Even Fredric’s love with Barkley has an autobiographical element. Hemingway’s love with a nurse while he convalesced in Milan hospital was a transitory phase. The war has caused devastation. It has upset the future. Henry’s fiancee is dead and he is lonely and disillusioned like Hemingway.

Views of a Critic

Dr. Mullick observes, “In A Farewell to Arms, we find that fullest account of this kind of death. Fredric Henry’s wound is received in the same manner as the actual experience of A Farewell. Certain facts of the novel’s war setting are very important. Here we have Gorizia, the nice town with its hospitals, its cafes, its two brothels (one reserved for the officers), its artillery and its upside streets. The two important ministers to the faith and security of the soldiers are the priest and Rinaldi, the surgeon. Dominating the town are the artillery pieces, which in the summer are covered with green branches to disguise them as part of the landscape. In the mountains at the front, which are hidden from view, one can only see the smoke from the guns:

“You saw the flesh, then heard the crack, then saw the smoke ball distort and thin in the wind.” No one cares for the advice of the priest, the whole life has been reduced to its secular minimum.

Death of Catherine

The death of Catherine Barkley, though its setting is remote from that of the war, is very much similar to the defeat and confusing terror of the war itself. The long, slow, almost monotonous life of waiting in Switzerland intensifies the terror and bitterness of the final scene. The two deaths are a transitory of the impersonal cruelty with which the novel abounds. The child is stillborn and the mother dies in her attempt to give him-life. There is no priest here, who would talk of love and God. There is nothing expect death and rain inside. Moreover, Catherine’s death is another example of the unreasonable wound, most pathetic, because it completely defeats the plan to which Lieutenant Henry had irrevocably committed himself.

Wound and Death as the Themes

The wound and the violent death are the themes of Hemingway’s works. This death, the violent death, is the special feature of the twentieth century and the wound caused is unreasonable. Hoffman comments “Hemingway can claim that of having honestly attempted an explanation of a form of death to which the twentieth century is particularly heir, death that comes as a violent disruption of life. It is unreasonable (that is, it is not properly motivated cannot be understood in terms of an ordinary system of motivation). It puts traditional securities to shame, since they cannot satisfactorily keep pace with its discriminate destructiveness. It demands a new form of resourcefulness and courage and in Hemingway’s case a new type of moral improvisation. The sudden violent injury inflicted impersonally by efficient guns and planes, too remote from the victim—to hold him any special grudge, is the symbol of this type of death and of death in life to which it is consequence.

Conclusion

Hemingway’s world is uniquely his own, a small segment of the twentieth-century world. It is a world of unparallel violence born of the horrors of the First World War and the intellectual and disillusionment which followed it. Most of its inhabitants lead a life of sensation only, usually mistaking sexual desire for love, devoting themselves to excitement rather than positive achievement. Uninterested in ideals or ideas they value courage above all other virtues and admire physical skills more than any other accomplishments, particularly when skill and courage can be combined in one activity such as in bullfighting or lion hunting. The joy of food, drink, sport, and fortification are their preoccupation because they are haunted by the spectre of death. To face death with courage is the supreme human virtue in the universe of Hemingway. Those who have not faced it, preferably in battle, are demonstrably inferior things.