The book A Farewell to Arms, written by Ernest Hemingway, is a classic about the love story of a nurse and a war-ridden soldier. The story starts as Frederick Henry is serving in the Italian Army. He meets his future love in the hospital that he gets put in for various reasons. I thought that A Farewell to Arms was a good book because of the symbolism, the exciting plot, and the constant moving of the main character.
The symbolism in A Farewell to Arms is very much apparent. Ernest Hemingway has always been one who is big on the symbolism of night as being bad. To the main character in Hemingway’s novels, nights have always been a sign of death, or something negative to happen. Another one of the symbolisms in A Farewell to Arms is when Henry tries to escape from the Italian army by jumping off one of the ships the army was traveling on and running away from the army. This symbolism was the water that he jumped into was a symbolism of the new, clean life that he was going to live from now on. At this time, Henry goes off and finds his wife to be.
The plot in A Farewell to Arms was always active. They were never staying in one place too long. It had a very good story line, which was a love story that ended up in a tragedy. The main character’s wife got pregnant and she was off to have her baby when problems started occurring. They had to have a caesarean, and the baby dies, and when the mother of the child starts to hemorrhage Henry knows that it was over for his wife and he was right.
From the beginning of the book until the end, the action was up. Ever since the front page Henry was traveling around to different towns so it was not boring for the reader. That made it very interesting for the reader because it was always a new town coming up so they were being introduced in the new characters quite often. As the story goes on, the reader is not introducing as many new people, but they are still traveling around quite a bit. Hemingway has a way with arranging the plots of all his stories. They all have that right timing to them. He always introduces only people that will affect the story, he does not introduce someone who will be in the scene for five minutes and then leave. I felt that the author’s planning on putting this novel together was very good.
Ernest Hemingway has always been one of the world’s best-known classic writers. His style and technique of symbolism is much different than others. He uses then in very strong ways that you the reader does not always pick up. I am sure that I missed some of the symbolism that went on in the book. I picked up a few though and they were very interesting. I recommend this to anyone who is interested in a love story that does not get too intimate.
