Hemingway’s A Farewell To ArmsThe book A Farewell to Arms, written by Ernest Hemingway, is a classicabout the love story of a nurse and a war ridden soldier. The story startsas Frederick Henry is serving in the Italian Army. He meets his future lovein the hospital that he gets put in for various reasons.
I thought that AFarewell to Arms was a good book because of the symbolism, the excitingplot, and the constant moving of the main character. The symbolism in A Farewell to Arms is very much apparent. ErnestHemingway has always been one who is big on the symbolism of night as beingbad. To the main character in Hemingway’s novels, nights have always beena sign of death, or something negative to happen. Another one of thesymbolisms in A Farewell to Arms is when Henry tries to escape from theItalian army by jumping off one of the ships the army was traveling on andrunning away from the army. This symbolism was the water that he jumpedinto was a symbolism of the new, clean life that he was going to live fromnow 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 neverstaying in one place too long. It had a very good story line, which was alove story that ended up in a tragedy.
The main character’s wife gotpregnant 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 thechild starts to hemorrhage Henry knows that it was over for his wife and hewas right. From the beginning of the book until the end, the action was up. Eversince the front page Henry was traveling around to different towns so itwas not boring for the reader. That made it very interesting for thereader because it was always a new town coming up so they were beingintroduced in the new characters quite often.
As the story goes on, thereader is not introducing as many new people, but they are still travelingaround quite a bit. Hemingway has a way with arranging the plots of all hisstories. They all have that right timing to them. He always introducesonly people that will affect the story, he does not introduce someone whowill be in the scene for five minutes and then leave. I felt that theauthor’s planning on putting this novel together was very good.
Ernest Hemingway has always been one of the world’s best known classicwriters. His style and technique of symbolism is much different thanothers. He uses then in very strong ways that you the reader does notalways pick up. I am sure that I missed some of the symbolism that went onin the book. I picked up a few though and they were very interesting.
Irecommend this to anyone who is interested in a love story that does notget too intimate.
