A Farewell to Arms, an Ernest Hemingway novel, has a distinctive anti-military rhetoric. While the war is not directly condemned, its atrocities are described vividly, showing that something wrong is happening. Its main character, Frederic Henry, is an American lieutenant serving in the Italian Army ambulance during World War I. At first, he performs his duties with courage and confidence, but after being wounded, he rethinks his war experience and, in addition, falls in love with the nurse Catherine Barkley. Henry’s position changes when he rethinks this terrifying war experience and realizes that another peaceful way of life with the loved one has much more value.
From the novel’s first page, death is present everywhere, and as Henry was serving in the ambulance, he saw all those deaths personally. He was ready for those casualties: in the first chapter of Book 1, it is mentioned that “only seven thousand died of it in the army” from cholera during winter (Hemingway, 1929, ch. 1). During Book 1, Henry performs all combat missions successfully; in the end, he suffers from the severe knee injury and become hospitalized. In the hospital, Henry falls in love with Catherine, an English nurse, and rethinks his war experience. In Book 3, when he returns to the front, he sees the dropped soldiers’ morale and the Italians retreating. He realizes that the war creates much more problems than solves, and I felt the same while reading. Eventually, he withdrew, was caught by the military police, and fled from the execution, after which his new peaceful life started.
Therefore, I was impressed by the vivid experience of death and suffering experienced by Henry and other soldiers during the war: it clearly shows that war is evil for people. One can see the difference between Henry’s position in Book 1, where he is a confident military leader, and in Book 3, where he has many conflicts with his companions and loses almost all of them. Eventually, he retreats, barely escapes execution, and starts a new life, dressing up in civilian cloth and reuniting with his loved one, Catherine. The benefit for my life from the novel is a clear understanding that the war, despite all its seemed benefits, brings murders and chaos and that a peaceful life is much more productive.
Reference
Hemingway, E. (1929). A farewell to arms. Scribner’s Sons.