Scarica APPUNTI ERNEST HEMINGWAY e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! ERNEST HEMINGWAY A FARWELL TO ARMS The novel is the story of a young American named Frederick Henry who volunteers to serve with the Italian Army as an ambulance driver during the World War I on the italian front. Henry portrays himself as a man of duty. He attaches to this understanding of himself no sense of honor, nor does he expect any praise for his service. Time and again, through conversations with men like the priest, Ettore Moretti and Gino, Henry distances himself from such abstract notions as faith, honor and patriotism: concepts such as these mean nothing to him. After being injured in a bomb attack, he is taken to hospital, where he falls in love with an English nurse named Catherine. Catherine is exceptionally beautiful and possesses, perhaps, the most sensuously described hair in all of literature. When the novel opens, Catherine’s grief for her dead fiancé launches her into a playful, game of seduction. Her feelings for Henry soon intensify and become more complicated. However, and she eventually swears lifelong fidelity to him.. When the protagonist goes back to the front, the tragic events surrounding the italian defeat at Caporetto make him realise that it is time to say his “farewell to arms” and he deserts. He reaches Catherine and they fly to Switzerland, but their dream of future happyness is shattered by the woman’s death due to complications of childbirth. THEMES The main theme is war. The majority of the characters remains ambivalent about the war, resentful of the destruction it causes, doubtful of the glory it supposedly brings. The protagonist Henry is not involved in the ideas of patriotism, honor and faith, and when he discusses about that with other men like the priest, Ettore Moretti and Gino, he distances himself from such abstract notions. War is presented in a realistically horrifying way as futile and “stupid”. The “thing”, as war is often referred to in the book, is not like a wound that can be healed, but a rather chronic disease. Nevertheless, the novel cannot be said to condemn the war; A Farewell to Arms is hardly the work of a pacifist. Instead, the war is seen as the inevitable outcome of a cruel, senseless world. Farewell to Arms shows men fulfilling what are often consider traditional male roles, or even stereotypes – they drink hard, fight hard, play hard, and commit heroic acts of bravery. However, as we get to know them better, their masculinity is revealed as subtle, complicated, and individual to each man. All in all, the men in this novel are human: they love, they suffer, they hurt, they hope, and, sometimes, they even break.
