A Farewell to Arms

A Farewell to Arms is a novel by Ernest Hemingway, set during World War One and with autobiographical elements. It was first published in 1929 and, as one of Hemingway’s works, is considered a classic.

The novel is divided into five books. The first book introduces the main character, Frederic Henry (often called simply Tenente, “Lieutenant”), an American ambulance driver on the Italian front, as well as details his meeting of Catherine Barkley, a British nurse, via his Italian friend Rinaldi. It ends after Catherine and Frederic have begun a relationship and Frederic has been sent to a hospital in Milan due to a wound in his knee inflicted by a mortar shell. The second book is about the growth of Frederic and Catherine’s relationship’s growth (Catherine, being the loving woman she is, had herself transferred to the hospital Frederic would be staying at). It ends with Frederic being sent back to the front and Catherine being three months pregnant. In the third book Mr.Henry returns to his unit on the front, just in time for the Austro-Germans to break through the Italian lines, triggering an Italian retreat.

The actual retreat phase was by far the most interesting part of the book, since there I could actually convince myself that harm could befall these characters. Frederic is with three fellow ambulance drivers, one of whom gets shot by panicky Italians and another surrenders to the Germans. Later, Frederic is taken to the “battle police” (a group of Italians executing officers for “treachery” ) and escapes being shot by jumping into a river. In the fourth book Frederic and Catherine reunite and flee to Switzerland in a rowboat; in the fifth, they live a pleasant, fulfilling life on the Alps until Catherine goes into labor.

Personally, I found this book to be tedious and couldn’t understand why it (or Hemingway’s writing style) could ever be considered excellent. The two main characters were rather bland and personality-less, and their interaction gave me the mental image of two bad actors reading a rather corny script to each other. Also, Hemingway failed hard on making the front seem like a war zone: there was no discernible mention of what was going on sound- and scentwise, and everyone seemed to have forgotten there was a war going on. Part of this could perhaps be attributed to Hemingway having been in a war zone long enough to think that the sounds and smells would be obvious, but even so, his proofreader should have commented on the fact. Almost all of the faults in characterization could be put down to the fact that, apparently, Hemingway tried to make Catherine and Frederic his ideal woman and ideal man, respectively. Ideals are far from realistic and boring to read.

All in all, I would definately not recommend this to anyone who likes books where things actually happen. If you like slow-paced novels about relationships, then sure, why not give it a try?