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Assignment
Submitted To:
Sir Agha Masood Ahmad
Submitted By:
Iram Idrees
MAENE-023R18-14

Submitted By:Iram Idrees

MAENE-023R18-14
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Q. A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway

as a war Novel

Introduction
Ernest Hemingway is an American writer who is considered to be a living
legend in American literature and whose works are filled with themes such
as loneliness, sex, love, initiation, loss and one of main themes that
characterize Hemingway’s writing style more fully is war. As Hemingway
took part in World War I and also in the Spanish Civil War, the most famous
novels, like For Whom the Bell Tolls, were written exactly during those
times. Moreover, during these war times Ernest Hemingway fell in love
several times.

First of all almost every poet or writer is influenced by the epoch he is living
in and his contemporaries. For example, in his novel A Farewell to Arms
Hemingway managed to combine both influence and impressions from war
and the influence of love he had during those times. The author opened us
the relationship between two characters - an English nurse Catherine Berkley
and the Lieutenant Frederic Henry who volunteered to work in the
ambulance. His personal experience of love Ernest Hemingway tried to
depict in this relationship between an ambulance driver and a nurse.

“There is nothing as bad as war. . . . When people realize how bad it is they
cannot do anything to stop it because they go crazy. There are some
people who never realize. There are people who are afraid of their officers.
It is with them the war is made.”

A Farewell to Arms, offers a drastic view of war. Whenever Hemingway

started this novel, Frederic saw war as a normal situation in human society.
He lived through it and had no problem with it. When he first met
Catherine, he noticed her beauty, and felt a certain connection towards her.
This connection did not represent love at first site. He saw her as a woman
that would allow him to forget about the war that was taking place.
Submitted By:Iram Idrees
MAENE-023R18-14
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Catherine saw him as the man that would help her forget her boyfriend that
had passed away, but at the same time she felt an attraction towards him of
love and passion.

“He was a very nice boy. He was going to marry me and he was killed in
the some.” (Hemingway, 18). Hemingway is describing the relationship of
war and love. Through this novel, he is stating that war is destructive.
According to Hemingway, love is destroyed through destruction and
anger. Catherine has experienced a tragic love life:

It is understandable through this that Catherine is afraid to start a

relationship. She has not been very lucky in life, and since her boyfriend died,
she is scared and afraid of getting hurt once again. Catherine wants to let him
know that it is important to take care of each other because of the type of life
that they will live. Due to the war, their love will be full of obstacles and
worries.

“Oh darling, she said. You be good to me, won’t you? What the hell, I
thought. I stroked her hair and patted her shoulder. She was crying. You
will, won’t you? She looked up at me. Because we’re going to have a
strange life.” (Hemingway, 27).

Frederic remembers the words of a British major he met at a club. The

major’s philosophy of warfare—that the last country to realize how much it
was losing would win—reflects a hard-nosed realism that acknowledges but
does not dwell on all the losses implied by being “cooked.” The major
apparently takes the big-picture view that winning is the ultimate good and
worth all of the sacrifice involved. Frederic describes the major as
pessimistic, but the major’s basic philosophy may be sound: Since war always
means loss and sacrifice, those who are best able to ignore the loss will
ultimately prevail.
Submitted By:Iram Idrees
MAENE-023R18-14
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Exactly because of the love story and not just because of cruelty and the
shocking events of the war, A Farewell to Arms is a magnificent novel.
Moreover, in his works Hemingway always used symbols to express as he
thought meaningful things. Mostly the author used symbols to describe
feelings and emotions that people felt and experienced during wars. For
instance, rainy weather in A Farewell to Arms was used as a symbol of some
tragedy or misfortune. To intensify shock, grief and sadness in his novels
Hemingway used irony and sarcasm, A Farewell to Arms was not an
exception. It is also believed that the author used love in his novels about war
times as the cure and response to all horrors, insanity and grief that war
brought to this world. Again and again Hemingway brightly pictures
devastation and tragedies, like cholera epidemic that took thousands of lives
or bombardment of the cities. A Farewell to Arms is one of these novels that
were against the war. However, Hemingway does not blame the war in
everything; he is just trying to show his readers that this world is self-
destructive and that it is not just war one needs to blame, but also people and
their attitude to everything. For instance, one of the main characters of this
anti-war novel, Henry, was always mentioning that it seemed as the world
wants to be destructed as it could not bear any dim of light or happiness.

Submitted By:Iram Idrees

MAENE-023R18-14