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Zayne Carpenter

Mrs. Cramer

College Comp Period 1

19 November 2021

Death in Rain’s Shadow: The Significance of Weather in A Farewell to Arms

“It’s never just rain,” writes Thomas C. Foster in How to Read Literature Like a

Professor. The impact of weather in pieces of literature is not something that can be understated;

weather is omnipresent, so it functions as a great candidate for symbolism. Often rain serves as a

symbol of spring, fertility, and rebirth. However, in Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms,

rain is symbolic of death. Hemingway’s use of weather as a driving symbolic force in A Farewell

to Arms contributes to the fundamental themes of death and isolation.

The first occurrence of rain comes in chapter one. Hemingway, after writing a now-

famous, gloomy, descriptive passage about the setting of the novel, writes that the cholera

brought upon by the rain wipes out seven thousand troops in the army. Although this connection

doesn’t drive the characters in a specific or meaningful way, this passage sets the precedent for

the novel’s use of rain by establishing it as directly connected to death.

Later in the book, the rain comes back and begins to reveal the themes present in the

novel. In chapter nineteen, Hemingway writes the dialogue between Catherine and Frederic in a

hospital on a rainy night. Catherine describes how she is afraid of the rain, and as Frederic listens

to Catherine discuss her fears, he presses her to tell him why. When Catherine tells him that she

has visions of death in the rain, Frederic seems discontent with the answer, and rather than
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responding in a caring way, his response is callous. This both reaffirms the connection between

rain and death and bridges the gap between the conventional symbolic meaning of rain, of

fertility and rebirth, and the ironic symbolic meaning used in the novel. The disconnect between

these ideas highlights the growing theme of isolation. The rain not only comes with death but

also comes with the isolation of Frederic’s character. Just as the rain is removed from the

expected meaning, Frederic becomes removed from the mutualism in his relationship,

paradoxically showing that in a relationship is when we discover we are the most alone.

Hemingway enjoys his irony.

The rain returns in chapter thirty-six, where Hemingway writes how the military has

come to arrest Frederic for deserting, and Frederic and Catherine are forced to escape to

Switzerland to avoid the military. The rain is again present, symbolizing the immediate danger of

both the police and the journey Frederic and Catherine must make across the lake to evade being

arrested, which is described in chapter thirty-seven. Their long and grueling journey,

accompanied by the threat of capture or drowning, is set with gusts of light rain that serve as a

representation of the looming danger and fear, both coming in errant waves. This chapter also

marks the beginning of Frederic and Catherine’s life of solitude. However, as time progresses,

Frederic grows restless and discontent with a comfortable lifestyle.

This reaches a climax in the final chapter of the novel, where Frederic describes the

stillbirth of his son and the resulting death of Catherine. The last line of the novel reads “After a

while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.” Rain, a symbol of

fertility and birth, now surrounding the man who watched his son and companion die. This

dissonance is a perfect representation of the isolation of Frederic’s character throughout the

novel and in its tragic end. Frederic is portrayed as cold and analytical; in his conversations he
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feels disconnected from the other characters in his cynicism and pessimism. As more is taken

from him, as his mind becomes closed, as life continually breaks him, as he closes himself to the

people around him, as the accepts death in his desperate agony, the rain is his manifestation, and

in the climax of his condition, where the world took that everything from him leaves him with

nothing but himself, impounding him to isolation, the rain, as inescapable as his loneliness,

encapsulates him as the world that brings it upon him swallows him whole.

Although weather acts as a driving symbolic force throughout the novel, A Farewell to

Arms is a commentary on many concepts, and as is true with Hemingway’s principle of the

iceberg, each page leaves seven-eighths under the water, yet to be exposed. To gloss over the

depths that the novel reaches will be the perfect setup for an unbearably boring read. The novel is

dynamic and to assess it in a linear way is stripping the literature of the humanity deeply

engrained within its pages. If the reader not only reads the words but listens deeply into the folds

of its complex themes, A Farewell to Arms quickly becomes a piece of literature deserving of the

attention.
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Works Cited

Hemingway, Earnest. A Farewell to Arms. Arrow, 1994. Print.

Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature Like a Professor Revised: A Lively Guide to Reading

Between the Lines. HarperCollins, 2014. Print.