This book has been hard for me to get into. I think it’s especially hard because I can’t really relate to the situation the characters are put into. Anyways, I really find the character Catherine Barkley to be interesting. The fact that she is so invested into Frederic Henry so fast kind of confused me. She hits him and then she apologizes to him asking him if he will keep her safe and not hurt her. Their relationship is confusing to me a bit but so is the story itself. I find it hard to follow. One thing that is bothering me is how much the characters are always drunk. I understand in that time period alcohol was very abused especially in the war, but it is so excessive. I feel like it adds good background action, and gives you a visual of how the conversation is going. I also feel like if it were less drinking there would probably be different personality traits going on in the book. I hope I get more into this book as the next few chapters come around, but at the moment I have to re read a lot of the same pages over and over again.

So far in A Farewell to Arms I have noticed that war has become normalized amongst the men that are fighting. Most of them joke around and drink while in the middle of the battle. Doctors seem relaxed and the only people that seem to be panicking are those that are missing limbs. Modern day, if I was thrown into a battle, I would never drink, eat right, and be extremely cautious, and probably be to nervous to even poke my head out from behind my cover. These soldiers in A Farewell to arms are very different. They have grown used to having their lives at risk, so much so that they don’t even believe that the odds of them living are in their control. Even Frederic after he has been injured still seems not to take responsibility for his own life. He believes it is in the hands of others. After receiving direct orders not to consume alcohol and knowing that it would not be good for his current situation, he still drinks. It is evident that most of the soldiers will struggle immersing themselves back into society after the war.

Throughout what I have read so far, much of the novel has revolved around alcohol in some form. The majority of characters are constantly drinking, likely using it as a coping mechanism to escape from the war. No matter what a person’s occupation, it appears most have a drink within an arm’s length at all times. Frederic, while in the hospital and under specific orders not to drink, still smuggles a few bottles into his room. Hiding the half consumed bottles on the other side of his bed while he is being checked on, it is apparent that he knows he probably shouldn’t be drinking yet does anyway. Even surgeons have been shown drinking right before operating on soldiers, raising some questions about the quality of surgery the soldiers might be recieving. In the trench, Frederic drinks wine from a canteen that he is given. He states that he thinks it’s rotten, yet continues drinking it anyway- clearly not too concerned about taste. This constant drinking is something I didn’t particularly expect to read in the novel but it makes sense when perceived as a coping mechanism.

Resources for A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

This source shares Hemingway’s life including the early stages of his childhood, his military experience, his career in literature, and his legacy that influence writers today. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1954/hemingway/speech/

In 1954 Hemingway received a Nobel Prize in Literature. This source contains the script of Hemingway’s speech that was read when he received this Nobel Prize. Hemingway was ill at the time of the banquet, but he later read and recorded his speech. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1954/hemingway/speech/

This source talks about Hemingway’s experience during WWI and his injuries he suffered on the Italian front. This article explains the event that Hemingway describes in his book, A Farewell to Arms, where he was struck by a mortar shell that hit is leg. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ernest-hemingway-wounded-on-the-italian-front

“ ‘I’d rather wait,’ I said. ‘There are much worse wounded than me. I’m all right.’ ” (50)

In “A Farewell to Arms”, Ernest Hemingway illustrates Fredrick Henry as an emotionless man that does not focus on the deeper aspects of life. While talking with the priest, Henry states that he has never loved anyone and that he most likely never will. He also spends his time getting drunk and visiting whorehouses. Although Henry is painted like this, this quote demonstrates that there is more to Henry than he is on the surface. In one of the hardest moment of Henry’s life, he becomes selfless and puts others before himself. This is important to the novel because it brings more of an insight to who Henry really is. This quote also shows an insight on the author Ernest Hemingway. As we learned before we started the novel, Hemingway was similarly seen as the “man’s man”. There are also many parallels between Hemingway and Henry’s life. Hemingway utilizes Henry’s character to give the readers deeper understanding of himself. Through Henry, we can see that people can have deeper layers to them besides what is on the surface and that therefore, Hemingway himself can have more to him than his reputation tells.

 Military victory is oftentimes portrayed as something that is obtained purely through skill. It is seen as a chance to win glory and honor in battle. However, in A Farewell to Arms, whether somebody lives or dies in war is portrayed as a random and indiscriminate event. Many of the deaths in World War 1 were caused by people the victim couldn’t even see. Gas, shelling, disease, famine and the awful conditions of the trenches killed millions. Survival in World War 1 was dependent on being lucky enough to not be killed by shells or catch a disease. A Farewell to Arms captures this reality perfectly. Frederic had his leg blown apart by a shell “while eating cheese”. There was nothing glorious about getting blown up while eating some mac and cheese; he wasn’t even fighting. Frederic didn’t get injured because he wasn’t competent, he was injured due to his own misfortune. The American soldiers who show up are also there due to being unlucky. Two are there from diseases that they had no way to prevent and one is there because he is an idiot. He wanted some sort of honorable memento to remember his glory days in the war but is injured because there is no glory to be earned.

“We read. We think. We are not peasants. We are mechanics. But even the peasants know better than to believe in a war. Everybody hates the war.”

This sentence strongly expresses the desire of people in the novel that they’re not elegant, ignorant, and rude people with low social status. They’re people with the ability to act, speak, walk, and think. The United States under the war seems fragile but human heart does not. People have the ambition to fight for the peace and justice. As my point of view, if something is 99% impossible, then I will chase the last 1% of chance to overturn. I believe, I can, you can, therefore we can. Nobody likes the war, for sure. When the inequality between each other magnified or the existence of the lack of love, the war breaks out. Then how we can end the war as soon as possible? Build the love, the friendship all over the world, let everyone knows that they’re loved. Once people feel the love, their aggressiveness will greatly reduced. “We’re mechanics” means we can any problems or conflicts, not just the machines producing the products. We’re alive, then fighting for peace!

I think it’s interesting how Catherine and Henry weren’t really that connected to each other before he got injured and once he starts to heal from his injury, he is talking about marriage with her. He went from a wild child to a tame guy very fast and it’s all because of her. We don’t really know much about Catherine besides that she is English and her old boyfriend died in the war. We know that Henry is very wild as we found out when he went on leave. In the beginning of the book Catherine wasn’t particularly interested in Henry as her boyfriend’s death was still kind of fresh in her memory but, she started to warm up to him. One night she had a breakdown and was pretending he was her old boyfriend and told him to tell her that he loved her, he did and then she said that he didn’t mean it. Now they say it and mean it. Catherine now says that she doesn’t think they need to rush to be married and that confused Henry as this is the first woman he wants to marry. Catherine said that last time she loved a guy he died and she doesn’t want that to happen to Henry.