Summary: Chapter I
The narrator, Lieutenant Henry, describes the small Italian
village in which he lives. It is a summer during World War I, and troops often
march along the road toward the nearby battlefront. Officers speed by in “small
gray motor cars.” If one of these cars travels especially fast, Henry
speculates, it is probably carrying the king, who makes trips out to assess the
battle almost every day. At the start of the winter, a cholera epidemic sweeps
through the army and kills seven thousand soldiers.
Summary: Chapter II
Lieutenant Henry’s unit moves to the town of Gorizia, further from the fighting, which
continues in the mountains beyond. Life in Gorizia is relatively enjoyable: the
buildings are not badly damaged, and there are nice cafés and two brothels—one
for officers, one for enlisted men. One winter day, Henry sits in the mess hall
with a group of fellow officers, who declare that the war is over for the year
because of the snow. Spurred by their contempt for religion, the men taunt the
military priest, baiting him with crude innuendos about his sexuality. A
captain jokingly chides the priest for never cavorting with women, and the
good-natured priest blushes. Though he is not religious, Henry treats the
priest kindly. The officers then argue over where Henry should take his leave.
The priest suggests that he visit the Abruzzi
region, where the priest’s family resides, but the officers have other ideas.
They encourage him to visit Palermo, Capri, Rome, Naples, or Sicily. Soon the
conversation turns to opera singers, and the officers retire to the whorehouse.
Summary: Chapter III
When he returns from his leave, Henry discusses his trip with his
roommate, the lieutenant and surgeon Rinaldi. Henry claims to have traveled
throughout Italy,
and Rinaldi, who is obsessed with “beautiful girls,” tells him that travel is
no longer necessary to find such women. He reports that beautiful English women
have been sent to the front and that he has fallen in love with a nurse named
Catherine Barkley. Henry loans him fifty lire (the plural of “lira,” the
Italian unit of currency) so that Rinaldi can give the woman the impression of
being a wealthy man. At dinner that night, the priest is hurt that Henry failed
to visit Abruzzi.
Henry, feeling guilty, drunkenly explains that he wanted to make the visit but
circumstances prevented him from doing so. By the end of the meal, the officers
resume picking on the priest.
Summary: Chapter IV
The next morning, a battery of guns wakes Henry. He goes to the
garage, where the mechanics are working on a number of ambulances. He chats
briefly with the men and then returns to his room, where Rinaldi convinces him
to tag along on a visit to Miss Barkley. At the British Hospital,
Rinaldi spends his time talking with Helen Ferguson, another nurse, while Henry
becomes acquainted with Catherine. Henry is immediately struck by her beauty,
especially her long blonde hair. She carries a stick that resembles a “toy
riding-crop”; when Henry asks what it is, she confides that it belonged to her
fiancé, who was killed in the Battle of the Somme. When she, in turn, asks if he has ever loved,
Henry says no. On the way home, Rinaldi observes that Catherine prefers Henry
to him.
Summary: Chapter V
The next day, Henry calls on Catherine again. The head nurse
expresses surprise that an American would want to join the Italian army. She
tells him that Miss Barkley is on duty and unavailable to visitors until her
shift ends at seven o’clock that evening. Henry drives back along the trenches,
investigating the road that, when completed, will allow for an offensive
attack. After dinner, Henry returns to see Catherine. He finds her in the
garden with Helen Ferguson; Helen soon excuses herself. After chatting about
Catherine’s job, Henry and Catherine agree to “drop the war” as a subject of
conversation. Henry tries to put his arm around her. She resists but, in the
end, lets him. When he moves to kiss her, however, she slaps him. Their little
drama, Henry notes with amusement, has gotten them away from talk of the war.
Catherine lets Henry kiss her and begins to cry, saying, “We’re going to have a
strange life.” Henry returns home, where Rinaldi teases him about his romantic
glow.
Analysis: Chapters 1–5
Many critics maintain that Ernest Hemingway did more to change the
tenor of twentieth-century American fiction than any other writer. He favored a
boldly declarative, pared-down prose style, which readers of the 1920s and
1930s considered a wildly experimental departure from the baroque,
Victorian-influenced style that was then the standard for high literature. The
short first chapter, in which Frederic Henry describes his situation on the war
front, is one of the most famous descriptive passages in American literature.
Hemingway sketches the description with a detached, almost journalistic prose
style that is nevertheless emotionally poignant: “The trunks of the trees too
were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching
along the road and the dust rising and leaves. . . .” With relatively few but
remarkably precise details, Hemingway captures life on the battlefront of a
small Italian town during World War I.
In his Death in the Afternoon, a meditation on the arts of
bullfighting and writing, Hemingway advocates an “Iceberg Theory” of fiction:
If a writer of prose knows enough about
what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if
the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as
strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an
iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.
True to Hemingway’s ideal, the above description of trees, leaves,
and a dusty road leaves the reader with more than a simple sense of Henry’s
environment. The lieutenant’s language, mournful and repetitive as an elegy,
hints at the great losses that he will eventually suffer.
Once Henry picks up the narrative in Gorizia, the reader is
introduced to several of the novel’s major characters and themes. Rinaldi
immediately emerges as a vibrant and mischievous character (only Henry’s word
positions him as a passionate and committed surgeon). Henry soon establishes
himself as a conflicted soldier. Having joined the army with neither a thirst
for glory nor a fierce belief in its cause, Henry is physically,
psychologically, and morally drained by the war. He is not alone. Catherine
Barkley, who is tense and unnerving the first time Henry meets her, softens
toward him quickly. Her strange behavior—the haste with which she attaches herself
to a man whom she barely knows—belies the grief that she feels over the death
of her fiancé.
Two dominant themes in A Farewell to Arms are love and war. War, which is
described with brutal intensity, fills the mind of everyone in Henry’s world.
Thoughts of it afflict the characters like a painful, chronic headache. War
fuels the sense of despair and grief at the heart of the book, establishing the
harsh conditions whereby the loss of seven thousand soldiers to a cholera
epidemic can be considered nominal. As Henry’s initial conversations with
Catherine make clear, everyone is desperate for an antidote to the numbing
effects of war. People would prefer to think any other thoughts, to feel any
other emotions, and so plunge headlong into love as a means of overcoming their
fear, pain, and grief. Rinaldi pretends to love every beautiful woman he meets,
while Catherine and Henry, upon meeting, play a seductively distracting game in
which they pretend to love and care for each other.
Summary: Chapter VI
After spending two days at “the posts,” Henry visits Catherine
again. She asks him if he loves her and he says yes. She tells him to call her
by her first name. They walk through the garden, and Catherine expresses how
much she loves him and says how awful the past few days have been without him.
Henry kisses her, thinking that she is “probably a little crazy,” but not
caring. Aware that he does not love Catherine, Henry feels that he is involved
in a complicated game, like bridge. To his surprise, she acknowledges their
charade, asking, “This is a rotten game we play, isn’t it?” She assures him
that she’s not crazy, and, though they are no longer playing, he persuades her
to kiss him. She breaks from the kiss suddenly and sends him away for the
night. At home, Rinaldi senses Henry’s romantic confusion and admits to feeling
relieved that he himself did not become involved with a British nurse.
Summary: Chapter VII
Driving back from his post the next afternoon, Henry picks up a
soldier with a hernia. The man admits that he threw away his truss (a support
for a hernia) on purpose so that he would not have to return to the front. He
fears being turned over to his commanding officers, aware that they are
familiar with this trick. Henry instructs the man to give himself a bump on the
head, which he does, thereby earning his way into the hospital. Henry thinks
about the upcoming offensive, which is scheduled to start in two days. He
wishes that he were with Catherine, enjoying a hot night and good wine in Milan. At dinner, the men
drink and tease the priest. Rinaldi escorts the drunken Henry to the British
hospital, feeding him coffee beans to sober him up. At the nurses’ villa, Helen
Ferguson tells Henry that Catherine is sick and will not see him. Henry feels
surprisingly “lonely and hollow.”
Summary: Chapter VIII
The next day, Henry hears of an attack scheduled for that night.
As the cars pass the British hospital on their way to the front, Henry tells
the driver of his car to stop. He hurries in and asks to see Catherine. He
tells her that he is off for “a show” and that she shouldn’t be worried. She
gives him a St. Anthony medal to protect him. Henry returns to the car and the
caravan continues toward Pavla, where the fighting will take place.
Chapter IX
At Pavla, Henry sees roadside trenches filled with artillery and
Austrian observation balloons hanging ominously above the distant hills. A
major greets Henry and his drivers and installs them in a dugout. The men talk
disparagingly about the various ranks of soldiers and engage Henry in a
discussion about ending the war. Henry maintains that they would all be worse
off if the Italian army decided to stop fighting, but Passini, one of the
ambulance drivers, respectfully disagrees, maintaining that the war will go on
forever unless one side decides to stop. The men are hungry, so Henry and
Gordini, another driver, fetch some cold macaroni and a slab of cheese from the
main wound-dressing station. As they return to the dugout, shelling begins and
bombs burst around them. As the men eat the food, there is “a flash, as when a
blast-furnace door is swung open.” Henry finds himself unable to breathe and
thinks himself about to die. A trench mortar has exploded through the dugout,
killing Passini and injuring Gordini. The two remaining drivers, Gavuzzi and
Manera, carry Henry to a wound-dressing station, where a British doctor treats
Henry’s ruined leg. An ambulance is loaded with the wounded and sent off to the
hospital.
Analysis: Chapters VI–IX
Henry’s small personal stake in the war, toward which he displays
a supreme indifference, becomes increasingly clear in these chapters. As an
American soldier fighting in the Italian army—an army that Catherine and the
other British nurses don’t take seriously—Henry feels as detached from the war
as he feels from everything else in his life. He claims that the war does “not
have anything to do with me,” and he feels no real commitment to it. His
behavior with the soldier who admits to tossing away his truss in order to
worsen his hernia and thereby evade service is telling; Henry exhibits none of
the integrity that the reader might expect of the young man’s commanding
officer. Rather than chastise him for his self-serving, irresponsible attitude,
Henry helps him plot his way into the hospital, thereby contributing, in a
small way, to the overall deterioration of the Italian army.
Henry’s behavior with the ambulance drivers further establishes
his detachment from the war. The men feel comfortable voicing their contempt
for the soldiers and their belief that Italy should withdraw from the war
in front of Henry, though they know better than to “talk so other officers can
hear.” Although Henry defends the Italian army and the war effort, he does so
from a calm, philosophical standpoint rather than anger at the men’s
disrespect. Also noteworthy is that Henry risks his life for something as
inglorious as a slab of cheese. The scene in which he braves falling mortar
shells in order to dress his pasta upends the popular literary convention of
the protagonist facing great adversity to accomplish a noble end. Henry’s
objective is ridiculous, pathetic, and decidedly not heroic. That this scene
follows on the heels of a conversation in which the men maintain that “war is
not won by victory” amplifies the doubt cast upon romantic ideals such as glory
and honor.
At this point in the novel, and especially in his dealings with
the ambulance drivers, Henry comes off as rather stoic. His engagement with the
men as they discuss victory and defeat seems academic rather than passionate;
he appears indifferent to the sense of loss, fear, and anger that fuels the
Italians’ arguments, indifferent even to whether he lives or dies. In this
context, his recurring thoughts of, and increasing feeling for, Catherine are
somewhat curious. The notion of visiting her interrupts his daydreaming about
the war the night before he leaves for the front. In a very beautiful, sensuous
passage, Henry imagines himself and Catherine stealing away to a hotel, where
she pretends that he is her dead lover: “we would drink the capri and the door
locked and it hot and only a sheet and the whole night and we would both love
each other all night in the hot night in Milan.”
Even though his attachment to Catherine is, at this point, casual, Henry is beginning
to develop feelings that extend beyond the game he plays with her. The sorrow
that he feels when Helen Ferguson announces that Catherine is sick and cannot
see him surprises him and hints at the depth of feeling, commitment, and
attachment of which this usually stoic soldier is capable.
Summary: Chapter X
At the field hospital, Henry lies in intense pain. Rinaldi comes
to visit and informs Henry that he, Henry, will be decorated for heroism in
battle. Henry protests, declaring that he displayed no heroism, but Rinaldi
insists. He leaves Henry with a bottle of cognac and promises to send Catherine
to see him soon.
Summary: Chapter XI
At dusk, the priest comes to visit. He tells Henry that he misses
him at the mess hall and offers gifts of mosquito netting, a bottle
of vermouth, and English newspapers, for which Henry is grateful. The
men drink and discuss the war. Henry admits to hating it, and the priest
theorizes that there are two types of men in the world: those who would make
war and those who would not. Henry laments that “the first ones make [the
second ones] do it . . . And I help them.” Henry wonders if ending the war
is a hopeless effort; the priest assures him that it is not, but admits
that he, too, has trouble hoping. The conversation turns to God, and the priest
defends his beliefs against the other officers’ teasing. A man who loves God,
he says, is not a dirty joke. Henry cannot say that he loves God, but he does
admit to fearing Him sometimes. The priest concludes by telling Henry that he,
Henry, has a capacity to love. He makes a distinction between sleeping with
women at brothels and giving fully of oneself to another human being, and
assures Henry that, eventually, he will be called upon to love truly. Henry
remains skeptical. The priest says goodbye, and Henry falls asleep.
Summary: Chapter XII
The doctors are anxious to ship Henry to Milan, where he can receive better treatment
for his injured knee and leg. They are eager to get the wounded soldiers fixed
up or transferred as quickly as possible because all of the hospital beds will
be needed when the offensive begins. The night before Henry leaves for Milan, Rinaldi and a
major from Henry’s company return for a visit. America
has just declared war on Germany,
and the Italians are very excited and hopeful. Rinaldi asks if President Wilson
will declare war on Austria,
and Henry responds that Wilson
will within days. The men get drunk, discussing the war and life in Milan. Rinaldi reports
that Catherine will be going to serve at the hospital in Milan. The following morning, Henry sets off
for Milan. He
describes the train ride, during which he gets so drunk that he vomits on the
floor.
Summary: Chapter XIII
Two days later, Henry arrives in Milan and is taken to the American hospital.
Two ambulance drivers carry him inside clumsily, causing him a great amount of
pain. In the ward, the men are met by an easily frazzled, gray-haired nurse
named Mrs. Walker, who cannot get Henry a room without a doctor’s orders. Henry
asks the men to carry him into a room and goes to sleep. The next morning, a
young nurse named Miss Gage arrives to take his temperature. Mrs. Walker
returns and, together with Miss Gage, changes Henry’s bed. In the afternoon,
the superintendent of the hospital, Miss Van Campen, appears and introduces
herself. She and Henry take an immediate dislike to each other. Henry asks for
wine with his meals, but Miss Van Campen says that wine is out of the question
unless prescribed by a doctor. Later, Henry sends for a porter to bring him several
bottles of wine and the evening papers. Before Henry goes to sleep, Miss Van
Campen sends him something of a peace offering: a glass of eggnog spiked with
sherry.
Analysis: Chapters X–XIII
Henry’s unemotional reaction to being
wounded further displays his stoicism: he exhibits neither despair at the wound
itself nor excitement at Rinaldi’s promise that the wound will bring him glory.
As his conversation with Rinaldi makes clear, he has no interest in being
decorated with medals. Despite Henry’s aloofness, however, his chat with
Rinaldi furthers a sympathetic impression of how men behave toward, and care
for, one another. While allegiance to their countries is, in a way,
voluntary—after all, no one wants to
fight this war—men are expected to show unconditional loyalty to their friends.
This expectation adds to a code of conduct partially expounded upon earlier
when the officers harass the priest for his lack of sexual exploits. Loyalty,
strength, resilience in the face of adversity, and a healthy sexual
appetite—these are the traditional tropes of masculinity that the novel
celebrates.
In light of Henry’s indifference to war
medals, it is interesting to note the arguable connection between Hemingway’s
Henry and another Henry—Stephen Crane’s Henry Fleming, the initially
overzealous and glory-seeking protagonist of The Red Badge of Courage. Toward the end of Crane’s Civil War
masterpiece, which Hemingway greatly admired and included in his1942 collection Men at War: The Best War Stories of All Time, Fleming’s self-absorption dissolves
into a mature and quiet dignity. One can make a strong case that the stoic
Frederic Henry is an outgrowth of this newly self-possessed and respectable
Henry Fleming.
Rinaldi, with his endless talk about “pretty girls” and frequent
trips to the brothel, embodies the overactive male sex drive. But, as the
priest suggests in his conversation with Henry, sex is not enough to satisfy a
man. The priest believes that Henry lacks someone to love and, when Henry
protests, draws a distinction between lust for prostitutes, of which there is
no shortage among the soldiers, and true, profound love. Love, in the priest’s
estimation, makes a man want to give of himself, to make sacrifices for the
sake of another. Although Henry remains unconvinced, his increasing affection
for Catherine hints that he will inevitably experience the kind of passionate
and meaningful connection that the priest describes.
The characters in A Farewell to Arms are constantly seeking solace from a
world ravaged by war. This solace, most often and most simply, comes in the
form of alcohol. Throughout the novel, vast amounts of wine and liquor are
consumed. Henry depends upon alcohol, and goes so far as to consider it a
necessary part of his convalescence: when Miss Van Campen refuses him wine with
his meals, he immediately arranges to have some smuggled into the hospital.
This sort of escape is understandable, given the reader’s growing impression of
the folly of war. Just as Henry is scornful of medals and the honor that they
supposedly bestow, the novel questions whether war is truly an appropriate
forum for such lofty and romantic distinctions. As evidenced by the
preposterous purpose for which Henry risks his life in battle—getting some
cheese to top his pasta—the novel severs any traditional association between
battle and glory. Similarly, once Henry arrives at the hospital in Milan, the reader
witnesses an equally pathetic and ludicrous world in which clumsy ambulance
drivers cannot manage the weight of a wounded soldier and inept nurses cry
rather than care for their patients.
Summary: Chapter XIV
In the morning, Miss Gage shows Henry the vermouth bottle that she
found under his bed. He fears that she will get him into trouble, but, instead,
she wonders why he did not ask her to join him for a drink. She reports that
Miss Barkley has come to work at the hospital and that she does not like her.
Henry assures her that she will. At Henry’s request, a barber arrives to shave
him. The man treats Henry very rudely, and the porter later explains that he
had mistaken Henry for an Austrian soldier and was close to cutting his throat.
The misunderstanding causes the porter much amusement. After the barber and the
porter leave, Catherine enters, and Henry realizes that he is in love with her.
He pulls her onto the bed with him, and they make love for the first time.
Summary: Chapter XV
Henry meets a thin, little doctor who removes some of the shrapnel
from his leg, but whose “fragile delicacy” is soon exhausted by the task. The
doctor sends Henry for an X-ray. Later, three doctors arrive to consult on the
case. They agree that Henry should wait six months before having an operation.
Henry jokes that he would rather have them amputate the leg. As he cannot stand
the thought of spending so long in bed, he asks for another opinion. Two hours
later, Dr. Valentini arrives. Valentini is cheerful, energetic, and competent.
He has a drink with Henry and agrees to perform the necessary operation in the
morning.
Summary: Chapter XVI
“There, darling. Now you’re all clean
inside and out. Tell me. How many people have you ever loved?”
“Nobody.”
Catherine spends the night in Henry’s room. They lie in bed
together, watching the night through the windows and a searchlight sweep across
the ceiling. Henry worries that they will be discovered, but Catherine assures
him that everyone is asleep and that they are safe. In the morning, Henry
fancies going to the park to have breakfast, while Catherine prepares him for
his operation. He urges her to come back to bed. She refuses and tells him that
he probably will not want her later that night when he returns from surgery,
groggy with an anesthetic. She warns him that such drugs tend to make patients
chatty and begs him not to brag about their affair. They discuss their affair,
and Catherine asks him how many women he has slept with. He answers none, and
though she knows he is lying, she is pleased.
Summary: Chapter XVII
After the operation, Henry grows very sick. As he recovers, three
other patients come to the hospital—a boy from Georgia
with malaria, a boy from New York
with malaria and jaundice, and a boy who tried to unscrew the fuse cap from an
explosive shell for a souvenir. Henry develops an appreciation for Helen
Ferguson, who helps him pass notes to Catherine while she is on duty. He asks
if she will come to their wedding, and Helen responds that she doubts that they
will get married. Worried for her friend’s health, Helen convinces Henry that
Catherine should have a few nights off. Henry speaks frankly to Miss Gage about
getting Catherine some time to rest. Catherine returns to Henry after three
days, and they enjoy a passionate reunion.
Analysis: Chapters XIV–XVII
Just as the officers’ early interactions with the priest establish
the novel’s sympathies toward a strong, virile type of male behavior, a number
of peripheral characters who appear in Book Two (Chapters XIII–XXIV) strengthen
this sentiment. Hemingway describes the doctor who begins to diagnose Henry’s
injuries as “a thin quiet little man who seemed disturbed by the war.” While
Henry himself is disturbed, if not sickened, by the war, he maintains a
competence and self-assurance that set him apart from men like the doctor, who
needs to consult a team of his colleagues. This doctor’s character stands in
sharp contrast to Dr. Valentini, a gregarious but competent surgeon who drinks
hard and wears his sexual appetite on his sleeve. Valentini’s presence
contributes to the novel’s celebration of a particular kind of manhood, a
fraternal bond supported by a love of wine and women and by displays of
reckless boldness, whether they happen on the battlefield, in the bedroom, or
on the operating table.
Henry conforms to this type of masculine ideal by rushing boldly
into a passionate affair with Catherine. When she appears in his room, he is
struck by her beauty and declares the depth of his love for her in a single
sentence: “Everything turned over inside of me.” Henry’s exchange with
Catherine in Chapter XVI is incredibly powerful and suggestive. As they volley
simple questions back and forth, asking whom the other has loved and made love
to, the line between game-playing and true passion begins to blur. In between
the lovers’ terse, deceptively simple lines of dialogue, Hemingway manages to
point the way toward reserves of untapped feeling. Both Henry and Catherine
feel more than they say or can say. Grief, fear, and a profound desire to be
protected from a hostile world are among the forces that bring them together.
But these confessions are beyond them; rather, they speak in strikingly
nonromantic terms:
“You’ve such a lovely temperature.”
“You’ve got a lovely everything.”
“Oh no. You have the lovely temperature. I’m awfully proud of
your temperature.”
Such conversations might strike the reader as a silly, indulgent
imitation of the way lovers speak to each other. Hemingway, however, rescues
these lines from saccharine sentimentality by establishing a complex
psychological motivation for them. For Henry and Catherine, such foolishly
romantic lines offer a respite from their war-torn world. The frivolity and
banality of their dialogue gauge their desire to escape the horror of the war.
Interestingly, in addition to being
innovative, Hemingway’s suggestive style of writing served a very practical
purpose. The standards of decency in 1929America would have barred a more explicit version of A Farewell to Arms from appearing in print. Hence,
Hemingway hints at Henry and Catherine’s first sexual encounter, demanding that
his audience read between the lines. Even though such scenes spared puritanical
readers explicit details, the novel was plagued by charges of indecency. A
public outcry in Boston,
for example, led to the excision of such perceived profanities as “balls” from
the novel.
Summary: Chapter XVIII
During the summer, Henry learns to walk on crutches, and he and
Catherine enjoy their time together in Milan.
They befriend the headwaiter at a restaurant called the Gran Italia, and
Catherine continues to spend her nights with Henry. They pretend to themselves
that they are married, though Henry admits that he is glad they are not. They
discuss marriage: Catherine, sure that they would send a married woman away
from the front, remains opposed to the idea. Marriage, she continues, is beside
the point: “I couldn’t be any more married.” Catherine pledges to be faithful
to Henry, saying that although she is sure “all sorts of dreadful things will
happen to us,” unfaithfulness is not one of them.
Summary: Chapter XIX
When not with Catherine, Henry spends his time with various people
from Milan. He
keeps company with the Meyerses, an older couple who enjoy going to the races.
One day, after running into the Meyerses on the street, Henry enters a shop and
buys some chocolates for Catherine. At a nearby bar, he runs into Ettore
Moretti, an Italian from San Francisco
serving in the Italian army, and Ralph Simmons and Edgar Saunders, two opera
singers. Ettore is very proud of his war medals and claims that he works hard
for them. Henry calls the man a “legitimate hero” but notes that he is
incredibly dull. When he reaches the hospital, he chats with Catherine, who
cannot stand Moretti; she prefers the quieter, English gentleman-type heroes.
As the couple talks on into the night, it begins to rain. Catherine fears the
rain, which she claims is “very hard on loving,” and begins to cry until Henry
comforts her.
Summary: Chapter XX
Henry and Catherine go to the races
with Helen Ferguson, whom Henry calls “Fergie”
or “Ferguson,”
and the boy who was wounded while trying to unscrew the nose cap on the
shrapnel shell. They bet on horses based on Meyers’s tips; Meyers usually bets
successfully but shares his secrets very selectively. While watching the
preparations for a race of horses that have never won a purse higher than 1,000 lire, Catherine spies a purplish-black horse that, she believes,
has been dyed to disguise its true color. As Italian horse racing is rumored to
be extremely corrupt, Catherine is sure that the horse is a champion in
disguise. She and Henry bet their money on it but win much less than expected.
Catherine eventually grows tired of the crowd, and she and Henry decide to
watch the remaining races by themselves. They both claim to feel better, or
less lonely, when they are alone together.
Summary: Chapter XXI
By September, the Allied forces are suffering greatly. A British
major reports to Henry that if things continue as they are, the Allies will be
defeated in another year. He suggests, however, that such a development is fine
so long as no one realizes it. As Henry’s leg is nearly healed, he receives
three weeks of convalescent leave, after which he will have to return to the
front. Catherine offers to travel with him and then gives him a piece of
startling news: she is three months pregnant. Catherine worries that Henry
feels trapped and promises not to make trouble for him, but he tells her that
he feels cheerful and that he thinks she is wonderful. Catherine talks about
the obstacles they will face, and Henry states that a coward dies a thousand
deaths, the brave but one. They wonder aloud who authored this observation, but
neither is able to remember. Catherine then amends Henry’s words, saying that
intelligent brave men die perhaps two thousand deaths but never mention them.
Analysis: Chapters XVIII–XXI
This section of Book Two chronicles the happy summer that Henry
and Catherine spend together before he must return to the front. As his leg
heals, Henry enjoys increasing mobility, and he develops a more normal, social
relationship with Catherine. One of the reasons that the reader is able to
believe more fully in their relationship is that these chapters do much to
develop Catherine’s character. Whereas in earlier chapters Catherine can be
read as an emotionally damaged woman who desperately craves companionship and
protection, she now emerges as a more complicated and self-aware character. The
trip to the racetrack, for example, shows her fundamental independence: she
would rather lose money on a horse that she herself chooses than win based on a
tip.
She exhibits this independence even further when she announces her
pregnancy to Henry. Concerned that he will feel trapped or obligated, she offers
to deal with the situation by herself. Whereas she earlier gushes determined,
over-the-top romanticism, she now provides small reminders of the real and
hostile world in which her relationship with Henry exists. Assuring him of her
loyalty to him, she cannot help but admit, “I’m sure all sorts of dreadful
things will happen to us.” Even more striking is her admission, soon after
announcing her pregnancy, that “I’ve never even loved anyone.” We can access
her intricate psychological state only partially. For instance, when she tells
Henry, rather poetically, that she fears the rain because “it’s very hard on
loving,” the reader can only begin to guess the kinds of sorrow, fear, and joy
that have shaped her. As a result of our incomplete understanding of her,
Catherine can appear somewhat underdeveloped as a character. But her loyalty to
Henry and her courage remain strong and constant.
The introduction of Ettore Moretti brings Henry’s character into
greater focus by juxtaposing him with a sharp contrast. The Italian-American
soldier is boastful, ambitious, and arrogant; he is quick to insult others,
such as the tenor at whom, he claims, audiences throw benches, and equally
quick to sing his own praises. Henry, on the other hand, is reserved, detached,
and disciplined. Suspicious of, or simply uninterested in, the glory for which
the army awards medals, Henry maintains a calm levelheadedness that helps to
convince the reader that his feelings for Catherine are indeed genuine.
Henry’s words about cowards echo Julius
Caesar’s defiant utterance in Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar: “Cowards die many times before their
deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once” (II.ii.32–33). Although Caesar’s stoicism carries
an arrogant refusal to believe that any harm can actually befall him, Henry,
like Caesar, remains philosophical and unafraid in the face of potential peril.
His inability to contextualize the reference suggests shortsightedness about
the development of his relationship with Catherine. His failure to recognize
that Caesar dies a few scenes after making this bold declaration seems to
foreshadow disaster for Henry.
Summary: Chapter XXII
The next morning, it begins to rain, and Henry is diagnosed with
jaundice. Miss Van Campen finds empty liquor bottles in Henry’s room and blames
alcoholism for his condition. She accuses him of purposefully making himself
ill in order to avoid being sent back to the front. She orders his liquor stash
to be taken away and promises to file a report that will deny him his convalescent
leave, which she successfully does.
Summary: Chapter XXIII
Henry prepares to travel back to the front. He says his goodbyes
at the hospital and heads out to the streets. While passing a café, he sees
Catherine in the window and knocks for her to join him. They pass a pair of
lovers standing outside a cathedral. When Henry observes, “They’re like us,”
Catherine unhappily responds, “Nobody is like us.” They enter a gun shop, where
Henry buys a new pistol and several ammunition cartridges. On the street, they
kiss like the lovers outside the cathedral did. Henry suggests that they go
somewhere private, and Catherine agrees. They find a hotel. Even though it is a
nice hotel and Catherine stops on the way to buy an expensive nightgown, she
still feels like a prostitute. After dinner, however, they both feel fine.
Henry utters the lines, “‘But at my back I always hear / Time’s wingèd chariot
hurrying near,’” which Catherine recognizes as a couplet from the poetry of
Andrew Marvell. Henry asks Catherine how she will manage having the baby; she
assures him that she will be fine and that she will have set up a nice home for
Henry by the time he returns.
Summary: Chapter XXIV
Outside, Henry calls for a carriage to bring him and Catherine
from the hotel to the train station. He gets out at the station and sends her
on to the hospital. He begs her to take care of herself and “little Catherine.”
There is a small commotion on the crowded train because Henry has arranged for
a machine-gunner to save him a seat. A tall, gaunt captain protests.
Eventually, Henry offers the offended captain his seat and sleeps on the floor.
Summary: Chapter XXV
After returning to Gorizia, Henry has a talk with the town major
about the war. It was a bad summer, the major says. The major is pleased to
learn that Henry received his decorations and decides that Henry was lucky to
get wounded when he did. The major admits that he is tired of the war and
states that he doesn’t believe that he would come back if he were given leave
from the front. Henry then goes to find Rinaldi, and while he waits for his
friend, he thinks about Catherine. Rinaldi comes into the room and is glad to
see Henry. He examines his friend’s wounded knee and exclaims that it is a
crime that Henry was sent back into battle. Rinaldi asks if Henry has married
and if he is in love. He asks if Catherine is good in bed, which offends Henry,
who says that he holds certain subjects “sacred.” They drink a toast to
Catherine and go down to dinner. Rinaldi halfheartedly picks on the priest,
trying to animate the nearly deserted dining hall for Henry’s sake.
Summary: Chapter XXVI
After dinner, Henry talks with the
priest. The priest thinks that the war will end soon, though he cannot say why
he thinks so. Henry remains skeptical. The priest notices a change in the men,
citing the major, whom he describes as “gentle,” as an example. Henry
speculates that defeat has made the men gentler and points the priest to the
story of Jesus Christ, who, Henry suggests, was mild because he had been beaten
down. Henry claims that he no longer believes in victory. At the end of the
evening, when the priest asks what Henry does believe
in, he responds, “In sleep.”
Analysis: Chapters XXII–XXVI
If Catherine’s behavior in the last section casts a slight shadow
over the romantic idealism surrounding her relationship with Henry, her
farewell to him casts it into darkness. A sense of doom slowly closes in.
Catherine’s observation, as she and Henry pass a young, amorous couple, that
“nobody is like us” betrays the pathos at the heart of their relationship. By
removing their relationship from the lofty realm of idealized love, Hemingway
makes Catherine and Henry’s love for each other more real, more complicated,
and more convincing.
The lines of poetry that Henry quotes
are from Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress” (1681). In the poem, a man addresses the young object of his desire and
tries to convince her that the social norms that keep her chaste are
unimportant in the face of inevitable death. Life is painfully short, the poem
suggests; whatever pleasure can be had should be had regardless of fussy,
moralistic traditions. The poem plays an important role in shaping the farewell
scene between Catherine and Henry. In their hotel room, Catherine says that she
feels like a whore; even though she feels no need to marry—and has asked Henry
how they could possibly be more married than they are now—the strict moral
expectations of society still exert a force strong enough to vex her happiness.
She quickly overcomes this feeling and actually wants to do “something really
sinful” with Henry. A sin, she imagines, would bring them closer together by
throwing them into sharper contrast with the outside world. As she says at the
racetrack, she feels she is at her best and least lonely when she and Henry are
separated from everyone around them. The final lines of Marvell’s poem evoke
this aspect of Catherine and Henry’s relationship:
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball:
And tear our pleasures with rough strife,
Through the iron gates of life.
Given the lack of comforts in a world so ravaged by war, it is
little wonder that Catherine wants to unite with Henry against life’s harsh
realities.
Henry’s discussion with the priest confirms the difficulties of
living in a world in which war has crumbled many of the foundations—God, love,
honor—that help to structure human life and give it meaning. Those of
Hemingway’s characters who have not yet lost all sense of these beliefs, as
Rinaldi has, try to make up for the loss in other ways, as Catherine does.
Henry’s conversation with the priest illustrates the numb horror one feels when
there is nothing left in which to believe. Without a belief in God or a
commitment to the war in which he is fighting, Henry can safely say that he
believes only in the oblivion that sleep brings.
Chapters
XXVII–XXIX
Summary:
Chapter XXVII
Abstract
words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete
. . . numbers of regiments and the dates.
The next
morning, Henry travels to the Bainsizza, a succession of small mountains in
which intense fighting has taken place. Henry meets a man named Gino, who tells
him about a battery of terrifying guns that the Austrians have. The men discuss
the Italian army’s position against Croatian troops; Gino predicts that there
will be nowhere for the Italians to go should the Austrians decide to attack.
He claims that the summer’s losses were not in vain, and Henry falls silent,
thinking how words like “sacred, glorious, and sacrifice” embarrass him. He
believes that concrete facts, such as the names of villages and the numbers of
streets, have more meaning than such abstractions.
That
night, the rain comes down hard and the enemy begins a bombardment. In the
morning, the Italians learn that the attacking forces include Germans, and they
become very afraid. They have had little contact with the Germans in the war
and would prefer to keep it that way. The next night, word arrives that the
Italian line has been broken; the forces begin a large-scale retreat. The
troops slowly move out. As they come to the town of Gorizia, Henry sees women from the soldiers’
whorehouse being loaded into a truck. Bonello, one of the drivers under Henry’s
command, offers to go with the women. At the villa, Henry discovers that
Rinaldi has taken off for the hospital; everyone else has evacuated too. Henry,
Bonello, and two other drivers, Piani and Aymo, rest and eat before resuming
the retreat.
Summary:
Chapter XXVIII
Then the
truck stopped. The whole column was stopped. It started again and we went a
little farther, then stopped.
The men
drive slowly through the town, forming an endless column of retreating soldiers
and vehicles. Henry takes a turn sleeping; shortly after he wakes, the column
stalls. Henry exits his vehicle to check on his men. He discovers two
engineering officers in Bonello’s car and two women with Aymo. The girls seem
suspicious of Aymo’s intentions, but he eventually, if crudely, convinces them
that he means them no harm. Henry returns to Piani’s car and falls asleep. His
dreams are of Catherine, and he speaks aloud to her. That night, columns of
peasants join the retreating army. In the early morning, Henry and his men
decide to separate from the column and take a small road going north. They stop
briefly at an abandoned farmhouse and eat a large breakfast before continuing
their journey.
Chapter
XXIX
Aymo’s car
gets stuck in the soft ground, and the men are forced to cut brush hurriedly to
place under the tires for traction. Henry orders the two engineering sergeants
riding with Bonello to help. Afraid of being overtaken by the enemy, they
refuse and try to leave. Henry draws his gun and shoots one of them; the other
escapes. Bonello takes Henry’s pistol and finishes off the wounded soldier. The
men use branches, twigs, and even clothing to create traction, but the car
sinks further into the mud. They continue in the other vehicles but soon get
stuck again. Henry gives some money to the two girls traveling with Aymo and
sends them off to a nearby village. The men continue to Udine on foot.
Analysis:
Chapters XXVII–XXIX
Hemingway’s
description of the retreat, which is based on one of the most large-scale
retreats of World War I, is one of the most famous descriptive passages in the
novel. As the lumbering columns of army vehicles wind through the country
night, Hemingway’s prose mimics the dark and streaming motion of the men. When
the movement of the columns becomes choppy, so do Hemingway’s sentences: “Then
the truck stopped. The whole column was stopped. It started again and went a
little farther, then stopped.”
These
three chapters are most noteworthy for their powerful, uncompromising, and
unromantic evocation of war. As Henry reflects in his conversation with the
priest, abstract concepts like courage and honor have no place alongside the
concrete reality of war. In describing the retreat, Hemingway strips war of its
romantic packaging and provides the reader with only the most solid, evocative,
and precise details.
In Book
Three (which begins with Chapter XXV), the focus of the novel switches
noticeably from love, the major thematic interest of Book Two, to war.
Hemingway reports from the battlefront with a neutral, journalistic style that
heightens the realism of the narrative and proves surprisingly unsettling. When
Henry shoots at the two engineering officers for refusing to help free the car
from the mud, Hemingway’s detached prose refrains from passing moral judgment
on his action. Rather, the text offers just the facts. This spare, disinterested
tone sets Henry’s wanton violence against an amoral landscape; shooting a man
out of anger is given the same weight as pushing a car out of the mud. Refusing
to give the reader reliable moral ground from which he or she may view and
judge the scene, Hemingway challenges the reader to deal with the scene on his
or her own terms. Certainly, the support that Henry receives from his fellow
soldiers suggests that his actions are not abnormal and that there is a larger,
pervasive irrationality at work. Indeed, the lack of a well-defined sense of
right and wrong in the narrative perspective mirrors the situation in which
Henry finds himself. War has stripped the world of its certainties, leaving men
to set their own moral compass. Some, like Gino, fight for their homeland
because they believe in ideals such as sacred ground and sacrifice, while
others, like Henry, attach no such grandeur or meaning to their behavior on the
battlefield.
The murder
of the engineering officer is a testament to Hemingway’s brilliant depiction of
the confusion and meaninglessness of war. This act seemingly comes out of
nowhere. The reader doesn’t expect the normally self-possessed Henry to display
such aggression, nor does such behavior seem particularly justified. Bonello’s ruthless,
point-blank extermination of the man’s life is equally senseless. That the
engineer is guilty of no capital crime and thus merits no punishment so grave
as death emphasizes that, oftentimes, one cannot account for men’s behavior in
war.
Summary: Chapter XXX
Crossing a bridge, Henry sees a German staff car crossing another
bridge nearby. Aymo soon spots a heavily armed bicycle troop. Fearing capture,
Henry and the men decide to avoid the main road, which the retreat follows, and
head for the smaller secondary roads. They start down an embankment and are
shot at. A bullet hits Aymo and kills him almost instantly. Realizing that
their friend has been shot by their own troops—the Italian rear guard, which is
afraid of everything—Henry and his men realize that they are in more danger
than they would be facing the enemy. They look for a place to hide until dark
and come across an abandoned farmhouse.
Henry camps out in the hayloft, while Piani and Bonello search for
food. Piani returns alone and reports that Bonello, fearing death, left the
farm in hopes of being taken prisoner and thereby escaping death. The men hide
in the barn until nightfall and then set out to rejoin the Italians. They come
upon a large gathering of soldiers where officers are being separated and
interrogated for the “treachery” that led to an Italian defeat. Suddenly, two
men from the battle police seize hold of Henry. He watches as a lieutenant
colonel is led away, questioned, and shot to death. Sensing the opportunity to
escape, Henry runs for the water and dives in. As he swims away he hears shots,
but as he gains distance from shore, the sounds of gunfire fade.
Summary: Chapter XXXI
After floating in the cold river water for what seems to him a
very long time, Henry climbs out, removes from his shirt the stars that
identify him as an officer, and counts his money. He crosses the Venetian plain
that day and jumps aboard a military train that evening. He freezes when a
young soldier with a helmet that is too large for his head spots him, but the
boy assumes that Henry belongs on the train and does nothing. Henry then hides
in a car stocked with guns. While crawling under a huge canvas tarp, he cuts
his head open. He waits for the blood to coagulate so that he can pick the
dried blood off of his forehead. He does not want to be conspicuous when he
gets out.
Summary: Chapter XXXII
Exhausted, lying under the canvas, Henry thinks about how well the
knee upon which Dr. Valentini operated has held up under the circumstances. He
reflects that his thoughts still belong to him, and thinks about Catherine,
though he realizes that thinking about her without promise of seeing her might
drive him crazy. Thoughts of loss plague him. Without his men, an army to which
to return, or the friends that he remembers, like the priest and Rinaldi, Henry
feels that the war is over for him. “It was not my show anymore,” he ruminates.
Soon, though, the needs of his body distract him from these thoughts. He needs
to eat, drink, and sleep with Catherine, whom he dreams of taking away to a
safe place.
Analysis: Chapters XXX–XXXII
In these last chapters of Book Three, the already delicate world
of the Italian military falls apart. This unraveling begins in Chapter XXIX
with the crumbling of Henry’s normally calm exterior, which leads him to shoot
the engineering sergeant. The world descends even further into chaos: the
panicky Italian rear guard begins shooting at its own men; Bonello, fearing
death, abandons Henry and Piani; and the neat columns that characterized the retreat
at its beginning have broken into a terrifying mob. Battle police randomly pull officers from the
columns of retreating men and execute them on sight. Hemingway expertly evokes
the horror, confusion, and irrationality of war.
Chapter XXX presents two types of characters as a counterpoint to
Henry. The zealous patriotism of the moblike battle police stands in contrast
to Henry’s distrust of noble ideals. Their rhetoric of God, blood, and soil, in
its senselessness and cruelty, makes Henry’s skepticism appear saintly. The
character of the officer who is executed is more complex. The grim and sobering
tone of his question—“Have you ever been in a retreat?”—resonates with Henry’s
realistic outlook. The officer, however, is resigned to his defeat. He neither
flees nor protests his execution. Still, he tries to salvage a quiet dignity by
asking not to be pestered with stupid questions before he is shot. Henry,
however, is neither defeated nor interested in saving face. Because he doesn’t
believe in the sacredness of war or victory, he cannot muster a response
comparable to the officer’s. He flees not out of cowardice but out of an
unwillingness to make a sacrifice for a cause that, to him, seems meaningless.
In the context of total irrationality, self-preservation seems to him as valid
a choice as any.
Just as war has been stripped of its romantic ideals, Henry strips
himself of the stars that mark him as a lieutenant. With this action, he feels
as if a certain portion of his life is over. His escape through the river is a
baptism of sorts, a journey that washes away his anger and obligations and
renews his sense of what truly matters in the world. His thoughts return to
Catherine. In these chapters, Henry makes a “separate peace,” as he later calls
it, with the war—the farewell to arms that gives the novel its title (Chapter
XXXIV).
When Henry reflects on his farewell in Chapter XXXII, the
narrative switches from the first person to the second. This shift doesn’t mark
the first time that Hemingway uses the second person, but it brings about the
most extended usage of it in the text. Here, as in its earlier occurrences, the
second person affects a colloquial, storytelling tone. More important, it asks
the reader to identify with Henry and get inside his head. This device, which
Hemingway reserves for Henry’s more philosophical moments, is as startling as
it is engaging. The repeated “you” jumps out of a text that has used “I” fairly
consistently. To heighten the reader’s sense of being inside Henry’s head, Hemingway
lets slide conventional rules of grammar and style. Semicolons proliferate and
sentence fragments are strung together. Even after the narrative returns to the
first person, this stream-of-consciousness style intensifies. Hunger intrudes
upon Henry’s thoughts about his presumed death and the welfare of his friends,
and the narrative follows Henry as he drifts off to sleep with the diffuse
sentence, “There were many places.”
Chapters
XXXIII–XXXVII
Summary: Chapter XXXIII
Henry gets off the train when it enters Milan. He goes to a wine shop and has a cup
of coffee. The proprietor offers to help him, but Henry assures the man that he
is in no trouble. After they share a glass of wine, Henry goes to the hospital,
where he learns from the porter that Catherine has left for Stresa. He goes to
visit Ralph Simmons, one of the opera singers that he encounters earlier, and
asks about the procedures for traveling to Switzerland. Simmons, offering
whatever help he can, gives Henry a suit of civilian clothes and sends him off
to Stresa with best wishes.
Summary: Chapter XXXIV
Henry takes the train to Stresa. He feels odd in his new clothes,
noticing the scornful looks that he receives as a young civilian. Still, he
claims that such looks do not bother him, for he has made a “separate peace”
with the war. The train arrives in Stresa, and Henry heads for a hotel called
the Isles Borromées. He takes a nice room and tells the concierge that he is
expecting his wife. In the bar, Emilio, the bartender, reports that he has seen
two English nurses staying at a small hotel near the train station. Henry eats
but does not answer Emilio’s questions about the war, which, he reflects, is
over for him.
Catherine and Helen Ferguson are having supper when Henry arrives
at their hotel. While Catherine is overjoyed, Helen becomes angry and berates
Henry for making such a mess of her friend’s life. Neither Henry nor Catherine
yields to Helen’s stern moralizing, and soon Helen begins to cry. Henry
describes the night spent with Catherine: he has returned to a state of bliss,
though his thoughts are darkened by the knowledge that the “world breaks
everyone” and that good people die “impartially.”
In the morning, Henry refuses the
newspaper, and Catherine asks if his experience was so bad that he cannot bear
to read about it. He promises to tell her about it someday if he ever gets “it
straight in [his] head.” He admits to feeling like a criminal for abandoning
the army, but Catherine jokingly assures him that he is no criminal: after all,
she says, it was only the Italianarmy. They agree that taking off for Switzerland
would be lovely, and return to bed.
Summary: Chapter XXXV
Later that morning, Catherine goes to see Helen, and Henry goes
fishing with Emilio. Emilio offers to lend Henry his boat at any time. Henry
and Catherine eat lunch with Helen Ferguson. Count Greffi, a
ninety-four-year-old nobleman whom Henry befriends on an earlier trip to
Stresa, is also at the hotel with his niece. That evening, Henry plays
billiards with the count. They talk about how the count mistakenly thought
religious devotion would come with age and about whether Italy will win
the war.
Summary: Chapter XXXVI
Later that night, Emilio wakes Henry to inform him that the
military police plan to arrest Henry in the morning. He suggests that Henry and
Catherine row to Switzerland.
Henry wakes Catherine, and they pack and head down to the dock. Emilio stocks
them up with brandy and sandwiches and lets them take the boat. He takes fifty
lire for the provisions and tells Henry to send him five hundred francs for the
boat after he is established in Switzerland.
Summary: Chapter XXXVII
Because of a storm, the waters are choppy and rough. Henry rows
all night, until his hands are dull with pain. Catherine takes a short turn
rowing, then Henry resumes. Hours later, having stayed safely out of sight of
customs guards, the couple lands in Switzerland. They eat breakfast,
and, as expected, the Swiss guards arrest them and take them to Locarno, where they receive provisional visas to remain in
Switzerland.
The guards argue comically over where the couple will find the best winter
sports. Relieved but tired, Catherine and Henry go to a hotel and immediately
fall asleep.
Analysis: Chapters XXXIII–XXXVII
Up to this point in the novel, reactions to the war have been
voiced primarily by those involved in it: officers, soldiers, nurses, and
surgeons. When Henry flees the front line, his travels expose him to several
civilian characters whose respective attitudes toward the war echo those of military
personnel. Neither Simmons, Emilio, nor Count Greffi support the war, with
Simmons and Emilio going so far as to help Henry escape from duty. This rather
one-sided presentation of the public’s perception of war advances the novel’s
fundamental argument that war offers more opportunities for senseless loss and
destruction than for glory and honor.
As if to underline this point,
Hemingway skewers a more optimistic contemporary of his during Henry’s
conversation with Count Greffi. Asked by Henry about literature written in
wartime, the count names Henri Barbusse, author of the 1916 war novel Le Feu (Under Fire), and H. G. Wells, the English writer most
famous for The Island of Doctor Moreau and The War of the Worlds. Wells also penned Mr. Britling Sees It Through, which the count mistakenly calls Mr. Britling Sees Through It. Hemingway, probably irritated by this
book’s upbeat take on the war, deflates the optimism of the work’s title with
Henry’s rejoinder, “No, he doesn’t.” Henry’s comment that he has read “nothing
any good” makes clear that Hemingway dislikes Barbusse as well. Barbusse argues
against the war in Le Feu, but
the novel’s collective, everyman perspective clashes with Hemingway’s rugged
individualism. (Barbusse’s later devotion to the Communist Party and Stalin
didn’t win him many points with Hemingway either.) Beyond their disputatious
nature, these literary inside jokes reinforce the sense of impending doom: the
optimistic war novel winds up in the hands of wounded soldiers, and the grim reality
of the war belies Wells’s optimistic depiction.
Once reunited with Catherine, Henry seems content with his
decision to abandon the military. Several times, he assures himself that he is
done with the war, but his “separate peace” is, perhaps, more a matter of
wishful thinking than an actual state of mind. Henry admits that his thoughts
are muddled when it comes to the war and his role in it. He tells Catherine
that he will one day share his experience, if he can “get it straight in [his]
head.” This psychological turmoil and Henry’s declaration that he feels like a
criminal for leaving the front speak to a conflict deeper than Henry is willing
to admit.
As Catherine and Henry prepare to journey to Switzerland,
there is a gathering sense of doom. Although Hemingway prizes sharp-edged
realism too highly to rely on traditional means of foreshadowing, he manages to
forecast the coming tragedy in a number of ways. Helen Ferguson’s
uncharacteristic outburst in the hotel points not so much to an extreme adherence
to social mores or her fear of solitude as it does to an unspeakable sense that
the world is a harmful place in which a love as true as Catherine and Henry’s
cannot survive. Henry’s nighttime meditation—one of the most beautifully
written and moving passages in the novel—echoes this sentiment. While his
incredibly bleak observation that the world was designed to kill the good, the
gentle, and the brave seems to come out of nowhere, it anticipates the workings
of the cruel world that soon “break[s]” what he holds most dear.
Summary: Chapter XXXVIII
By fall, Henry and Catherine have moved to a wooden house on a
mountain outside the village
of Montreux. They pass a
splendid life together, enjoying the company of Mr. Guttingen and his wife, who
live downstairs, and taking frequent walks into the peaceful nearby villages.
One day, after Catherine has her hair done in town, the couple goes out for a
beer, which Catherine believes will help keep the baby small. Catherine has
been increasingly worried about the baby’s size, since the doctor has warned
her that she has a narrow pelvis. Again, Henry and Catherine discuss marriage.
Catherine agrees to marry someday because it will make the child “legitimate,”
but she prefers to talk about the sights that she hopes to see, such as Niagara Falls and the Golden Gate Bridge,
when the marriage makes her an American.
Three days before Christmas, snow falls. Catherine asks Henry if
he feels restless. He says no, though he does wonder about Rinaldi, the priest,
and the men on the front. Catherine, suspecting that Henry might be restless,
suggests that he change something to reinvigorate his life. He agrees to grow a
beard. Catherine suggests that she cut her hair to make her look more like
Henry, but Henry doesn’t like this idea. When she proposes that they try to
fall asleep together at the same time, Henry is unable to and lies awake
looking at Catherine and thinking for a long time.
Summary: Chapter XXXIX
By mid-January, Henry’s beard has come in fully. While out on a
walk, he and Catherine stop at a dark, smoky inn. They relish their isolation
and wonder if things will be spoiled when the “little brat” comes. Catherine
says that she will cut her hair when she is thin again after the baby is born
so that she can be “exciting” and Henry can fall in love with her all over
again. He tells her that he loves her enough now and asks, “What do you want to
do? Ruin me?”
Summary: Chapter XL
In March, the couple moves to the town of Lausanne to be nearer to the hospital. They
stay in a hotel there for three weeks. Catherine buys baby clothes, Henry
exercises in the gym, and both feel that the baby will come soon and that
therefore they should not lose any time together.
Summary: Chapter XLI
Around three o’clock one morning, Catherine goes into labor. Henry
takes her to the hospital, where she is given a nightgown and a room. She
encourages Henry to go out for breakfast, which he does. When he returns to the
hospital, he finds that Catherine has been taken to the delivery room. He goes
in to see her; the doctor stands by as Catherine inhales an anesthetic gas to
get her through the painful contractions. Later that afternoon, when Henry
returns from lunch, Catherine has become intoxicated from the gas and has made
little progress in her labor. The doctor tells Henry that the best solution
would be a Caesarean operation. Catherine suffers unbearable pain and pleads
for more gas. Finally, they wheel her out on a stretcher to perform the
operation. Henry watches the rain outside.
The doctor soon comes out with a baby boy, for whom Henry,
strangely, has no feelings. Henry sees the doctor fussing over the child, but
he rushes off to see Catherine without speaking to him. When Catherine asks
about their son, Henry tells her that he is fine. The nurse gives him a
quizzical look; ushering him outside, the nurse explains that the umbilical
cord had strangled the child prior to birth.
Henry goes out for dinner. When he returns, the nurse tells him
that Catherine is hemorrhaging. He is terrified that she will die. When he is
finally allowed to see her, she tells him that she will die and asks him not to
say the things that he once said to her to other girls. He stays with her until
she dies. Once she is dead, he attempts to say goodbye but cannot find the sense
in doing so. He leaves the hospital and walks back to his hotel in the rain.
Analysis: Chapters XXXVIII–XLI
Henry and Catherine’s simple domestic
rituals in the first half of this section illustrate their happiness together.
Hemingway efficiently marks their distance from the outside world by
juxtaposing this bliss, in Chapter XL, with news of the German attack: “It was
March, 1918, and the German offensive had started in France. I drank
whiskey and soda while Catherine unpacked and moved around the room.” A subtle
nervousness, however, hangs over the tranquility. Henry, as is typical for
Hemingway’s heroes, craves adventure and finds himself becoming restless with
what has essentially become married life. When he shadowboxes at the gym, he
can’t bear to look at himself long in the mirror because a boxer with a beard
looks strange to him. This clash of new and old identities explodes later when
Henry feels nothing for his son. As much as Henry has desired his isolation
from the world and solitude with Catherine, their exclusive union poses for him
a new problem of maintaining a modicum of independence. While Catherine is
happy to have their lives “all mixed up,” Henry confesses, “I haven’t any life
at all any more.” As the ending of the novel shows, Henry is still very much in
love with Catherine. But when Catherine wants to make love, Henry wants to play
chess. Love, the last ideal left standing in the novel, proves to be
problematic, like glory and honor.
Throughout this last book, Hemingway foreshadows Catherine’s
death. Her attempt to keep the baby small by drinking beer anticipates the
painful labor through which she will suffer, while her claim that the world has
“broken” her echoes the passage in which Henry fears the death of the good and
the gentle. These subtleties create an expectation that casts a pall on the
domestic satisfaction and relative optimism that Catherine and Henry feel. When
Catherine’s death comes, Henry reports it in the baldest, most unadorned terms:
“It seems she had one hemorrhage after another. They couldn’t stop it. I went
into the room and stayed with Catherine until she died.” Although Hemingway
shows only the tip of the iceberg, the reader feels the immeasurable grief that
extends below the surface. Here, in its ability to evoke so much by using so
little, is the power of Hemingway’s writing.
Though the novel ends in tragedy,
Catherine’s death fails to initiate an epiphany in Henry. Her death is not the
catalyst for a great change or revelation. The realization that does come only confirms the
novel’s largest thematic focus: both love and war lead to losses for which
there is no compensation. The storm with which the novel ends reminds the
reader of Catherine’s fear of rain. In Chapter XIX, Catherine speaks about an
unidentifiable malevolence in the world. The rain that now falls on Henry as he
leaves the hospital signals the same destructive forces—forces that render one
powerless, speechless, and hopeless. By ending on this note, the novel seems to
suggest that any epiphany Henry might have had, any thoughts that might have
given him a more promising perspective, or any words that might have lent him
solace would be false or impossible. They belong to the realm of Rinaldi’s
prostitutes, of Henry’s drinking, of Catherine’s lust for love: each of these
provides much needed shelter from the world’s inhospitable forces. But, as the
closing passage of A Farewell to Arms makes
heartbreakingly clear, such shelter is always temporary.
