
Laura’s Rating: 3/5 Stars
This book was my first encounter with Hemingway. I’ve been avoiding his work for a while because his usual subject matter doesn’t interest me much but his influential role in American literature is undeniable. His writing style has been lauded by many and he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.
The Analysis:
The story centers on Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American serving in the Italian army during WWI. Henry narrates his journey as an ambulance driver during the war and eventually begins an affair with an English nurse named Catherine Barkley. Hemingway writes about the war and the romance with Catherine in simple, matter-of-fact terms. He describes scenes with minimal detail, giving the reader just enough to understand what is happening, and nothing more.
Reading Hemingway’s work is a different experience because his style is very understated and to-the-point. He writes to tell you what happened, not to create beautiful prose or elaborate metaphors. Hemingway does use a bit of foreshadowing, but you sense that the main character does not have all the answers, and therefore, neither does the reader. This novel is interesting because there were boring stretches that failed to capture my attention with interjections of brief, gory war scenes and sappy romance between Henry and his lover Catherine.
“Write hard and clear about what hurts” -Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway certainly took his own advice with this book. I can’t say that Hemingway’s type of writing is a favorite style of mine but it does perfectly align with one of the main focuses of the book: the grim reality of war. Unlike other writers and stories, Hemingway does not glorify war or romanticize it. He describes the harsh events of life on the battlefront and the brutal injuries many soldiers encounter. Somehow Hemingway manages to evoke emotion from the reader without using emotional words and descriptions. The book is divided into 5 parts and while none of it is exactly cheerful, Book V was heavy and depressing. I would not recommend A Farewell to Arms to many people, but it was more quality than I’d like to admit.
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