A Farewell to Arms (1929)

This is, of course, a classic book. I'm not sure what writing was like before Hemmingway and his kind, but I found the writing difficult and strange. It got better as the book went on with lots of dialog, but it was still perhaps a product of its time, written in 1929. It is said that Earnest Hemmingway did much to change the style of prose and he won a Nobel Prize for literature. I found both the story and writing lacking, but I'm coming at that from many years past the time this was written and prose has changed a great deal. It's possible that Hemmingway's later works were different.

Classics are always worth reading, but don't expect this book to be like modern writing. The story was repetitious and if the dialog between the main character and his lady were all that happened, it's impossible they would ever get to know each other. It was crazy shallow and funny really. So was some of the dialog between the main character and his war buddies. Despite that, the author did somehow impart what was going on and how terrible war conditions were.

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Fictional account of WWI in the Austrian Alps ( )

I know this is a classic, and so thought I would like it more than I did. The writing is clear. But the story of the novel didn’t seem particularly deep or thought-provoking. It was moving at parts but, for example, the relationship between the main character and his love, Catherine Barkley, seemed a little shallow, especially in their dialogue. ( )

I have mixed feelings about A Farewell to Arms. It starts off rather pedestrian, reading less like a celebrated inter-war novel by a respected author and more like a 'How I spent my summer holidays in wartime Italy' story. The description is, even by Hemingway's 'iceberg' standards, rather sparse. You would think it would be easy to convey the beauty of an Italian town at sunset, yet in the early part of the book such a setting is described thus: It was hot walking through the town but the sun was starting to go down and it was very pleasant." (pg. 17). The book really struggles to get going, and it doesn't seem that Hemingway is yet decided in whether it will develop to be primarily a war novel or a romance novel. Consequently, the anti-war ruminations of the characters feel contrived and the romance angle unconvincing.

The characterisation is also poor throughout. Rinaldi, Henry's male best friend, was presumably intended by Hemingway to be a stereotypical heart-on-his-sleeve, hot-blooded Italian. Instead, partly because he insists on calling Henry 'baby', Rinaldi comes across as aggressively and laughably camp. However, it is the female characters which are particularly poor, spending most of their scenes crying or fretting about making babies. Catherine Barkley, the nurse who serves as the protagonist's love interest, falls in love with Henry rather easily and inexplicably. On an early date, and with only middling small-talk serving as foreplay, she falls weeping into his arms - "'Oh, darling,' she said. 'You will be good to me, won't you?'" (pg. 25) - before beginning to talk about their 'strange' life together. The reader's thoughts are similar to Henry's - what the hell - and unfortunately, whilst other aspects of the novel improve, Catherine never loses this behaviour, constantly fretting over whether she is a 'good girl', and a good wife. "She looked at me very happily. 'I'll do what you want and say what you want and then I'll be a great success, won't I?'" (pg. 96). I could cite many more examples, but it is hard to choose which to share. Simply let the book open on any given page and you'll find a gem. She seems - certainly unintended on the part of the author - to be emotionally-stunted, with a puppyish naïveté about romance: more an overgrown schoolgirl than an independent woman. This makes the subsequent relationship between the two less convincing, which is particularly damaging as it becomes a more prominent storyline as the novel develops.

After the poor start, A Farewell to Arms does settle and allows for some classic Hemingway to shine through. The anti-war musings become less simplistic and Hemingway's patented iceberg approach to description and setting is allowed to thaw. Beginning with the Italian retreat after the Battle of Caporetto, the novel really gets the kick it needs. The disorderly retreat, the panic, Henry cut off, going cross-country, the battle police - all highlights of A Farewell to Arms. Henry becomes disillusioned and deserts (although, it must be said, this seems forced on him rather than being a choice), fleeing with Catherine. "I had the paper but I did not read it because I did not want to read about the war. I was going to forget the war. I had made a separate peace." (pg. 217). The novel becomes a great read by this point, and one can add the encounters with Count Greffi to the list of the novel's highlights. Somewhat surprisingly for a Hemingway novel, by this point some moments of humour pop up, particularly the absurd bickering between the champions of Montreux and Locarno on pages 251-3. In another instance, Henry betrays his unease about deserting, to which Catherine replies: "'Darling, please be sensible. It's not deserting from the army. It's only the Italian army.'" (pg. 224).

These highlights mentioned above, and others, do allow the reader to forgive the disappointment present in the first 100 or so pages of A Farewell to Arms. However, I feel that perhaps the reason I was so forgiving was that I could identify and appreciate classic Hemingway moments, as I have read some of his other works. When I first decided to read a Hemingway novel, I narrowed down my choices to this novel and For Whom the Bell Tolls. I decided on the latter and loved it; if I had chosen Farewell first I might not be such a budding fan, for it is a decidedly imperfect novel. I initially planned to write a review based around the novel's themes, as I had for The Old Man and the Sea and, to a lesser extent, For Whom the Bell Tolls. I decided against it, as although one could analyse the symbolism of the rain, and the themes linking war to childbirth (and the all-important line on page 222 about how "The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places." ), these themes are imperfectly executed and presented. The novel picks up considerably towards the middle, and the ending is a double-gut-punch, but its flaws are easily identifiable. A Farewell to Arms is not one of Hemingway's best works, ranking quite a way behind the later For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea, but it is still an above-average novel." ( )

Has ever anything like A Farewell To Arms been written? Anything where the humor is so unfailing, the romance so perfect, the movement of the plot so unforced, so perfectly congruent with the reader's imagination and personal experience, so real? The answer, at least while I am still numbly reveling in the aftertaste, seems to be no. There is something uniquely genuine about A Farewell, especially in its unforced, minimalist construction, perfectly suffused with the subtle wisdoms which are never overstated, and resultingly even more powerful. Only something written from an experience so close to the heart can be expected to deliver such a vivid feeling of the beautiful and sad duality of the human experience. Truly, it is in itself, an experience of a lifetime. ( )