Ernest Hemingway\'s Farewell to Arms

Ernest Hemingway's Farewell to Arms is often called the best novel about WWII, because of the contrast between the horrors of war and the love shared between Catherine and Frederick. In addition, Hemingway is also considered to be one of the best writers in American literature, due to his vivid, detailed accounts and unique use of symbolism and irony. The title of the book, Farewell to Arms is a prime example of these literary devices.

The original "Farewell to Arms," comes from a poem by George Peele who lived in the 1500s in England. The poem, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, relates to the great disappointment of a soldier who can no longer fight. "This helmet shall now make a hive for bees," he says forlornly.

If Hemingway is indeed basing his title on Peele's poem, he is using it with irony. Surely, the characters in Farewell to Arms do want to continue fighting in a war. Hemingway's book does not show anything positive about such vicious events. As West (1970, p. 26) notes, the readers of Hemingway need to always be cautious about taking him to the most obvious level of meaning. He normally has many layers of symbolism.

Some literary scholars say that the title may have other meanings. West (1970, p. 26), for example, explains that Hemingway always has a double implication or "the idea and the image; and the emotional force of the idea is intensified by the shock supplied by the image." West believes that the title should be seen as completely ironic. Frederick, an American second lieutenant in the Italian army, has tried to escape from his obligations to fight on behalf of his country and, not as desired, falls in love with Catherine Barkley, an English volunteer nurse.

Frederick anticipates a life after the war spent with Catherine in Switzerland that would be of total bliss without conflict. He thinks he has left unhappiness behind on the battlefields. The couple has said goodbye to a life of hardship, action and struggle. Yet, at the moment when they are about to achieve their successful break from the past, the dream abruptly comes to an end. "What the novel says," according to West, "is that you cannot escape the obligations of action -- you cannot say 'farewell to arms'; you cannot sign a separate peace. You can only learn to live with life, tolerate it as 'the initiated learn to tolerate it' (1990, p. 27).

Young (1966, p. 95) adds "as a final gloss on the novel, we may find a small substantiation in the title. A Farewell to Arms is beautifully ambiguous in two obvious realms: "the farewell to war in the separate peace, the farewell to the beloved in death." In addition, the title may also suggest a farewell to those arms that the younger Frederick Henry had opposed to the world: "a farewell to 'not-caringness' which gives a death-in-life to which no one can resign himself."

Lewis (1965, p. 40), instead, says that the irony in the title is equivalent to the saying "be careful of what you wish for." Frederick and Catherine are now alone with their love, but Frederick is still thinking of the war and his friends. He perhaps is even lonely and bored now that he is in a more peaceful location. As a result, it is a "farewell to arms" that turns out badly. The farewell and the consequences were based on an unfortunate decision.

Johnson (1940, p. 89) adds that Frederick is not only saying farewell to arms of the war, but to all of society. He is purely separating from the war, refusing to be part of it. By doing so, he is isolating himself from the outside world. By his flight from the war, he is evading responsibility and emotion, taking refuge in simple primary sensations. In A Farewell to Arms," says Johnson, "it is society as a whole that is rejected, social responsibility, social concern. Lieutenant Henry is in the War, but his attitude is purely that of a spectator, refusing to be involved. He is leading a private life as an isolated individual." Penn Warren (1985, p. 58) explains that the individual is thrown back upon his private discipline and his private capacity to endure. The hero cuts himself off from the herd, the confused world. Frederick is then reborn into another world: he comes out into the world of the man alone, no longer supported by and involved in society. "Anger was washed away in the river along with my obligation...I had taken off the stars, but that was for convenience. It was no point of honor. I was not against them. I was through."

As far as Frederick is concerned, "I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious and sacrifice and the expression in vain." Such words of abstraction "such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the number of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates." However, concludes Johnson, Hemingway is in fact saying that perhaps the only way that one can escape the realities, turn away from society, and gain a separate peace is through death.