Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway. Specifically,

¶ … Farewell to Arms," by Ernest Hemingway. Specifically, it will discuss rain throughout the story. Rain and water are two reoccurring themes woven through the story. Hemingway uses water and rain as a subtle warning of the characters ultimate fate.

FAREWELL TO ARMS"

Hemingway wrote "A Farewell to Arms" after his own service in World War I as an ambulance driver for the Italian Red Cross. Many people believe "A Farewell to Arms" is really his own story, for he spent some time in an Italian hospital after a bomb exploded near him, and he may have fallen in love with his nurse. "A Farewell to Arms" is more than a tragic love story, it is a story about the ultimate horrors of war, and how the people fighting do not really matter. "The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially" (Hemingway 249).

Many critics believe it is Hemingway's finest novel, and perhaps that is the case because it was so very close to his own life and experience.

The novel itself tells the story of Catherine, a wartime nurse from England, and Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American serving in Italy during World War I. Catherine is initially involved with Frederic's friend, Rinaldi, but soon begins an affair with Frederic. Her fiance was recently killed, and Catherine is desperate for love, so desperate she will settle for it even if it is nothing more than an illusion. She is not really in love with Frederic, and he is too cool and detached to ever really love her.

Symbolism is intense in this novel, and usually matches some natural images in direct opposition to darkness or death. Whenever it is raining in the novel, something dreadful soon occurs. Rain is a random weather event, and so are the dreadful events, but rain is always a precursor to misery.

As he [Frederic] recounts his story, the rain triggers associations beyond Catherine's premonition that one day she might be dead in it. The wetness of the recurring rain resembles his traumas, one after another: the immediate, warm wetness of his leg wound; the warm, sticky stream that drips down from the bleeding soldier lying above the helpless Frederic in the ambulance; the unrelenting flow of Catherine's hemorrhage (Prescott 46).

In one of the most touching and yet disturbing scenes involving rain, Frederic remembers a time when he and Catherine were lying in bed together, and it was raining and storming. This rain portends Catherine's later death, in fact, Frederic is looking back at the time after Catherine is gone, and it is easy to see the sadness in this haunting scene.

If there were no war we would probably all be in bed. In bed I lay me down my head. Bed and board. Stiff as a board in bed. Catherine was in bed now between two sheets, over her and under her. Which side did she sleep on? Maybe she wasn't asleep. Maybe she was lying thinking about me. Blow, blow, ye western wind. Well it blew and it wasn't the small rain but the big rain down that rained. It rained all night....Christ, that my love were in my arms and I in my bed again. That my love Catherine. That my sweet love Catherine down might rain. Blow her again to me. Well, we were in it. Every one was caught in it and the small rain would not quiet it. "Good-night, Catherine," I said out loud. "I hope you sleep well.... I'm sorry he makes you so uncomfortable" (Hemingway 197).

Consistently, the unpredictable rain is always there just before something awful happens. It is raining just before the army retreats, and of course, it is raining before Catherine dies, in fact, she even has a premonition she will die in the rain. Sometimes, the symbolism is so complete; the entire book seems soaked in the rainwater, such as the scene when Catherine and Frederic leave the hotel in a rainstorm. After the scene in the hotel room, it appears everywhere, from drops of rain on the driver's coat, to a waiter coming to the door of the hotel with an umbrella, and the horse's head hanging in the rain. Just as the two lovers cannot escape from the rain, they cannot escape their fate, and the rain is a sometimes silent reminder of that inescapable doom.

It turned cold that night and the next day it was raining. Coming home from the Ospedale Maggiore it rained very hard and I was wet when I came in. Up in my room the rain was coming down heavily outside on the balcony, and the wind blew it against the glass doors'" (Bloom and Hemingway 19). Just after this rain appears, Frederic comes down with jaundice, just another symbol of what awful things the rain brings with it.

Hemingway uses more than just rain to create the illusion of impending doom. He also uses mud, mist, fog, and water as elements of rain to create the mood and the misery. "It was dark outside and cold and misty... There was a fog in the square and when we came close to the front of the cathedral it was very big and the stone was wet'" (Bloom and Hemingway 19).