Mehedinteanu Ana Maria
English-Italian
Year:III
Love and War in "A Farewell to Arms''
"A Farewell to Arms" was the result of ten years digestion of Hemingway's 555t198f experiences in the First World War.The novel is not
generally regarded as an"epistemological story''.It has called among other things a "tragedy",un unconvincing romance,a masterful depiction of the impersonal cruelty of war.The central character is Frederick Henry,a young American who is in Italy when war breaks out and who enlists with the Italian ambulance unit.
He is wounded and his convalescence coincides with a love affair between him and British nurse,Catherine Barkley.The novel offers masterful descriptions of the conflict's senseless brutality and violent chaos:the scene of the Italian army's retreat remains one of the most profound evocations of war in American literature.Nevertheless,the novel cannot be said to condemn the war:"A Farewell to Arms" is hardly the work of a pacifist.Instead just the innocent ingeneer's death is an inevitability of war,so is the war the inevitable outcome of cruel,
senseless world.Hemingway suggests that war is nothing more than the dark,murderous extension of a world that refuses to acknowledge,protect or preserve true love. Against the backdrop of war,Hemingway offers a deep,mournful meditation on the nature of love.No sooner does Catherine announce to on Henry that she is in mourning for her dead fiancée than she begins a game meant to seduce Henry.Her reasons for doing so are clear:she wants to distance herself from the pain of loss.Likewise,Henry intends to get as far away from talk of the war as possible.In each other,they find solace from the things that plague them.The couple's feelings quickly pass from an amusement that distracts them to the very fuel that sustains the.Reunited,they plan an idyllic life and promise to
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