Farewell to Arms, A

Novel by Ernest Hemingway, 1929

Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms stands as a seminal statement of the hopelessness and widespread lack of conviction that characterized the attitudes of many participants in the “Great War.” Within American letters and society, A Farewell to Arms is considered to have captured, and in a sense to have contributed to, the feeling of disillusionment about the failed ideals of the preceding generations—a significant expression, that is, of the “Lost Generation.”

The novel tells the story of Lt. Frederic Henry, a young Red Cross volunteer serving with the Italian Army in World War I. While recounting some of his relationships with his Italian soldier colleagues from 1915 to 1918, the novel's narrative and emotional core treats Henry's love affair with his English nurse, Catherine Barkley. The novel begins in the fall of 1916, after a brief prologue summarizing some of the events of 1915. Frederic Henry is a dutiful but uncommitted supporter of the war effort. While friendly with his surgeon colleague, Lieutenant Rinaldi, and his unit's Catholic priest chaplain, on the whole Henry is a callow youth who steers clear of serious emotional involvements. Having enlisted for adventure rather thanout of conviction, he is skeptical about any larger purposes. Henry observes, in a much quoted passage from the novel:

Henry is seriously wounded at the front by an Austrian trench mortar shell. He watches one of his ambulance drivers die in the same attack. Transported to a rear area hospital in Milan, Henry finds himself crippled; he is nursed back to health by Catherine Barkley. Over the next year Henry falls [Page 271]in love with Barkley while regaining the use of his wounded legs. When Henry returns to front-line duty, Catherine is pregnant with his baby.

Henry returns to a disastrous situation. The Italian Army, defeated by the October 1917 Austro–German Caporetto offensive, is in full retreat. Hemingway, though he did not arrive in Italy until 1918, writes a superbly evocative description of the retreat. Lieutenant Henry leads his ambulance unit in retreat, but after his ambulances all break down, he and his men must march on foot. Some of his men are killed; several desert; Henry is even accused by the rear area Italian Army battle police of being a coward. (Ironically, Henry had just shot an Italian sergeant for deserting his unit against orders.) After watching several Italian officers shot as cowards on the basis of little or no evidence, Henry escapes by diving into a nearby river. Now a deserter, Henry hops a freight train and journeys to Stresa, where Catherine is stationed at a hospital.

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