Ernest Hemingway ` A Farewell to Arms`

With its relatively unbiased plot, sparse language, and seemingly traditional background of love and war, Earnest Hemingways third unfermented, A Farewell to munition stands as one of the most highly regarded novels of the twentieth century.Beneath the traditional surface of the novel revolutionary taradiddle techniques and penetrating appraisals of political and social themes interact to produce, perhaps, the most richest and profound work of Hemingways career.The themes and emotions of A farewell to blazonry are stated indirectly, through and through an unreliable fibber, but beneath the familiar-seeming surface of the reputation, worry an iceberg, which Hemingway often took to be the apt image of his art. (Bloom 10)One important technique Hemingway uses in A Farewell to coat of arms is to tell the story from a 1st person register point of view. This allows for the inclusion of ambiguity and unreliability in the story, so that the ratifier can never be exactly certain (a s one can in wise narration) of the nature and specificity or meaning of the events that are being recounted.The commencement ceremony step toward this ambiguous and unreliable news report is to create a character with an outward traditional face that of a soldier but with a non-traditional inner-self the book is cast in the form which Hemingway has apparently delimited for himself in the novel-diary form.It is written in the first person, in that bare and unliterary style in that tone which suggests a roughly educated but comminuted poet who is prouder of his muscles than of his vocabulary. (Meyers 121)The poetic narrator caught in a war that he is unaccompanied ambivalently engaged in at an emotional direct, and wherefore caught up in a whirlwind love-affair that he may or may non be faking,generates an enormous degree of novelty in Hemingways characterization. The fact that the narrator spends a great compensate of his time contradicting himself or acting in direct oppos ition to his expressed beliefs endows A Farewell to Arms not only with verisimilitude, but also with a multi-layered theme, one which must be searched for by the reader as he or she follows along with Fredrick Henrys own quest.Henry says he is in love with Catherine, but then immediately remarks I knew I did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards. Like bridge you had to pretend you were playing for money or playing for some stakes. (Hem 30-31)This dynamic use of theme marks one of several innovative narrative techniques at work in the novel. By subsuming even his character to the (hidden) theme of the novel, Hemingway allowed for an intense degree of reader-identification and thematic resonance. The theme of the novel is probably most directly and explicitely stated by Frederick Henrys observation thatIf people form so much courage to this terra firma the world has to kill them to b reak them, so of flow it kills them.The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that willing not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but at that place will be no special hurry. (Hem)This theme, one of bitterness, regret, and mortality where heroism and courage are met only by close is decidedly not a traditional theme for war novels or love stories.By jibe deeply beyond the surface layers of the novel, an astute reader will find that the aforementioned traditional themes of the bold soldier and the happy lovers gives way to a more probing, penetrating and accurate view of love and war, at least in light of Hemingways personal beliefs and experiences.Beneath the romantic surface is a brutal truth of dying and regret and waste and sadness For a war novel, however, A Farewell to Arms ends rather surprisingly, with the strangulate and stillborn death Of Frederics and Catherines infant, and Catherines subsequent death by hemorrhaging. (Pozorski)In fact, this theme is foreshadowed and hinted at throughout the course of the novel by way of Henrys unreliable narration and also by way of the use of symbols and wordplay through the novels rising action. Key to Hemingways themes being masked or mirrored is his use of wordplay and puns.The title of course operates as a pun of sorts A Farewell to Arms involves a play on oral communication relating both to Frederic Henrys desertion from the Italian army and to his later leave-taking of Catherine Barkley after her death in Switzerland. (Harrington 59)However, there are other instances of puns and wordplay which specifically point out to the astute reader that Henrys surface level narration cloaks the deeper more desolate themes recounted above.One highly revealing play on words in A Farewell to Arms involves Frederics returning to the front before his knee is completely healed. He has only partial articulation in the wounded leg (96), a pun that captures his reticence and failings as narrator Similarly, while making their diagnosis, the doctors in Milan test Frederics articulation (96), which matches the readers task in working through this intricate text. (Harrington 59)