Ernest Hemingway Hemingway combines austere realism and poetic language to present a powerful argume
nt against war and to tell a touching love story at the same time. Possessed of the most remarkable
time sense of the period between wars, his disillusioned temperament and technical skill have influe
nced a whole generation of writer. In spite of its hard-boiled realism of detail and its tragic endi
ng, A Farewell to Arms is nevertheless an idealistic book. The novel was dramatized by Laurence Stal
lings and was made into a motion picture.
Lieutenant Frederic Henry was a young American attached to an Italian ambulance unit on the Italian
front. An offensive was soon to begin, and when Henry returned to the front from leave he learned fr
om his friend, Lieutenant Rinaldi, that a group of British nurses had arrived in his absence to set
up a British hospital unit. Rinaldi introduced him to nurse Catherine Barkley.
Between ambulance trips to evacuation posts at the front, Henry called on Miss Barkley. He liked the
frank young English girl in a casual sort of way, but he was not in love with her. Before he left f
or the front to stand by for an attack, she gave him a St. Anthony medal.
At the front, as Henry and some Italian ambulance drivers were eating in a dugout, an Austrian proje
ctile exploded over them. Henry, badly wounded in the legs, was taken to a field hospital. Later he
was moved to a hospital in Milan.
Before the doctor was able to see Henry in Milan, the nurses prohibited his drinking wine, but he br
ibed a porter to bring him a supply which he kept hidden behind his bed. Catherine Barkley came to t
he hospital and Henry knew that he was in love with her. The doctors told Henry that he would have t
o lie in bed six months before they could operate on his knee. Henry insisted on seeing another doct
or, who said that the operation could be performed the next day. Meanwhile. Catherine managed to be
with Henry constantly.
After his operation, Henry convalesced in Milan with Catherine Barkley as his attendant. Together th
ey dined in out of the way restaurants, and together they rode about the countryside in a carriage.
Henry was restless and lonely at nights and Catherine often came to his hospital room.
Summer passed into autumn. Henry's wound had healed and he was due to take convalescent leave in Oct
ober. He and Catherine planned to spend the leave together, but he came down with jaundice before he
could leave the hospital. The head nurse accused him of bringing on the jaundice by drink, in order
to avoid being sent back to the front. Before he left for the front, Henry and Catherine stayed tog
ether in a hotel room; already she had disclosed to him that she was pregnant.
Henry returned to the front with orders to load his three ambulances with hospital equipment and go
south into the Po valley. Morale was at low ebb. Rinaldi admired the job which had been done on the
knee and observed that Henry acted like a married man. War weariness was all-pervasive. At the front
, the Italians, having learned that German divisions had reinforced the Austrians, began their terri
ble retreat from Caporetto. Henry drove one of the ambulances loaded with hospital supplies. During
the retreat south, the ambulance was held up several times by wagons, guns, and trucks which extende
d in stalled lines for miles. Henry picked up two straggling Italian sergeants. During the night the
retreat was halted in the rain for hours.
At daybreak Henry cut out of the long line and drove across country in an attempt to reach Udine by
side roads. The ambulance got stuck in a muddy side road. The sergeants decided to leave, but Henry
asked them to help dislodge the car from the mud. They refused and ran. Henry shot and wounded one;
the other escaped across the fields. An Italian ambulance corpsman with Henry shot the wounded serge
ant through the back of the head. Henry and his three comrades struck out on foot for Udine. On a br
idge, Henry saw a German staff car and German bicycle troops crossing another bridge over the same s
tream. Within sight of Udine, one of Henry's group was killed by an Italian sniper. The others hid i
n a barn until it seemed safe to circle around Udine and join the main stream of the retreat toward
the Tagliamento River.
By that time the Italian army was nothing but a frantic mob. Soldiers were throwing down their arms
and officers were cutting insignia of rank from their sleeves. At the end of a long wooden bridge ac
ross the Tagliamento military carabiniere were seizing all officers, giving them drumhead trials, an
d executing them by the river bank. Henry was detained, but in the dark of night he broke free, plun
ged into the river, and escaped on a log. He crossed the Venetian plain on foot, then jumped aboard
a freight train and rode to Milan, where he went to the hospital in which he had been a patient. The
re he learned that the English nurses had gone to Stresa.
During the retreat from Caporetto Henry had made his farewell to arms. He borrowed civilian clothes
from an American friend in Milan and went by train to Stresa, where he met Catherine, who was on lea
ve. The bartender of the hotel in which Henry was staying warned Henry that authorities were plannin
g to arrest him for desertion the next morning; he offered his boat by means of which Henry and Cath
erine could escape to Switzerland. Henry rowed all night. By morning his hands were so raw that he c
ould barely stand to touch the oars. Over his protests, Catherine took a turn at the rowing. They re
ached Switzerland safely and were arrested. Henry told the police that he was a sportsman who enjoye
d rowing and that he had come to Switzerland for the winter sports. The valid passports and the ampl
e funds that Henry and Catherine possessed saved them from serious trouble with the authorities.
During the rest of the fall and the winter the couple stayed at an inn outside Montreux. They discus
sed marriage, but Catherine would not be married while she was with child. They hiked, read, and tal
ked about what they would do together after the war.
When the time for Catherine's confinement approached, she and Henry went to Lausanne to be near a ho
spital. They planned to return to Montreux in the spring. At the hospital Catherine's pains caused t
he doctor to use an anaesthetic on her. After hours of suffering she was delivered of a dead baby. T
he nurse sent Henry out to get something to eat. When he went back to the hospital, he learned that
Catherine had had a hemorrhage. He went into the room and stayed with her until she died. There was
nothing he could do, no one he could talk to, no place he could go. Catherine was dead. He left the
hospital and walked back to his hotel in the dark. It was raining.
--- Excerpts from Masterpieces of World Literature in Digest Form