A Farewell To Arms Entrapment Essay
Kurt Anderson
Ms. Westmoreland
American Literature
January 4th, 2013
The Themes of Doom and Entrapment in a Farewell to Arms
“If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it” (Avanzo 122). This quote applies to the main relationship in A Farewell to Arms between Catherine and Frederic. Frederic is an American ambulance driver in the Italian Army who is serving at the Italian front. Catherine is an American nurse who is stationed in the same location as Frederic, nursing the injured there. The novel is a tragedy starting with the relationship between the two previously mentioned, and ending with the death of Catherine and their child during childbirth. The two seemed to be trapped from the beginning, not able to escape the …show more content…
doom of the war. It was best said by Light, “And the sexual urge is the biological trap which leads to death” (para 5). In the novel, A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway displays the themes of doom and entrapment through the use of dialogue, scenery, and the motif of rain. The book follows the relationship of Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley during World War One. They both meet and fall in love near the Italian front where they are both stationed. Frederic, soon after their meeting, is injured by a mortar shell and sent to a safe-zone hospital located at the inner sectors of Italy. Lucky for the couple, Catherine is also stationed here as Frederic’s nurse and, the two fall deeper into love. They spend their time with each other when they can, and end up having a happy relationship. Frederic then has to go back to the Italian front as he is recovered and cleared for combat once again. He arrives at the front and within a week has to partake in a retreat due to the advancing Austrians. Frederic breaks the retreat pattern as he knows it will get shot to pieces by enemy Aircraft and decides on a back route to the rendezvous point. The rain though causes a thick mud to be formed on the roads resulting in an ambulance getting stuck. As they try to get the ambulance free two soldiers try to desert, which prompts Frederic as leading officer to shoot them for treason. He kills one but only injures the other. The Germans are seen very close to their position so they try the rest of the journey on foot. Frederic is then confronted by the aggressive and impulsive “Battle Police” who are executing all officers in the Italian army for letting the sacred lands of Italy be touched by the Austrians. Frederic makes the quick decision and deserts the army himself to avoid death. He then gets Catherine and runs away to Switzerland where they settle down. Catherine is pregnant and soon goes into labor. The baby is too big and requires a C-Section in which both Catherine and the baby die. Frederic leaves the hospital shattered and alone once again. The sense of doom is illustrated from the very beginning of the book in the descriptions of the surroundings and of the dismal Italian front, for which Frederic is stationed. This passage from the book best illustrates it; “The vineyards were thin and bare-branched too and all the country was wet and brown and dead with the autumn…Cartridges, bulged forward under the capes so that the men, passing on the road, marched as though they were six months gone with child” (Hemingway 4). This scene really paints the picture for the rest of the novel. Hemingway chose the words very closely to detail the loss that would eventually occur. The words like “dead” and bare-branched hint at the death as well as the phrase “Six months gone with child” which shows that birth will give way to violence and pain (Pozorski 3). The word choice is key here as Hemingway could have said this phrase a number of ways but he chose the word “gone” for a reason. The word illustrates something missing or gone. Tetlow best described this passage, “The opening passage is saturated with a sense of something having passed away, something gone” (4). This paragraph of doom really demonstrates the underlying theme of the book. Normally one would think about it as just a description. This description however is a precedent for many other passages in the book. The book is saturated with the sense of doom lurking around the corner. Late into their relationship when Catherine was pregnant for example one scene states it very clearly. “The baby was very close now and gave us both a feeling as though there wasn’t much time” (Hemingway 311). This is one of the boldest descriptions of the impending doom in the book, yet one that is easily overlooked. When reading this passage, the reader has the feeling that the time is short because the baby will require a large amount of attention. However it is hinting at the doom that is Catherine’s death in child birth. This is really eerily pointing at the death near the end of the book. During childbirth there is yet another hint at the forthcoming death. “Hemingway’s linguistic reference to the gas mask evokes soldier’s gas masks” (Pozorski 5). Even the use of gas is an underlying hint of the death. The world at this time was just beginning to use gas warfare which killed thousands upon thousands of soldiers on the front and was a symbol of death. This is exactly why Hemingway used the gas mask. Its symbolization helped to summarize what was going to happen to Catherine. Along with the hints of death, the hints of entrapment are also shown in the book. Entrapment goes hand and hand with doom in the novel showing how overall trapped and doomed the couple really is. One such example comes from near the end of the book when Frederick describes a story in his head. The story is a recount of when he was once camping and was around a campfire. In the story he threw a log into the fire and the log was filled with ants. They start to run towards the fire at first then turn around and run toward the cooler end of the stick. They get trapped here and are eventually burned by the fire. (Hemingway 327) This is Frederick’s analogy on the war and life itself. The ants are soldiers and the people of the world. No matter what they do, they all eventually die in the end. He is stating that life itself is a trap because no one escapes death. (Tetlow 8) This morbid realization helps to develop the overwhelming sense of entrapment in the story. Another instance happens during the retreat. “Then Frederick and Bonillo are trapped in their hideout in a barn loft accessible only by a ladder, again conveying the image of confinement” (Tetlow 8). The description of the scene helps show the bleak and entrapped situation the men are facing. At this point in the story they are trapped between the two fronts of the war. Behind them are the Germans enemies and to the front is the trigger-happy Italian guard who shooting at anything that moves due to the fear of the being flanked and overrun. The ladder in this scene symbolically represents the entrapment as it as it portrays to fact that there is only way out of the loft. (Tetlow 8) It shows that the two men are truly trapped in their surroundings and in life itself. Hemingway also uses another symbol to hint at the doom and entrapment of the main characters. The motif of rain is also a very prominent source of doom in the story. “The motif of rain is also used in the book, 24 times in Chapter 26 just before the retreat and 17 times during the retreat” (Tetlow 9). The rain is prominent during the retreat. The rains starts before the retreat and is falling throughout it as well. The retreat is a scene of chaos, disorder, entrapment, and death, as most large scale military movements are. The rain helps to predict the tragedies that will unfold throughout the rest of the novel. “The motif of rain also creates a dreary note in Book two when Catherine and Frederic are at the hotel in Milan, the night Frederic has to return to the front following his injury.” (Tetlow 9) The rain is present throughout the scene. The rain here portrays the dreary mood right before Frederic has to go back to the front, and helps to foreshadow the many problems he will face on the front lines. The rain also compliments Catherine’s demise near end of the book. The very end of the book entails the fall and death of the main character Catherine. The rain during her death, like Frederic, never leaves her side. It falls constantly before and after the she passes. “It rained for 3 days before Frederic and Catherine go into town for the birth of the baby” (Tetlow 11). The rain here predicts the tragedy that a routine childbirth is going to bring. The dreamy snow which symbolizes happiness and peace is shattered by the dreary rain that washes it away (Tetlow 11). Just like how Frederic’s life will shatter when Catherine dies. This is best seen through the last line of the book. “After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain” (Hemingway 333). This shows the desolateness of the situation and the overall sadness which is of course complimented by the falling rain. It shows the crushed Frederic walking in the dreary and destroying rain. The motif of rain also helps to predict the symbol of entrapment. The entrapment faced by the characters is also shadowed by the rain. “The persistent motif of rain is perhaps the most obvious source of the feeling of doom and entrapment in the novel” (Tetlow 8). Here Tetlow describes the role of the rain. The rain is always accompanying the couple during every hardship. It shows how they cannot escape the troubles that are constantly following them showing how truly trapped they are. “But those that will not break it kill. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If none of those you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry” (Hemingway 10). This scene is described while Frederic is waiting in the rain to hear the news about Catherine. It is one of the darkest in the novel. It shows the entrapment that Frederic is feeling in life. It states that there is no escape and that like the story with the log, everyone will die in the end. It is a very chilling and morbid conclusion by Frederic that illustrates the trapped and hopeless human life. This telling monologue is also accompanied by dialogue through the novel that also illustrates the themes. Dialogue is a common element of this particular novel by Hemingway; however he carefully worded it to portray the themes of the book. It starts with the first few days of the couple’s relationship. “In tears Catherine says ‘We’re going to have a strange life.’” (MacDonald para 3) This is the beginning of the tragic relationship that is going to be the basis of the book. Here Hemingway is using Catherine to hint at the strange and ultimately deadly relationship that the two are going to end up having. “Up to this point fear and denial of it has been present in the dialogue among all the characters” (Tetlow 6). This is a reflection of right before Frederic was injured. It shows how the dialogue before this was pointing towards the injury. The denial of the war was actually predicting a scene where the war would become ultimately and quickly become real. The dialogue of Frederic’s friend Ranaldi predicts the dreary and doomed end as well. Ranaldi’s dialogue is dreary and sets an overall ominous mood to the situation. “No we never get anything. We are born with all we have and we never learn” (Hemingway 171). This dialogue is very dark and predicts the end of the book. Frederic thinks he can get out the war and become happy in the end. This dialogue however disproves it and predicts how Frederic will not actually be able to make it out of the war and life a happy life. He will never gain anything, but stay where he is. “There’s nothing else I tell you. Not a damned thing I know when I stop working” (Light para. 5). This too helps to set the mood of the story. It shows the desolation of the point in time. He is stating that there is nothing else in life except the work he is doing. This hint at the life Frederic will have when he deserts the army, his job, later on. It demonstrates that he will end up having nothing which ultimately comes true. The dialogue of Ranaldi and other characters in the book also show the entrapment. The dialogue in the book also helps to show the entrapment that is facing Catherine and Frederic.
“If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.” (Avanzo 122) This is a very ominous but true statement in regards to this story. Catherine and her fiancé loved each other and he ended up dying. Catherine and Frederic’s relationship also ended in death and pain. This shows the entrapment that love brings. “On his monologue where he constantly says “but she can’t die” (Tetlow 11). In the monologue Frederic mentions “but she can’t die” over seven times always coming back to that same point. (Tetlow 11) This shows the entrapment of the situation. No matter what he keeps coming back to the fact that Catherine is going to die and he cannot do anything to save her. These elements help to show the entrapment of the book. Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms is like an onion. You can take it for what it is or you can peel away the layers and go deeper into the novel. He uses the scenery and dialogue to help display the mood of the scenario and to foreshadow the end of the book. The use of rain helps also with the foreshadowing as it is always present during and before a tragic event. The use of these three elements helps to carry the themes of entrapment and doom through Hemingway’s A Farewell to
Arms.
Ms. Westmoreland
American Literature
January 4th, 2013
The Themes of Doom and Entrapment in a Farewell to Arms
“If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it” (Avanzo 122). This quote applies to the main relationship in A Farewell to Arms between Catherine and Frederic. Frederic is an American ambulance driver in the Italian Army who is serving at the Italian front. Catherine is an American nurse who is stationed in the same location as Frederic, nursing the injured there. The novel is a tragedy starting with the relationship between the two previously mentioned, and ending with the death of Catherine and their child during childbirth. The two seemed to be trapped from the beginning, not able to escape the …show more content…
doom of the war. It was best said by Light, “And the sexual urge is the biological trap which leads to death” (para 5). In the novel, A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway displays the themes of doom and entrapment through the use of dialogue, scenery, and the motif of rain. The book follows the relationship of Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley during World War One. They both meet and fall in love near the Italian front where they are both stationed. Frederic, soon after their meeting, is injured by a mortar shell and sent to a safe-zone hospital located at the inner sectors of Italy. Lucky for the couple, Catherine is also stationed here as Frederic’s nurse and, the two fall deeper into love. They spend their time with each other when they can, and end up having a happy relationship. Frederic then has to go back to the Italian front as he is recovered and cleared for combat once again. He arrives at the front and within a week has to partake in a retreat due to the advancing Austrians. Frederic breaks the retreat pattern as he knows it will get shot to pieces by enemy Aircraft and decides on a back route to the rendezvous point. The rain though causes a thick mud to be formed on the roads resulting in an ambulance getting stuck. As they try to get the ambulance free two soldiers try to desert, which prompts Frederic as leading officer to shoot them for treason. He kills one but only injures the other. The Germans are seen very close to their position so they try the rest of the journey on foot. Frederic is then confronted by the aggressive and impulsive “Battle Police” who are executing all officers in the Italian army for letting the sacred lands of Italy be touched by the Austrians. Frederic makes the quick decision and deserts the army himself to avoid death. He then gets Catherine and runs away to Switzerland where they settle down. Catherine is pregnant and soon goes into labor. The baby is too big and requires a C-Section in which both Catherine and the baby die. Frederic leaves the hospital shattered and alone once again. The sense of doom is illustrated from the very beginning of the book in the descriptions of the surroundings and of the dismal Italian front, for which Frederic is stationed. This passage from the book best illustrates it; “The vineyards were thin and bare-branched too and all the country was wet and brown and dead with the autumn…Cartridges, bulged forward under the capes so that the men, passing on the road, marched as though they were six months gone with child” (Hemingway 4). This scene really paints the picture for the rest of the novel. Hemingway chose the words very closely to detail the loss that would eventually occur. The words like “dead” and bare-branched hint at the death as well as the phrase “Six months gone with child” which shows that birth will give way to violence and pain (Pozorski 3). The word choice is key here as Hemingway could have said this phrase a number of ways but he chose the word “gone” for a reason. The word illustrates something missing or gone. Tetlow best described this passage, “The opening passage is saturated with a sense of something having passed away, something gone” (4). This paragraph of doom really demonstrates the underlying theme of the book. Normally one would think about it as just a description. This description however is a precedent for many other passages in the book. The book is saturated with the sense of doom lurking around the corner. Late into their relationship when Catherine was pregnant for example one scene states it very clearly. “The baby was very close now and gave us both a feeling as though there wasn’t much time” (Hemingway 311). This is one of the boldest descriptions of the impending doom in the book, yet one that is easily overlooked. When reading this passage, the reader has the feeling that the time is short because the baby will require a large amount of attention. However it is hinting at the doom that is Catherine’s death in child birth. This is really eerily pointing at the death near the end of the book. During childbirth there is yet another hint at the forthcoming death. “Hemingway’s linguistic reference to the gas mask evokes soldier’s gas masks” (Pozorski 5). Even the use of gas is an underlying hint of the death. The world at this time was just beginning to use gas warfare which killed thousands upon thousands of soldiers on the front and was a symbol of death. This is exactly why Hemingway used the gas mask. Its symbolization helped to summarize what was going to happen to Catherine. Along with the hints of death, the hints of entrapment are also shown in the book. Entrapment goes hand and hand with doom in the novel showing how overall trapped and doomed the couple really is. One such example comes from near the end of the book when Frederick describes a story in his head. The story is a recount of when he was once camping and was around a campfire. In the story he threw a log into the fire and the log was filled with ants. They start to run towards the fire at first then turn around and run toward the cooler end of the stick. They get trapped here and are eventually burned by the fire. (Hemingway 327) This is Frederick’s analogy on the war and life itself. The ants are soldiers and the people of the world. No matter what they do, they all eventually die in the end. He is stating that life itself is a trap because no one escapes death. (Tetlow 8) This morbid realization helps to develop the overwhelming sense of entrapment in the story. Another instance happens during the retreat. “Then Frederick and Bonillo are trapped in their hideout in a barn loft accessible only by a ladder, again conveying the image of confinement” (Tetlow 8). The description of the scene helps show the bleak and entrapped situation the men are facing. At this point in the story they are trapped between the two fronts of the war. Behind them are the Germans enemies and to the front is the trigger-happy Italian guard who shooting at anything that moves due to the fear of the being flanked and overrun. The ladder in this scene symbolically represents the entrapment as it as it portrays to fact that there is only way out of the loft. (Tetlow 8) It shows that the two men are truly trapped in their surroundings and in life itself. Hemingway also uses another symbol to hint at the doom and entrapment of the main characters. The motif of rain is also a very prominent source of doom in the story. “The motif of rain is also used in the book, 24 times in Chapter 26 just before the retreat and 17 times during the retreat” (Tetlow 9). The rain is prominent during the retreat. The rains starts before the retreat and is falling throughout it as well. The retreat is a scene of chaos, disorder, entrapment, and death, as most large scale military movements are. The rain helps to predict the tragedies that will unfold throughout the rest of the novel. “The motif of rain also creates a dreary note in Book two when Catherine and Frederic are at the hotel in Milan, the night Frederic has to return to the front following his injury.” (Tetlow 9) The rain is present throughout the scene. The rain here portrays the dreary mood right before Frederic has to go back to the front, and helps to foreshadow the many problems he will face on the front lines. The rain also compliments Catherine’s demise near end of the book. The very end of the book entails the fall and death of the main character Catherine. The rain during her death, like Frederic, never leaves her side. It falls constantly before and after the she passes. “It rained for 3 days before Frederic and Catherine go into town for the birth of the baby” (Tetlow 11). The rain here predicts the tragedy that a routine childbirth is going to bring. The dreamy snow which symbolizes happiness and peace is shattered by the dreary rain that washes it away (Tetlow 11). Just like how Frederic’s life will shatter when Catherine dies. This is best seen through the last line of the book. “After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain” (Hemingway 333). This shows the desolateness of the situation and the overall sadness which is of course complimented by the falling rain. It shows the crushed Frederic walking in the dreary and destroying rain. The motif of rain also helps to predict the symbol of entrapment. The entrapment faced by the characters is also shadowed by the rain. “The persistent motif of rain is perhaps the most obvious source of the feeling of doom and entrapment in the novel” (Tetlow 8). Here Tetlow describes the role of the rain. The rain is always accompanying the couple during every hardship. It shows how they cannot escape the troubles that are constantly following them showing how truly trapped they are. “But those that will not break it kill. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If none of those you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry” (Hemingway 10). This scene is described while Frederic is waiting in the rain to hear the news about Catherine. It is one of the darkest in the novel. It shows the entrapment that Frederic is feeling in life. It states that there is no escape and that like the story with the log, everyone will die in the end. It is a very chilling and morbid conclusion by Frederic that illustrates the trapped and hopeless human life. This telling monologue is also accompanied by dialogue through the novel that also illustrates the themes. Dialogue is a common element of this particular novel by Hemingway; however he carefully worded it to portray the themes of the book. It starts with the first few days of the couple’s relationship. “In tears Catherine says ‘We’re going to have a strange life.’” (MacDonald para 3) This is the beginning of the tragic relationship that is going to be the basis of the book. Here Hemingway is using Catherine to hint at the strange and ultimately deadly relationship that the two are going to end up having. “Up to this point fear and denial of it has been present in the dialogue among all the characters” (Tetlow 6). This is a reflection of right before Frederic was injured. It shows how the dialogue before this was pointing towards the injury. The denial of the war was actually predicting a scene where the war would become ultimately and quickly become real. The dialogue of Frederic’s friend Ranaldi predicts the dreary and doomed end as well. Ranaldi’s dialogue is dreary and sets an overall ominous mood to the situation. “No we never get anything. We are born with all we have and we never learn” (Hemingway 171). This dialogue is very dark and predicts the end of the book. Frederic thinks he can get out the war and become happy in the end. This dialogue however disproves it and predicts how Frederic will not actually be able to make it out of the war and life a happy life. He will never gain anything, but stay where he is. “There’s nothing else I tell you. Not a damned thing I know when I stop working” (Light para. 5). This too helps to set the mood of the story. It shows the desolation of the point in time. He is stating that there is nothing else in life except the work he is doing. This hint at the life Frederic will have when he deserts the army, his job, later on. It demonstrates that he will end up having nothing which ultimately comes true. The dialogue of Ranaldi and other characters in the book also show the entrapment. The dialogue in the book also helps to show the entrapment that is facing Catherine and Frederic.
“If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.” (Avanzo 122) This is a very ominous but true statement in regards to this story. Catherine and her fiancé loved each other and he ended up dying. Catherine and Frederic’s relationship also ended in death and pain. This shows the entrapment that love brings. “On his monologue where he constantly says “but she can’t die” (Tetlow 11). In the monologue Frederic mentions “but she can’t die” over seven times always coming back to that same point. (Tetlow 11) This shows the entrapment of the situation. No matter what he keeps coming back to the fact that Catherine is going to die and he cannot do anything to save her. These elements help to show the entrapment of the book. Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms is like an onion. You can take it for what it is or you can peel away the layers and go deeper into the novel. He uses the scenery and dialogue to help display the mood of the scenario and to foreshadow the end of the book. The use of rain helps also with the foreshadowing as it is always present during and before a tragic event. The use of these three elements helps to carry the themes of entrapment and doom through Hemingway’s A Farewell to
Arms.