Code Hero In Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms

Hemingway’s literary masterpiece A Farewell to Arms is the perfect place to show and celebrate the kind of man that people could connect and look up to. The kind of man that Hemingway chose to celebrate was his own code hero by exhibiting his traits in three different men Rinaldi, the priest, and Henry and ultimately chose to not make his own main character this code hero.
The priest is celebrated as he exhibits many traits of the code hero. When Henry first describes the priest in chapter 2 he says, “The priest was young and blushed easily and wore a uniform like the rest of us but with a cross in dark red velvet above the left breast pocket of his tunic” (6). In his attire, the uniform is symbolic for the discipline that the priest has.
In chapter 4 Rinaldi takes Henry to meet his interest Miss Barkley however when Henry and Miss Barkley were done saying their greetings he saw that, “Rinaldi was talking with the other nurse.They were laughing” (15). His casual nature with women is a classic trait of the Hemingway code hero. He is celebrated because he is also seen in a good light as he is Henry’s fatherly friend he even helps Henry get to the British villa in chapter 7 when he was drunk (34). After he made sure that he was all right he told Henry goodnight and when asked why he would not come inside Rinaldi answered “‘I like the simpler pleasures’”. This shows Rinaldi’s free-spirit another trait that both him and the code hero possess. The villa is symbolic for domestic life and him not coming in means that he is rejecting that kind of commitment in turn for a freer
He does love to drink but he has no discipline in it and gets carried away. For example, in chapter 22 when he gets jaundice because of drinking so much. He has his honor stripped away even though he sounds nonchalant about it when he says, “Nothing happened except that I lost my leave” (127). Miss Van Campen had to find many empty bottles of alcohol in his armoire and he explains that, “They were mostly vermouth bottles, marsala bottles, capri bottles, empty chianti flasks and a few cognac bottles” (125) the great quantity of alcohol shows that he has so little self-control that he couldn’t stop drinking the thing that made him sick in the first place. When Catherine goes into labor he goes to a cafe. There the server wishes him good luck and he replies, “‘Give me another glass of wine’” (270) he is starting to succumb to the pressure and tries ease it with more alcohol. When he sees his son he reflects, “I had no feeling for him. He did not seem to have anything to do with me. I felt no feeling of fatherhood” (277) this shows how he is starting to crack under the pressure especially when he replies with a “No” when he gets asked if he’s proud of his son. In the end, Henry may be what Hemingway would call a manly man, however he does not live by a code and most would not look up to him because in the end it’s most of his undisciplined actions that bring him the most pain.
A Farewell to Arms celebrates the