Farewell To Arms Fire

Ernest Hemingway’s novel “A Farewell to Arms” includes a passage that describes the the main character Frederic Henry casting ants on a log into a fire. The passage displays the lack of mercy that the high ranking officers have towards the brave men that run into the flames of war. The passage also displays the soldier's bodies or the logs or firewood being physically consumed by the fire. The ants scamper around in their dismay, of being thrust into the fire, and they continually charge back into the fire like the soldiers do. This passage represents what happens to the souls, bodies, and spirits of the soldiers when they are dumped into the flames of war. The fire that Henry dumps the ants into symbolizes the war that Henry was dumped into, and how it consumes and takes everything from those inside it. Fire in the story and in life is a destructive force and so is war, they both destroy life. In the story Henry compares the destruction of war to a fire in a store “You saw emptily, lying on your stomach, having been present when one army moved back and another came forward. You lost your cars and your men as a floorwalker loses the stock of his department in a fire. There was, however, no insurance” (Hemingway 200). Henry states this as he is deciding to go AWOL and after he witnessed Aymo die in the attack. His first hand account of the horrors of war demonstrate that war consumes everything in its path,
The small number of those who escape are not untouched. They are flattened and blackened by the flames and most are reduced to nothing more than ash. The soldiers are the fuel for the flame of war and are broken inside and outside. The passage of the ants burning in the flame is a explanation of how war affects everyone cast into the flame. The flames of war engulf everything and while most is left as rubble all that remains is altered and will never be the same