A Farewell To Arms

I wanted to do something for him. You see, I didn't care about the other thing and he could have had it all. He could have had anything he wanted if I would have known. I would have married him or anything. I know all about it now. But then he wanted to go to war and I didn't know.

Hemingway was not known for either unbridled optimism or happy endings, and A Farewell to Arms, like his other novels (For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Sun Also Rises, and To Have and Have Not), offers neither. What it does provide is an unblinking portrayal of men and women behaving with grace under pressure, both physical and psychological, and somehow finding the courage to go on in the face of certain loss. --Alix Wilber

Product Description

The best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Hemingway's frank portrayal of the love between Lieutenant Henry and Catherine Barkley, caught in the inexorable sweep of war, glows with an intensity unrivaled in modern literature, while his description of the German attack on Caporetto -- of lines of fired men marching in the rain, hungry, weary, and demoralized -- is one of the greatest moments in literary history. A story of love and pain, of loyalty and desertion, A Farewell to Arms, written when he was 30 years old, represents a new romanticism for Hemingway.

Yet in all this emotional turmoil and existential 'sturm-und-drang' of two star-crossed lovers caught in the contradictions, deceptions, and brutality of the First World War, we are also treated to Hemingway's amazing powers of exposition at the peak of his prowess. Indeed, as with other Hemingway novels, it is Hemingway's imaginative and spare use of the language itself that wins the reader over. Unlike his predecessors, he sought a lean narrative style that cut away at all the flowery description and endless adjectives. In the process of parsing away the excesses, Hemingway created a clear, simple and quite declarative prose style that was truly both modern and revolutionary.

In what may be one of the most quoted passages in modern fiction, in "A Farewell to Arms" Hemingway gives us his personal view of the world's inevitable negative impact on all of us: "If a person brings so much courage into the world that the world must kill him to break him, so of course it kills him. The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those it cannot break it will kill. It kills the very good, the very gentle, and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these things the world will kill you too but there will be no special hurry." Here the human beings are caught in the murderous crossfire of brutal forces fighting to death, and they must flee to save themselves and their hopes for a better future away from the madness. Their journey towards safety is full of the poignancy of all such fragile ventures, and someone must pay the cost of their bravery, gentleness, and love.

What one encounters as a result is a story seemingly stripped to its barest essentials, superficially more like the newspaper man's pantheon of who, what, where, when, and why, and yet somehow transformed into a much more accurate and imaginative effort, one leaving the reader with a much more artful account of what is going on. One reads Hemingway quickly, at least at first, when one learns to slow down and drink in every word and every detail as it is related. For me and for millions of others, the true genius of Hemingway is to be found in his artful use of language. This book was one of Hemingway's finest successful forays into the world of letters, and the result of his collected works truly changed the face of modern fiction. Enjoy!


A WONDERFUL WORK OF LITERATURE - CLASSIC BY ANY STANDARD   April 12, 2006
D. Blankenship (The Ozarks)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful

This book is well worth owning and reading even if you only read the opening paragraph (one of tbe best paragraphs ever written, I feel.) But to stop there would be a pity as this is one of Hemingways best works and one of the better works created by an American author in the past 100 years or so. The novel, which is indeed semi-autobiographical, takes a hard look at war and a hard look at young love. From my own point of view though, the story is secondary. Hemingways style and skill as a writer is the true allure of this work. Hemingway stated that American literature started with Mark Twain. That may be true, but it certainly got a strong shot in the arm when Hemingway himself came along. Much of the writing we see even to this day has been strongly influenced by Mr. Hemingway. I cannot recommend this work high enough. Recently it has become an "in thing" to bash both Hemingway the man and Hemingway the author. I am note sure why or what is going on here, but I do not that most of those that are throwing the stones would be lucky to get job writng Wal-Mart ads in a local paper. Do purchase and do read this work. You will be much richer for the expierence.


On the idealism of youth   May 20, 2002
18 out of 21 found this review helpful

I had a misfortune to listen to the "A Farewell to Arms" audiobook before I attempted to read the novel itself. Unfortunately, a bad speaker is apt to spoil the otherwise good novel, as this case indicates. That should also teach me to never attempt to listen to the book if I am not aware of the contents. Ever since, I follow the first things first strategy. As far as this particular book by Hemingway goes, I think the title is one of the most charming, ever.

Set in the last years of World War I in Italy, "A Farewell to Arms" is a classic novel about the side effects the war imposes on the young, 'beardless warriors', to borrow a phrase from Richard Matheson. Apart from those who find combat their duty they can't shirk from, there are young, idealistic men who are attracted to the idea of the war as a symbol of a point in timespace that will allow them to show the qualities they possess, anywhere from patriotism to bravery out of range. It is a truism that many of those young volunteers have been scarred for life by the war experiences, if they happened to outlive their enemies, that is. While "A Farewell to Arms" does not center on the psychological aspects of combat, it does emphasize the phenomenon of young people's naïveté, and how fast they mature in the circumstances. Needless to say, their idealistic spirit, while being not entirely compatible with the wartime conditions, makes them easy prey for both the enemy, when they let themselves involved in situations they are not able to handle on their own, and to young women who accompanied the army. Rarely is there a more dangerous mix than love and war, as this novel beautifully illustrates. If not for minor quirks specific to Hemingway's style of writing, and A Farewell to Arms is one of the best examples of this style at work - one might regard this novel as a grand wartime love story. Unfortunately, considered as such, it does not really hold a candle to Erich Maria Remarque's wartime novels, and "Arch of Triumph" in particular. When a young, idealistic protagonist finds himself in a hospital, his beloved takes care of him often enough in addition to the miniature army of nurses, and perhaps it's the fault of the audiobook I listened to, I admit, but the dialogues, the verbal lovemaking and twirling they exchange couldn't appear more artificial. Is that how people in love behave? Are they also so cold, frosty, even? I seriously doubt so. There is no passion between these two young people, not that I could detect any. But perhaps it's just me, and I demand a little bit more from love.

These little unimportant quirks notwithstanding, I heartily recommend "A Farewell to Arms" for a few reasons. It's a good way to approach Hemingway's larger works of prose, it's a good way to introduce yourself to the literature of the 1920s, where the memories of the World War I were still fresh, and not overshadowed by the monstrosity of what happened just a decade later. The next major World War changed the world much more than it is usually perceived, another major event of this type in recent history might be only the Anti-French Revolution and the following Napoleonic Pax Franca. Last, but not least, as indicated above, this novel provides a very interesting outlook on the idealism of the youth. All things considered, if you are in your teens, I recommend this book with a firm conviction, and if you are older and have not yet explored Hemingway beyond some short stories, or not even that, "A Farewell to Arms" will be a good point of entry to the Papa's World.


well...   November 10, 2005
Bill Frist (I am omnipresent)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful

Ok folks. I had no intention of writing a review of A Farewell To Arms, but what's been written on this page necessitates a response. This is not an anti-war novel. Well, I suppose it's anti-war in the sense that there is a war and wars are bad. There is no definitive literary content in this novel that suggests that Hemingway was making an anti-war statement. In FACT, the only work that Hemingway unequivocally dubbed "anti-war" was For Whom The Bell Tolls. There really are only two grotesque war scenes (the shell exploding in the drivers' tent and the man bleeding to death in the ambulance) and that hardly constitutes the book's classification as an "anti-war novel" or "anti-war allegory" or parable or masterwork or whatever you want to insert to justify yourself. Sure, one cane make the assertion that the man bleeding to death in the ambulance was indicitive of the slow, callous slaughter of the world's young healthy males during WWI, but it would have been impossible for Hemingway to have written the entire book without making SOME reference to the grotesque nature of the war. A Farewell To Arms, however, is not Guernica. It is not a Dadaist painting. It is certainly not that old Mel Gibson movie where he dies at the end (remember that?).

The point is, this book has thematic elements that hardly relate to war. Take love, for instance. But love, unto itself, is more a compication than anything. At it's simplest, the novel is about strength. Strength, unabashed and unflinching. It is about the eternal struggle that every strong man and woman fights until their (untimely) death. It is the struggle with the world and the universe, which so callously torments the strong until they succumb to the weight of the unforgiving cosmos.

The most fallacious aspect of calling A Farewell To Arms a "war novel" is really the fact that it undermines what Hemingway wanted the reader to take away from the book: the fact that war is simply one of many trials and tribulations that slowly and painfully break us. It is yet another painful step towards death, which is, according to Hemingway, the definition of finality. It is in death that we all end and that the trials finally cease.

Now, in terms of what's been written on this page, I have very little to say. A Farewell To Arms, whether you care to admit it or not, transcends anything and everything written on Amazon.com or any other site that presents the book simply as a commodity and a merchandisable memento from a writer whose image has been bastardized by a lack of public understanding. Catherine, for her part, is a pristine character: she is unquestionably strong and her jubilance ("cheesiness") is a reflection of her unflinching loyalty to Henry. What people often fail to realize is that Henry is not really the "man" of A Farewell To Arm. Catherine fills the role that, in any other Hemingway novel, would be filled by a man. She is not simply a sad, helpless woman whose death is an unfortunate occurance in Henry's life. She is a bastion of stength and earthly defiance.

Now, Clearly this novel is not for everyone. However, insulting it because of it's "simple language" or lack of action or simply it's supposedly stilted dialogue or whatever else you care to come up with is positively absurd. Hemingway's style was not simply an iconoclastic stab at trying to make something new and weird. It reflected the focused effort that Hemingway made throughout his life to defy the established literary community by rejecting the overwrought floweriness of past novels. This act of defiance and rejection, however, was not important unto itself. If a man simply writes a story using basic verbiage, he has accomplished nothing. Hemingway did more. A Farewell To Arms is but a primer- the basic, pure outline of a massive concept that governed Hemingway's life. The book's significance lies in implication and subtleties. Hemingway often likened his novels to icebergs, in that they were primarily obscured. It is unfortunate that so few modern Hemingway readers are willing to penetrate that obscured mass that lies beneath A Farewell To Arms.

It is beneath the immediate novel that one finds the truth: The inevitable approach of death. The inherent cruelty of God. The unfortunate way of the strong. The beauty that lies only in our interactions with the ones we know and love. This is not an action story. This is not some trite Chicken Soup garbage feigning truth and meaning.

And on that note, don't get me started on Chicken Soup For The Soul. I thank God for books like A Farewell To Arms, which exist in polar opposition to all the self-help garbage that is being vomited up by modern, brain-dead "writers". The more self-help books a person reads, the more he becomes senseless and blind. He becomes filled with a trite, meaningless happiness derived from stupid falsitudes. The first step in understanding truth is abandoning the rediculous contrivances contained in modern self-help literature, which exist only to shelter us from life's uncomfortable truths. A Farewell To Arms might be "depressing", but it is at the very least candid. It is real, and it has a depth that surpasses that of most modern literature. If you don't like it, go pick up your Dan Brown novel and be thankful everyone is happy at the end. Philistines.