A Farewell to Arms an Ironic Metaphor to Explore Physical and Emotional Death - Literature review Example

A Farewell to Arms an Ironic Metaphor to Explore Physical and Emotional Death THESIS: “A Farewell to Arms” uses rain (or water), something that is known to support life, an ironic metaphor to explore physical and emotional death. I. Overview 1. An introduction of the story's parallelism to the author's life. 2. Rain is a recurring event in the whole story. II. Rain and physical death 1. Rain is used a to replace emotions associated with death. 2. Rain is used to forecast death. III. Rain and emotional death 1. Rain is used to understate the obvious misery in losing a loved one. 2. Rain is used to forecast what will happen in the relationship between Frederic and Catherine. IV. Rain and destruction 1. Rain, along with things associated with water, is used to symbolize destruction. 2. Rain is used to forecast the major tragic events in the story. V. Conclusion 1. Irony of rain in real life and in the novel. 2. Importance of the symbolism of rain. Paper Prospectus on A Farewell to Arms “A Farewell to Arms” is a novel set during World War I. It is filled with human despair, loneliness, and confusion (Bloom 17). It is told in first person, using the character of Lt. Frederic Henry, who is an American serving in the Italian army as an ambulance driver. He falls in love with an English nurse, Catherine Barkley, and the whole story revolves around how each character tries to survive life, conquer death, and placate their loneliness and misery (Burden and Hemingway 9). If one is familiar with the life of the author, Ernest Hemingway, one could easily see several allusions to the events that occurred in the author's life, particularly in the relationship between the main characters Frederic and Catherine. Hemingway served in the Red Cross in Italy during the war (Hewson 53). Not surprisingly, he was an ambulance driver, much like the main character in the story, Frederic. Hemingway got wounded and during his hospitalization, met and developed a relationship with nurse Agnes von Kurowsky (Hewson 56). A large part of the story is based on the realities that Hemingway encountered during the war, and to explore this in the novel, he utilizes several metaphors (Harrington 60) mainly using rain or the weather to forecast major events in the characters' lives (Bloom 19). Rain, or water for that matter, is usually seen as something that supports life, yet Hemingway effectively utilizes this as an ironic representation of gloom, pain, and destruction (Harrington 60-1). From start to finish, rain symbolizes the many emotions associated with death. At the beginning of the novel, one can see the immediate turning of summer into autumn. Summer is “rich with crops,” while autumn is where “ the branches were bare and the trunks black with rain” (Hemingway 7). This alone forecasts the turning of events from happy to desolate. This is because on that same chapter, death is foreshadowed. “In the fall when the rains came, the leaves all fell from the chestnut trees and the branches were bare and the trunks black with rain” and “The vineyards were thin and bare-branched too and all the country wet and brown and dead with autumn” (Hemingway 7). This is followed by the line “At the start of the winter came the permanent rain and with the rain came the cholera. But it was checked and in the end only seven thousand died of it in the army” (Hemingway 8). Here, the link between death and the pouring of the rain is stated clearly. However, there is no reference to emotions usually associated with death. The understatement of emotions is replaced with the “permanent rain.” On love, rain is used as an effective predictor of what would happen to the love relationship between Frederic and Catherine (Burden and Hemingway 11). Their relationship is actually linked to death, that is why the allegory of rain on love overlaps with death. Their relationships ends in death --- Catherine's death. In the story, Catherine says “I'm afraid of the rain because sometimes I see me dead in it” (Hemingway 113). This could either be physical death or emotional death. Physical death because it could be her own death she is talking about, or emotional death, because Catherine lost her fiance during the war, and falling in love with Frederic makes her afraid of losing another loved one to war (Seed, Benson, and Donaldson 452). Or it could be both. Because after Catherine's declaration of her fear of the rain, Frederic comforts her but says “but outside it kept on raining” (Hemingway 93). Here, readers are now assured that death will occur, and one of them will experience emotional death. Whose death it is is declared when Catherine delivers their baby. Frederic looks out of the window and muses: I sat down on the chair in front of a table where there were nurses' reports hung on clips at the side and looked out of the window. I could see nothing but the dark and the rain falling across the light from the windows. So that was it. The baby was dead. (Hemingway 327) Furthermore, Frederic's emotional death is understated as he “walk[s] back [to his] hotel in the rain” (Hemingway 332). The rain speaks for Frederic what Hemingway refuses to put plainly in words. From Frederic, to Catherine, to the rest of the soldiers involved in the war, Hemingway subtly depicts the senseless waste of life to this unjust violence to mankind. From the start of the novel, Hemingway depicts the contrast of dry and wet seasons --- of the calm riverbed at the start, to the raging torrents of river waters in the end (Moses 173). Therefore, dry is associated with good and hopeful, while wet is associated with bad and misery. The roads are wet and muddy during the second military operation. Wet, definitely, due to the rain. They are forced to retreat during this second military operation. It is during this wet season that the army experiences defeat. Rain is this story is used as an omen (Bloom 27), where current happiness is threatened by sadness hanging like the sword of Damocles. In real life, water and rain are necessary, more necessary than the dry season. Drought will cause death. Ironically, this novel uses not the reality of the use of water and rain (Harrington 61), but the allusion of dark clouds and rains to the heaviness of emotions. Its use in the novel provides readers with a chance to predict the next events, and an opportunity to imagine for themselves the emotions carried along by these events. Working Bibliography Bloom, Harold. Ernest Hemingway's a Farewell to Arms. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2010. Print. Burden, William, and Ernest Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway's a Farewell to Arms. Seven Hills, N.S.W: Five Senses Education, 2009. Print. Cirino, Mark. "Teaching Hemingway's a Farewell to Arms (review)." The Hemingway Review. 28.2 (2009): 140-143. Print. Clifford, S P. "Critical Essays on Ernest Hemingway's a Farewell to Arms Ed. by George Monteiro.]." College Literature. 24.2 (1997): 172-183. Print. Harrington, Gary. "Partial Articulation: Word Play in a Farewell to Arms." The Hemingway Review. 20.2 (2011): 59-75. Print. Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975. Print. Hewson, Marc. ""the Real Story of Ernest Hemingway": Cixous, Gender, and a Farewell to Arms." The Hemingway Review. 22.2 (2011): 51-62. Print. Moses, William R. "Water, Water Everywhere: "old Man" and "a Farewell to Arms"." Modern Fiction Studies. 5.2 (1965): 172-174. Print. Ott, Mark. "Ernest Hemingway's a Farewell to Arms: a Reference Guide (review)." Hemingway Review. 23.2 (2004): 108-110. Print. Seed, David, Jackson J. Benson, and Scott Donaldson. "Review of New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway." Review of English Studies. 44.175 (1993): 452- 453. Print. Read More