A Farewell to Arms
SOME
INFO ON ERNEST HEMINGWAY
The first boy of Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, a physician, and Grace Hall Hemingway, Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in a suburb of Chicago. He was educated in the public schools and began to compose in high school, where he was active and outstanding, but the parts of his boyhood that mattered most were summers spent with his household on Walloon Lake in upper Michigan. On graduation from high school in 1917, impatient for a less sheltered environment, he did non come in college but went to Kansas City, where he was employed as a newsman for the Star. He was repeatedly rejected for military service because of a faulty oculus, but he managed to come in World War I as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross. On July 8, 1918, non yet 19 old ages old, he was injured on the Austro-Italian forepart at Fossalta di Piave. Decorated for gallantry and hospitalized in Milan, he fell in love with a Red Cross nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky, who declined to get married him. These were experiences he was ne’er to bury.
After recovering at place, Hemingway renewed his attempts at authorship, for a piece worked at uneven occupations in Chicago, and sailed for France as a foreign letter writer for the Toronto Star. Advised and encouraged by other American authors in Paris — F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound — he began to see his nonjournalistic work appear in print at that place, and in 1923 his first of import book, a aggregation of narratives called In Our Time, was published in New York City. In 1926 he published The Sun Besides Rises, a novel with which he scored his first solid success. A pessimistic but scintillating book, it deals with a group of aimless exiles in France and Spain — members of the postwar “ lost coevals, ” a phrase that Hemingway scorned while doing it celebrated. This work besides introduced him to the spotlight, which he both craved and resented for the remainder of his life. Hemingway ‘s The Downpours of Spring, a lampoon of the American author Sherwood Anderson ‘s book Dark Laughter, besides appeared in 1926.The authorship of books occupied him for most of the postwar old ages. He remained based in Paris, but he traveled widely for the skiing, tauromachy, fishing, or runing that by so had become portion of his life and formed the background for much of his authorship. His place as a maestro of short fiction had been advanced by Men Without Women in 1927 and exhaustively established with the narratives in Winner Take Nothing in 1933.
Among his finest narratives are “ The Killers, ” “ The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, ” and “ The Snows of Kilimanjaro. ” At least in the public position, nevertheless, the novel A Farewell to Arms ( 1929 ) overshadowed such plants. Reaching back to his experience as a immature soldier in Italy, Hemingway developed a inexorable but lyrical novel of great power, blending love narrative with war narrative. While functioning with the Italian ambulance service during World War I, the American lieutenant Frederic Henry falls in love with the English nurse Catherine Barkley, who tends him during his convalescence after being wounded. She becomes pregnant by him, but he must return to his station. Henry deserts during the Italians ‘ black retreat after the Battle of Caporetto, and the reunited twosome flee Italy by traversing the boundary line into Switzerland. There, nevertheless, Catherine and her babe dice during childbearing, go forthing Henry desolate at the loss of the great love of his life.
Hemingway ‘s love of Spain and his passion for bullfighting resulted in Death in the Afternoon ( 1932 ) , a erudite survey of a spectacle he saw more as tragic ceremonial than as athletics. Similarly, a campaign he took in 1933-34 in the big-game part of Tanganyika resulted in The Green Hills of Africa ( 1935 ) , an history of big-game hunting. Largely for the fishing, he bought a house in Key West, Florida, and bought his ain fishing boat. A minor novel of 1937 called To Have and Have Not is about a Caribbean desperate criminal and is set against a background of low-class force and upper-class degeneracy in Key West during the Great Depression.By now Spain was in the thick of civil war. Still profoundly attached to that state, Hemingway made four trips at that place, one time more a letter writer. He raised money for the Republicans in their battle against the Patriots under General Francisco Franco, and he wrote a drama called The Fifth Column ( 1938 ) , which is set in besieged Madrid. As in many of his books, the supporter of the drama is based on the writer. Following his last visit to the Spanish war he purchased Finca Vigia ( “ Lookout Farm ” ) , an unpretentious estate outside Havana, Cuba, and went to cover another war — the Nipponese invasion of China.
The crop of Hemingway ‘s considerable experience of Spain in war and peace was the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls ( 1940 ) , a significant and impressive work that some critics see his finest novel, in penchant to A Farewell to Arms. It was besides the most successful of all his books as measured in gross revenues. Set during the Spanish Civil War, it tells of Robert Jordan, an American voluntary who is sent to fall in a guerilla set behind the Nationalist lines in the Guadarrama Mountains. Most of the fresh concerns Jordan ‘s dealingss with the varied personalities of the set, including the miss Maria, with whom he falls in love. Through duologue, flashbacks, and narratives, Hemingway offers stating and graphic profiles of the Spanish character and scathingly depicts the inhuman treatment and inhumaneness stirred up by the civil war. Jordan ‘s mission is to blow up a strategic span near Segovia in order to help a approaching Republican onslaught, which he realizes is doomed to neglect. In an ambiance of impending catastrophe, he blows up the span but is hurt and makes his withdrawing companions leave him behind, where he prepares a last-minute opposition to his Nationalist pursuers.All of his life Hemingway was fascinated by war — in A Farewell to Arms he focused on its inanity, in For Whom the Bell Tolls on the chumminess it creates — and as World War II progressed he made his manner to London as a journalist. He flew several missions with the Royal Air Force and crossed the English Channel with American military personnels on D-Day ( June 6, 1944 ) .
Attaching himself to the 22nd Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division, he saw a good trade of action in Normandy and in the Battle of the Bulge. He besides participated in the release of Paris and, although apparently a journalist, he impressed professional soldiers non merely as a adult male of bravery in conflict but besides as a existent expert in military affairs, guerilla activities, and intelligence collection.Following the war in Europe, Hemingway returned to his place in Cuba and began to work earnestly once more. He besides traveled widely, and on a trip to Africa he was injured in a plane clang. Soon after ( in 1953 ) , he received the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for The Old Man and the Sea ( 1952 ) , a short, epic novel about an old Cuban fisherman who, after an drawn-out battle, maulerss and boats a elephantine marlin merely to hold it eaten by rapacious sharks during the long ocean trip place.
This book, which played a function in deriving for Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, was as enthusiastically praised as his old novel, Across the River and into the Trees ( 1950 ) , the narrative of a professional ground forces officer who dies while on leave in Venice, had been damned.By 1960 Fidel Castro ‘s revolution had driven Hemingway from Cuba. He settled in Ketchum, Idaho, and tried to take his life and make his work as earlier. For a piece he succeeded, but, anxiety-ridden and down, he was twice hospitalized at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where he received electroshock interventions. Two yearss after his return to the house in Ketchum, he took his life with a scattergun. Hemingway had married four times and fathered three sons.He left behind a significant sum of manuscript, some which has been published. A Movable Feast, an entertaining memoir of his old ages in Paris ( 1921-26 ) before he was celebrated, was issued in 1964. Islands in the Stream, three closely related novelettes turning straight out of his peacetime memories of the Caribbean island of Bimini, of Havana during World War II, and of seeking for U-boats off Cuba, appeared in 1970.Hemingway ‘s characters obviously embody his ain values and position of life.
The chief characters of The Sun Besides Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls are immature work forces whose strength and assurance nevertheless coexist with a sensitiveness that leaves them profoundly scarred by their wartime experiences. War was for Hemingway a powerful symbol of the universe, which he viewed as complex, filled with moral ambiguities, and offering about ineluctable hurting, injury, and devastation. To last in such a universe, and possibly emerge winning, one must carry on oneself with honor, bravery, endurance, and self-respect, a set of rules known as “ the Hemingway codification. ”
To act good in the alone, losing conflict with life is to demo “ grace under force per unit area ” and constitutes in itself a sort of triumph, a subject clearly established in The Old Man and the Sea.Hemingway ‘s prose manner was likely the most widely imitated of any in the twentieth century. He wished to deprive his ain usage of linguistic communication of nonessentials, fring it of all hints of verboseness, embroidery, and mawkishness. In endeavoring to be as nonsubjective and honest as possible, Hemingway hit upon the device of depicting a series of actions utilizing short, simple sentences from which all remark or emotional rhetoric have been eliminated. These sentences are composed mostly of nouns and verbs, have few adjectives and adverbs, and rely on repeat and beat for much of their consequence. The ensuing terse, concentrated prose is concrete and unemotional yet is frequently resonating and capable of conveying great sarcasm through understatement. Hemingway ‘s usage of duologue was likewise fresh, simple, and natural-sounding. The influence of this manner was felt world-wide wherever novels were written, peculiarly from the 1930s through the ’50s.A consummately contradictory adult male, Hemingway achieved a celebrity surpassed by few, if any, American writers of the twentieth century. The virile nature of his authorship, which attempted to re-create the exact physical esthesiss he experienced in wartime, big-game hunting, and tauromachy, in fact masked an aesthetic esthesia of great daintiness. He was a famous person long before he reached in-between age, but his popularity continues to be validated by serious critical sentiment.
Context
Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in the summer of 1899. As a immature adult male, he left place to go a newspaper author in Kansas City. Early on in 1918, he joined the Italian Red Cross and became an ambulance driver in Italy, functioning in the battleground in the First World War, in which the Italians allied with the British, the Gallic, and the Americans, against Germany and Austria-Hungary. In Italy, he observed the slaughter and the ferociousness of the Great War firsthand. On July 8, 1918, a trench howitzer shell struck him while he crouched beyond the front lines with three Italian soldiers.
Though Hemingway embellished the narrative of his wounding over the old ages, this much is certain: he was transferred to a infirmary in Milan, where he fell in love with a Red Cross nurse named Agnes von Kurowsky. Scholars are divided over Agnes ‘ function in Hemingway ‘s life and authorship, but there is small uncertainty that his matter with her provided the background for A Farewell to Arms, which many critics consider to be Hemingway ‘s greatest novel.
Published in 1929, A Farewell to Arms tells the narrative of Frederic Henry, a immature American ambulance driver and first lieutenant ( “ Tenente ” ) in the Italian ground forces. Hit in the leg by a trench howitzer shell in the combat between Italy and Austria-Hungary, Henry is transferred to a infirmary in Milan, where he falls in love with an English Red Cross nurse named Catherine Barkley. The similarities to Hemingway ‘s ain life are obvious.
After the war, when he had published several novels and go a celebrated author, Hemingway claimed that the history of Henry ‘s wounding in A Farewell to Arms was the most accurate version of his ain wounding he had of all time written. Hemingway ‘s life surely gave the novel a searching urgency, and its similarity to his ain experience no uncertainty helped him polish the terse, realistic, descriptive manner for which he became celebrated, and which made him one of the most influential American authors of the 20th century.
Summary
Book I, Chapters 1-6
Frederic Henry begins his narrative by depicting his state of affairs: he is an American in the Italian ground forces near the forepart with Austria-Hungary, a stat mi from the combat. Every twenty-four hours he sees military personnels processing and hears gunfire ; frequently the King drives through the town. A cholera epidemic has spread through the ground forces, he says, but merely seven thousand dice of it.
His unit moves to a town in Gorizia, farther from the combat, which continues in the mountains beyond. His state of affairs is comparatively gratifying ; the town is non severely damaged, with nice coffeehouses and two whorehouses — one for the officers and one for the enlisted work forces. One twenty-four hours Henry sits in the muss hall with a group of fellow officers teasing the military priest. A captain accuses the priest of frolicing with adult females, and the priest blushes ; though he is non spiritual, Henry treats the priest kindly. After badgering the priest, the Italians argue over where Henry should take his leave ; because the winter is nearing, the combat will ease, and Henry, an ambulance driver, will be able to pass some clip off from the forepart. The priest encourages him to see the cold, clear state of Abruzzo, but the other work forces have other suggestions.
When he returns from his leave, Henry discusses his trip with his roomie, the sawbones Rinaldi. Henry claims to hold traveled throughout Italy, and Rinaldi, who is obsessed with beautiful misss, tells him about a group of new English adult females and claims to be in love with a Miss Barkley. Henry loans him 50 lire ( Italian money ) . At dinner that dark, the priest is hurt that Henry failed to see Abruzzi. Henry feels guilty, and tells him that he wanted to see Abruzzi.
The following forenoon, Henry examines the gun batteries and quizzes the mechanics ; so he travels to see Miss Barkley and the English nurses with Rinaldi. He is instantly struck by Miss Barkley ‘s beauty, and particularly by her long light-haired hair. Miss Barkley tells Henry that her bride-to-be was killed in the conflict of the Somme, and Henry tells her he has ne’er loved anyone. On the manner back, Rinaldi observes that Miss Barkley liked Henry more than she liked Rinaldi, but that her friend, Helen Ferguson, was nice excessively.
The following twenty-four hours, Henry calls on Miss Barkley once more. The caput nurse expresses surprise that an American would desire to fall in the Italian ground forces, and tells him that Miss Barkley is gone — but says that Henry may come back to see her at seven o’clock that dark. Henry drives back along the trenches, chows dinner, so returns to see Miss Barkley. He finds her waiting with Helen Ferguson ; Helen excuses herself, and Henry tries to set his arm around her. She refuses, but allows him to snog her. Then she begins to shout, and Henry is annoyed. When Henry goes place, Rinaldi is amused.
Three darks subsequently, Henry sees Miss Barkley once more ; she tells him to name her Catherine. They walk through the garden, and Henry Tells Catherine he loves her, though he knows he does non. They kiss once more, and he thinks of their relationship as an luxuriant game. To his surprise, she all of a sudden tells him that he plays the game really good, but that it is a icky game. Henry sees Rinaldi subsequently that flushing, and Rinaldi, detecting Henry ‘s romantic confusion, experience sword lilies that he did non go involved with a British nurse.
Book I, Chapters 7-12
Driving back from his station, Henry picks up a soldier with a hernia ; they discuss the War, and Henry arranges a manner to acquire the adult male to a infirmary. Henry thinks about the War, and realizes that he feels no danger from it. At dinner that dark, the work forces drink and tease the priest ; Henry about forgets he had promised to travel see Catherine, and before he rushes over, Rinaldi gives him some java to sober him up. At the nurses ‘ Villa, Helen Ferguson tells Henry that Catherine is ill and will non see him. Henry feels guilty and surprisingly lonely.
The following twenty-four hours an onslaught is scheduled. Henry goes to see Catherine, and she gives him a Saint Anthony decoration. He spends Thursday
e twenty-four hours driving to the topographic point where the combat will take place.Henry and his work forces wait in the trenches as the barrage begins. They are hungry, and Henry hazards being shot to bring some cheese. As he sits down to eat it, he hears a loud noise and sees a flash and believes he has died. A trench howitzer shell has struck him in the leg. Wounded work forces fall all around him.
Henry ‘s lasting work forces carry him to safety ; a British physician treats him on the field, so sends him in an ambulance to the field infirmary. Henry lies in intense hurting. Rinaldi comes to see him at the field infirmary, and Tells Henry that he will acquire a decoration. Henry shows no involvement in decorations. Rinaldi leaves him a bottle of Cognac and promises to direct Miss Barkley to see him shortly.
At twilight, the priest comes to see. They discuss the war, so God. Henry tells the priest he does non love God — he says he does non love anything much. The priest Tells him he will happen love, and it will do him happy. Henry claims to hold ever been happy, but the priest says Henry will cognize another sort of felicity when he finds it. Half hallucinating, Henry thinks about Italian towns, so falls asleep.
Rinaldi and a Major from their group come to see Henry the dark before he moves to a better infirmary in Milan. Henry is still half-delirious, and they drink abundantly. After a baffled conversation, Henry falls into a bibulous slumber. The following twenty-four hours, he is taken on a train to Milan.
Book II, Chapters 13-17
At Milan, Frederic Henry is taken to the American infirmary. A immature, pretty nurse named Miss Gage makes his bed and takes his temperature. The caput nurse, Miss Van Campen, irritates Henry by non leting him to hold vino. Henry pays some Italians to mouse vino into his room with the eventide documents.
In the forenoon, Miss Gage tells Henry that Miss Barkley has come to work at the infirmary — she claims non to wish her, but Henry tells her she will larn to wish her. The porter brings a Barber to shave Henry, but the Barber errors Henry for an Austrian soldier and threatens to cut his pharynx. After the Barber and the porter leave, Miss Barkley comes in, and Henry realizes he is in love with her. He pulls her down into the bed with him, and they make love for the first clip.
Henry goes through a unit of ammunition of physicians who remove some of the shrapnel from his leg. The physicians seem unqualified, and state Henry he will hold to wait six months for an operation if he wants to maintain his leg. He can non stand the idea of passing six months in bed, and asks for another sentiment ; the house physician says he will direct for Dr. Valentini. When Dr. Valentini comes, he is cheerful, energetic, and competent and says he will execute the operation in the morning.Catherine spends the dark in Henry ‘s room, and they see a chiropteran. Catherine prepares him for the operation, and warns him non to speak about their matter while under the anesthetic.
After the operation, Henry is really ill. As he recovers, three other patients come to the infirmary — a male child from Georgia with malaria, a male child from New York with malaria and icterus, and a male child who tried to unscrew the fuse cap from an explosive shell for a keepsake. Henry develops an grasp for Helen Ferguson, who helps him go through notes to Catherine while she is on responsibility. Catherine continues to remain with Henry every dark, but Henry and Miss Gage eventually convince her to take three darks off of dark responsibility — Miss Van Campen has commented that Henry ever sleeps till midday.
Book II, Chapters 18-24
That summer Henry learns to walk on crutches, and he and Catherine enjoy Milan. They befriend the captain at a eating house called the Gran Italia, and Catherine continues to see Henry every dark. They discuss matrimony, but Catherine remains opposed to the thought for the clip being. They pretend to be married alternatively. Catherine tells Henry that her love for him has become her faith.
When non with Catherine, Henry spends clip with a soldier named Ettore Moretti, an Italian from San Francisco who is really proud of his war decorations. Ettore is highly braggart about his military art, and Catherine finds him raging and dull. One dark Henry and Catherine prevarication in bed hearing to the rain, and Catherine asks Henry if he will ever love her. She says she is afraid of the rain, and begins to shout.
Henry and Catherine go to the races with Helen Ferguson, whom Henry now calls “ Fergie, ” and the male child who tried to unscrew the nose cap on the shrapnel shell. They bet on a Equus caballus backed by a racing expert and former felon named Mr. Myers ; they win, but Catherine feels dissatisfied, so they pick a Equus caballus for the following race on their ain. Even though they lose, Catherine feels much better.
By September, Henry ‘s leg is about healed. He receives some leave clip from the infirmary, and Catherine tells him she will set up to travel with him. She so gives him a piece of galvanizing intelligence: she is six months pregnant. Catherine worries that Henry feels trapped, and promises non to do problem for him, but he tells her he feels cheerful and thinks she is fantastic. Catherine negotiations about the obstructions they will confront, and references the old quotation mark about how the coward dies a 1000 deceases, the brave but one. She says that, in world, the brave adult male dies possibly two thousand deceases in his imaginativeness — he merely does non advert them.
The following forenoon it begins to rain, and Henry is diagnosed with icterus. Miss Van Campen finds empty spirits bottles in Henry ‘s room, and accuses him of bring forthing icterus through alcohol addiction to avoid being sent back to the forepart. Miss Gage helps Henry clear things up, but in the terminal he loses his leave clip.
Henry prepares to go back to the forepart. He buys a new handgun, and takes Catherine to a hotel. The hotel makes Catherine feel like a cocotte, but before the dark is over they feel at place at that place. Before midnight, they walk downstairs and Henry calls a passenger car for Catherine. They have a brief good-bye, and Henry boards the crowded train that will take him back to the war.
Book III, Chapters 25-28
After returning to Gorizia, Henry has a talk with the major about the war — it was a bad twelvemonth, the major says ; Henry was lucky to acquire hit when he did. Henry so goes to happen Rinaldi ; while he waits for his friend, he thinks about Catherine. Rinaldi comes into the room and is glad to see Henry ; concerned, he examines Henry ‘s hurt articulatio genus. He says that he has become a skilled sawbones from the changeless work with the hurt, but now that the combat has died down temporarily he has a frustrating deficiency of work. They talk about Catherine, and at dinner the officers tease the priest.
After dinner, Henry goes to speak with the priest. The priest thinks the war will stop shortly, but Henry remains disbelieving. After the priest leaves, Henry goes to kip ; he wakes when Rinaldi comes back, but rapidly falls asleep once more.
The following forenoon, he travels to the Bainsizza country, and sees the harm caused by the war: the whole small town is destroyed. Henry meets a adult male named Gino, and they discuss the combat. Gino says the summer ‘s losingss were non in vain, and Henry falls soundless — he says words like those embarrass him. He says that the names of small towns and the Numberss of streets have more significance than words like sacred and glorious.That dark, the rain comes down difficult, and the Croatians begin a barrage. In the forenoon, the Italians learn that the attacking forces include Germans, and they become really afraid — they have had small contact with the Germans in the war so far, and prefer to maintain it that manner. The following dark, the Italian line has been broken, and the Italian forces begin a large-scale retreat.
As the forces easy move out, Henry returns to the Villa, but finds it empty ; Rinaldi is gone with the infirmary. Henry finds the drivers under his bid, including Piani, Bonello, and Aymo. Before go forthing in the forenoon, Henry gets a good dark ‘s slumber.
They drive out easy through the town, in an eternal line of soldiers and vehicles. Henry takes a bend sleeping, and shortly after he wakes, the column stables. He finds that Bonello has given two applied scientist sergeants a drive, and Aymo has two misss in his auto. Exhausted, Henry falls asleep once more, and dreams of Catherine.That dark, columns of provincials join the withdrawing ground forces. In the early forenoon Henry and his work forces halt briefly at a farmhouse, eating a big breakfast. Soon, they continue easy on their manner, rejoining the line of trucks and soldiers.
Book III, Chapters 29-32
Aymo ‘s auto gets stuck in the soft land ; the work forces are forced to cut coppice hastily to put under the tyres for grip. Henry orders the two applied scientist sergeants siting with Bonello to assist ; afraid of being overtaken by the enemy, they refuse, and seek to go forth. Henry draws his gun and hit one of them, but the other flights. Bonello takes Henry ‘s handgun and kills the hurt sergeant.
They begin to cut subdivisions and branchlets ; in the terminal, they are unable to salvage the auto. Henry gives some money to the two misss going with Aymo and encourages them to travel down to a nearby small town, Aymo gets in Henry ‘s vehicle, and they set out, now cut off from the chief column.
Traversing a span, Henry sees a nearby auto full of German soldiers. As they travel, they begin to detect more and more marks of German business, and they worry that they have been wholly cut off from Italian-controlled land. They proceed with cautiousness ; a sudden explosion of gunshot putting to deaths Aymo. They realize he was shot by the Italian rear guard — the Italians are in front, but because the rear guard is afraid, they are about every bit unsafe as the Germans.
Fearing decease, Bonello leaves in hopes of being taken captive. The work forces hide in a barn that dark, and in the forenoon they rejoin the Italians. The enlisted work forces become ferocious with the officers, and Piani is afraid they will seek to kill Henry. Suddenly, two work forces ( conflict constabulary ) seize clasp of Henry. They seize Henry because he is a alien, and in the pandemonium of the retreat they intend to hit him for a undercover agent. When they look off for a minute, Henry dives into the river and swims off.
After drifting in the river for what seems like a really long clip, Henry climbs out, removes the stars from his shirt, and counts his money. He crosses the Venetian field that twenty-four hours, so jumps aboard a military train that eventide, concealing under a canvas with guns.
Liing under the canvas, Henry thinks about the ground forces, about the war, and about Catherine. He realizes that he will be pronounced dead, and assumes he will ne’er see Rinaldi once more. Rinaldi has been concerned he will decease of pox, and Henry concerns for him. Exhausted and hungry, he imagines happening Catherine and traveling off with her to a safe topographic point.
Book V, Chapters 38-41
That autumn, Henry and Catherine live in a brown wooden house on the side of a mountain. They enjoy the company of Mr. and Mrs. Guttingen, who live downstairs, and they remain really happy together ; sometimes they walk down the mountain way in Montreux. One twenty-four hours Catherine gets her hair done in Montreux, and afterwards they go to hold a beer — Catherine thinks beer is good for the babe, because it will maintain it little ; she is worried about the babe ‘s size because the physician has said she has a narrow pelvic girdle. They talk once more about acquiring married, but Catherine wants to wait until after the babe is born when she will be thin once more.
Three yearss before Christmas, the snow comes. Catherine asks Henry if he feels restless, and he says no, though he does inquire about his friends on the forepart, such as Rinaldi and the priest.
Henry decides to turn a face fungus and by mid-January, he has one. Through January and February he and Catherine remain really happy ; in March they move into town to be near the infirmary. They stay in a hotel at that place for three hebdomads ; Catherine buys babe apparels, Henry works out in the gym, and they both feel that the babe will get shortly.
Finally, around three o’clock one forenoon, Catherine goes into labour. They go to the infirmary, where Catherine is given a nightgown and a room. She encourages Henry to travel out for breakfast, and he does, speaking to the old adult male who serves him. When he returns to the infirmary, he finds that Catherine has been taken to the bringing room. He goes in to see her ; the physician stands by, and Catherine takes an anesthetic gas when her contractions become really painful. At two o’clock in the afternoon, Henry goes out for tiffin.
He goes back to the infirmary ; Catherine is now intoxicated from the gas. The physician thinks her pelvic girdle is excessively narrow to let the babe to go through through, and advises a Cesarean subdivision. Catherine suffers intolerable hurting and pleads for more gas. Finally they wheel her out on a stretcher to execute the operation. Henry watches the rain outside.
Soon the physician comes out and takes Henry to see the babe, a male child. Henry has no feeling for the kid. He so goes to see Catherine, and at first concerns that she is dead. When she asks him about their boy, he tells her he was all right, and the nurse gives him a mocking expression. Ushering him outside, the nurse tells him that the male child is non all right — he strangled on the umbilical cord, and ne’er began to take a breath.
He goes out for dinner, and when he returns the nurse Tells him that Catherine is shed blooding. He is filled with panic that she will decease. When he is allowed to see her, she tells him she will decease, and asks him non to state the same things to other misss. Henry goes into the hallway while they try to handle Catherine, but nil plants ; eventually, he goes back into the room and corsets with her until she dies.
The physician offers to drive him back to the hotel, but Henry declines. He goes back into the room and attempts to state good-bye to Catherine, but says that it was like stating adieu to a statue. He leaves the infirmary and walks back to his hotel in the rain
CHARACTERS & # 8217 ; PROFILE
Frederic Henry – The novel ‘s supporter. A immature American ambulance driver in the Italian ground forces during the First World War, Henry is disciplined and brave, but feels detached from life. When introduced to Catherine Barkley, Henry discovers a capacity for love he had non known he possessed, and begins a procedure of development that culminates with his abandonment of the Italian ground forces. Throughout the novel, the Italian soldiers under Henry ‘s bid call him “ Tenente ” — the Italian word for “ lieutenant. ”
Catherine Barkley – An English nurse who falls in love with Frederic Henry. Catherine ‘s bride-to-be was killed in the conflict of the Somme before she met Henry. Catherine has cast aside conventional societal values, and lives harmonizing to her ain values, giving herself entirely to her love for Henry. Her long, beautiful hair is her most typical physical characteristic.
Rinaldi – Frederic ‘s friend, an Italian sawbones. Arch and wry, Rinaldi is however a passionate and skilled physician. Rinaldi makes a pattern of ever being in love with a beautiful adult female, and at the beginning of the novel is attracted to Catherine Barkley ; Rinaldi ‘s infatuation causes him to present Frederic and Catherine to one another.
Helen Ferguson – A friend of Catherine ‘s. Though she remains fond of the lovers and helps them, Helen is much more committed to societal convention than Henry and Catherine ; she vocally disapproves of their “ immoral ” love matter.
Miss Gage – An American nurse. Miss Gage becomes a friend to both Catherine and Henry — in fact, she may be in love with Henry. Unlike Helen Ferguson, she sets aside conventional societal values to back up their love matter.
Miss Van Campen – The overseer of nurses at the American infirmary where Catherine works. Miss Van Campen is rigorous, cold, and unsympathetic ; she is obsessed with regulations and ordinances and has no forbearance for or involvement in single feelings.
Dr. Valentini – An Italian sawbones who comes to the American infirmary. Self-assured and confident, Dr. Valentini is besides a extremely talented sawbones. Frederic Henry takes an immediate liking to him.
Count Greffi – A agile 94 twelvemonth old Lord. Henry knows Count Greffi from his clip in Stresa, and the two drama billiards together toward the terminal of the novel. Despite his advanced age, the count is intelligent, disciplined, and to the full committed to life.
