A Farewell to Arms as an Anti-War Novel

A Farewell to Arms as an Anti-War Novel

There are indications in each of the novel’s five books that Ernest Hemingway meant A Farewell to Arms to be a testament against war. World War One was a cruel war with no winners; ”War is not won by victory” (47). Lieutenant Frederic Henry, the book’s hero and narrator, experiences the disillusionment, the hopelessness and the disaster of the war. But Henry also experiences a passionate love; a discrepancy that ironically further describes the meaninglessness and the frustration felt by the soldiers and the citizens.

Hemingway repeatedly emphasizes the horrific devastation war has wrought on everyone involved. From the opening account of cholera that kills "only" 7,000 men to the graphic description of the artillery bombardment to the corrupt violence during the Italian retreat, A Farewell to Arms is among the most frank anti-war novels.

But Hemingway does not merely condemn war. Rather, he indicts the world at large for its atmosphere of destruction. Henry frequently reflects upon the world's insistence on breaking and killing everyone; it is as if the world cannot bear to let anyone remain happy and safe.

Indeed, whenever Henry and Catherine are blissful, something comes along to interrupt it - be it Henry's injury, his being sent back to the front, his impending arrest, or, finally, Catherine's death from childbirth. With such misery confronting them at every turn, the two turn to each other. Catherine, especially, plunges almost too easily into love when she first meets Henry. She admits she was "crazy" at first, most likely over the fairly recent death of her fiancé, but Henry, too, succumbs to the temptations of love. Love is a pleasurable diversion (see Games, below) that distracts lovers from the outside world; the two often tell each other not to think about anything else, as it is too painful. Hidden within the shelter of Catherine's beautiful hair, Henry and Catherine feel protected from the cruel outside world.

The major problem with such escapist love is, as Henry and other characters point out several times, one does not always know the "stakes" of love until it is over, or that one does not know about something until one has lost it. Henry hardly allows himself to think of life without Catherine while he is in love, and once he does lose her, it seems unlikely that he will recover.

You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.

~Ernest Hemingway

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.

~Ernest Hemingway

The 1st panacea of a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the 2nd is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; a permanent ruin.

~Ernest Hemingway

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

~Ernest Hemingway