A Farewell To Arms | Ernest Hemingway | Landmark and breakthrough style!!!

A Farewell To Arms | Ernest Hemingway | Elemental Hemingway

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A Farewell To Arms

	A Farewell To Arms Ernest Hemingway Scribner, 1995 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 379 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Landmark and breakthrough style!!!

A Farewell To Arms
Set in the environment of Word Ward II, this novel, anti-war novel per excellence, conveys the story of love between young lieutenant Frederick Henry and the young English nurse Catherine Barkley and the inexorable happenings thereafter. Henry is an American ambulance driver at the Italian front who gets his legs and head wounded by a trench mortar- and decorated for that- on the Isonze north of Plava, north of Gorizia and is therefore hospitalized in Milan. It is in the latter that the love among the two youngsters starts to develop beautifully until his convalescence leave is over and he has to go back to the front. The story goes on but as many reviewers have already done their job at summarizing this novel I so will only concentrate on Hemingway's writing style.

His writing style is modern and unprecedented, definitely a landmark style where from the first person singular or plural narrations of events and feelings are put into paragraphs and dialogs with concise, short, straight to the point precise sentences, with almost lack of punctuation and not one "surplus" word nor sentence. In addition the use of adjectives and adverbs is therefore minimized. However, Hemingway accomplishes to convey both the uttermost feelings and actions of the protagonists involved and the outstanding descriptions of the sites and happenings related to WWI. In particular, is it a masterwork in itself the description of the happenings surrounding the retreat of the Italian Army due to the German attack on Capporeto with lines of tired men marching in the rain, in utterly disbelief, hungry, demoralized, dispirited, exhausted, weary...

As for Hemingway's anti-war comments, they are all throughout the novel, especially in the dialogs of Lieutenant Henry and his friend Dr. Rinaldi, the priest and his subordinates. Nevertheless there is a paragraph towards the end of the novel that struck me the most- and really got me heartbroken and I will transcribe part of it below:
"Once in a camp I put a log on top of the fire and it was full of ants. As it commenced to burn, the ants swarmed out and went first toward the centre where the fire was; then turned back and ran toward the end. When there were enough on the end they fell off into the fire. Some got out, their buddies burnt and flattened, and went off not knowing were they were going. But most of them went toward the fire and then back toward the end and swarmed on the cool end and finally fell of into the fire..."

The novel is a master piece of work and I certainly look forward to reading more of this Nobel Price winner literature titles... It is well worth the read and definitely a breakthrough in writing style.

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Elemental Hemingway

If you're on death row and only have time to read one Hemingway novel, this is the one to read -- especially if you're on death row. The novel encapsulates Hemingway's philosophy on life, death, human dignity and disappointment. It can be uplifting and very depressing but always gripping. That it has to do with one man's mission in the Spanish Civil War is almost beside the point. It is a book I recommend to anyone, perhaps a little more for men, who can identify the passion of life compressed into a few short days at a pivotal point in 20th Century western civilization.

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A classic!

I read this book in high school and I fell in love. This book has it all: adventure, love, and a incredibly tragic ending. This is the type of book that should be required reading in schools!

A Soap Opera

I re-read this recently. I don't know why. I guess a friend of mind is into Hemingway. Here's what I found: this seminal work of the American 20th century fiction reads like a chick flick or soap opera, especially the rather embarrasingly overwrought last chapter.

The Depressing American Novel

Well, being the 363rd review listed here on Amazon for this book, there probably isn't too much that hasn't already been said by the average reader about this book. Having read this and other Hemingway novels for my 10th grade honors English class (and a subsequently painful paper) I can honestly say I enjoyed this a lot more than I did back then at age 14 or however old I was at the time.

My "little" book group read this one--we'll read anything, and take turns picking stuff out, and this was not my pick, but it is kind of an unspoken rule in this group that if someone wasnts to read something like this, we'll all do it. I was pleasantly surprised. Hemingway's writing was as spare a I remembered it, but also much more readable than I recalled, despite the run on sentences, giving an almost stream of consciousness feel to the dialogue. It really served to lend itself to the desperation of these lonely souls trying to find solace anywhere during a war that is clearly un-winnable by all sides.

Not a romantic love story--Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley find each other and cling to the idea of their relationship, even though anyone can see that outside of these terrible circumstances, theirs is not a relationship that would last. She is clearly no Mrs. Henry. It is a relationship about sex and comfort, and little else, sadly.

The most prominent feature that stood out for me about the whole novel is that it is so clearly a very modern feeling anti-war novel. Our little group was surprised at the familiar "this isn't our war" sentiment that hovers over Lt. Henry's person.

Full of some great moments, this book should be read by all college bound students and all Americans.

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