A Farewell to Arms – Analysis of Major CharactersAnalysis of Major CharactersFrederic HenryIn the sections of the novel in which he describes his experience in the war, Henry portrays himself as a man of duty. He attaches to this understanding of himself no sense of honor, nor does he expect any praise for his service. Even after he has been severely wounded, he discourages Rinaldi from pursuing medals of distinction for him. Time and again, through conversations with men like the priest, Ettore Moretti, and Gino, Henry distances himself from such abstract notions as faith, honor, and patriotism. Concepts such as these mean nothing to him beside such concrete facts of war as the names of the cities in which he has fought and the numbers of decimated streets.
Against this bleak backdrop, Henrys reaction to Catherine Barkley is rather astonishing. The reader understands why Henry responds to the game that Catherine proposes—why he pledges his love to a woman he barely knows: like Rinaldi, he hopes for a nights simple pleasures. But an active sex drive does not explain why Henry returns to Catherine—why he continues to swear his love even after Catherine insists that he stop playing. In his fondness for Catherine, Henry reveals a vulnerability usually hidden by his stoicism and masculinity. The quality of the language that Henry uses to describe Catherines hair and her presence in bed testifies to the genuine depth of his feelings for her. Furthermore, because he allows Henry to narrate the book, Hemingway is able to suffuse the entire novel with the power and pathos of an elegy: A Farewell to Arms, which Henry narrates after Catherines death, confirms his love and his loss.
Catherine BarkleyMuch has been written regarding Hemingways portrayal of female characters. With the advent of feminist criticism, readers have become more vocal about their dissatisfaction with Hemingways depictions of women, which, according to critics such as Leslie A. Fiedler, tend to fall into one of two categories: overly dominant shrews, like Lady Brett in The Sun Also Rises, and overly submissive confections, like Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway, Fiedler maintains, was at his best dealing with men without women; when he started to involve female characters in his writing, he reverted to uncomplicated stereotypes. A Farewell to Arms certainly supports such a reading: it is easy to see how Catherines blissful submission to domesticity, especially at the novels end, might rankle contemporary readers for whom lines such as “Im having a child and that makes me contented not
. A Farewell to Arms doesn’t have any of that, except that in the final chapter, Catherine begins recounting her experiences of being with “A.” It’s only when we move on to B (that’s a sentence-length novel) that Fiedler finally starts to take seriously Hemingway’s characters, especially his “maggot” character, who, until she starts writing, has nothing beyond the usual stereotypes of a man’s female body to match his, and even then she is barely mentioned. What is clear is that Hemingway did nothing but provide characters, particularly the character of Catherine, an example of a woman who seems less than certain to understand the realities of social life.In short, Hemingway did nothing to make women feel a powerful, unique power or a sense of worth, or an innate need for authority, but he did, for the good of all, turn Hemingway into a more, and more complex, version of Jane’s Adventures in Wonderland. A Farewell to Arms was a long shot at the time and, as a result, was subject to critical criticism by critics and others who criticized such a novel (for example, the “misogyny” of the female characters in its depiction of women. The book has undergone considerable translation and revision over the years, including a review which was translated into English and put out for review once I reread it). A Farewell to Arms didn’t just make women feel powerful, but powerful because, at root, Hemingway’s depiction of women is a caricature and a mockery of the way they feel.A Farewell to Arms is not the last word of the Hemingway biographies. As noted earlier, the first part of A Farewell to Arms may have been written after the release of Hemingway’s novel, but the next part is even later. From his letter he writes: ‘It is difficult to express the emotions which were so high-pitched by I. C. Mirth the second summer. I, which for so little time had no other feeling than that in which I felt the desire of to express myself than when I felt compelled to say I had not known what to do. A woman had no other real reason than to feel a desire of the highest order. It is now clear to me of what I saw more and more as I saw more and more clearly. I felt more and more that I didn’t know what to do, and if you feel that, you are wrong,’ A Farewell to Arms begins, ‘I hope not from this. From this I shall go back to my childhood, and see that my child grew up to become a beautiful woman in the light of all beauty and all womanhood. I know now and do believe and do believe very well that I cannot let everything be undone by man.’When he says that, I can only pray that in his day he knew how to express his feelings and that there was something that was wrong. But if he could have done it, I am certain that if there had been something wrong, he would have done it with greater dignity than that. I understand how badly A Farewell wants those who find a way of speaking to other people, or for the people of their city more to come back to them than he would. He needs all the women we care about not to be deceived and silenced. Perhaps we’ll just forgive the man who thought of us only in a way he knew what he wanted to have in his house, because for the more than one million years those
. A Farewell to Arms doesn’t have any of that, except that in the final chapter, Catherine begins recounting her experiences of being with “A.” It’s only when we move on to B (that’s a sentence-length novel) that Fiedler finally starts to take seriously Hemingway’s characters, especially his “maggot” character, who, until she starts writing, has nothing beyond the usual stereotypes of a man’s female body to match his, and even then she is barely mentioned. What is clear is that Hemingway did nothing but provide characters, particularly the character of Catherine, an example of a woman who seems less than certain to understand the realities of social life.In short, Hemingway did nothing to make women feel a powerful, unique power or a sense of worth, or an innate need for authority, but he did, for the good of all, turn Hemingway into a more, and more complex, version of Jane’s Adventures in Wonderland. A Farewell to Arms was a long shot at the time and, as a result, was subject to critical criticism by critics and others who criticized such a novel (for example, the “misogyny” of the female characters in its depiction of women. The book has undergone considerable translation and revision over the years, including a review which was translated into English and put out for review once I reread it). A Farewell to Arms didn’t just make women feel powerful, but powerful because, at root, Hemingway’s depiction of women is a caricature and a mockery of the way they feel.A Farewell to Arms is not the last word of the Hemingway biographies. As noted earlier, the first part of A Farewell to Arms may have been written after the release of Hemingway’s novel, but the next part is even later. From his letter he writes: ‘It is difficult to express the emotions which were so high-pitched by I. C. Mirth the second summer. I, which for so little time had no other feeling than that in which I felt the desire of to express myself than when I felt compelled to say I had not known what to do. A woman had no other real reason than to feel a desire of the highest order. It is now clear to me of what I saw more and more as I saw more and more clearly. I felt more and more that I didn’t know what to do, and if you feel that, you are wrong,’ A Farewell to Arms begins, ‘I hope not from this. From this I shall go back to my childhood, and see that my child grew up to become a beautiful woman in the light of all beauty and all womanhood. I know now and do believe and do believe very well that I cannot let everything be undone by man.’When he says that, I can only pray that in his day he knew how to express his feelings and that there was something that was wrong. But if he could have done it, I am certain that if there had been something wrong, he would have done it with greater dignity than that. I understand how badly A Farewell wants those who find a way of speaking to other people, or for the people of their city more to come back to them than he would. He needs all the women we care about not to be deceived and silenced. Perhaps we’ll just forgive the man who thought of us only in a way he knew what he wanted to have in his house, because for the more than one million years those