A Farewell to Arms 3

After finishing a Farewell to Arms, the ending really didn’t surprise me. As soon as the couple seemed to escape all of their troubles with the military police and escaping Italy, I knew that something bad would happen in the end. Hemingway doesn’t write happy endings and I could predict that she was going to die in childbirth from a mile away. Nevertheless, I did still have to read the entire ending because it seemed several times that Catherine might pull through. Yet no matter how many fatal bullets the couple dodges, they are never really in safety. Even in the last few pages after learning the baby died and that Catherine was recovering ok, there was still an ominous feeling in Heminway’s tone. The author didn’t fail to deliver in yet another sad ending despite surviving many near catastrophic events, Catherine dies of a hemorrhage. This conclusion makes A Farewell to Arms seem even more like a true Romeo and Juliet story except that Romeo doesn’t die.

As I alluded in my first blog, I believe that their relationship started as a make-believe love that developed into something deeper and truer. As Lt. Henry had more time to think about what Catherine really meant to him, he began to fall in love with her. It was no longer a wartime fling that he had experienced with so many other women. Although he first intended Catherine to be another one of his one night stands, he soon realized that she meant more to him that other women. He found that he actually cared about her. Lt. Henry matured over the course of his experiences in the war from being a lost young man to an adult that knew what he wanted in life. He realized that he only wanted to be with Catherine no matter what the risk. It was a type of emotional awakening for Lt. Henry along with Catherine. They both started to make sacrifices for each other and let themselves fall in love. They both began to let their emotional barrier down. Before meeting Henry, Catherine was still in shock from losing her long time fiancée in the war. Even when she met Henry, it seemed as if she believed it was her lost love coming back from the dead to be with her again. Even at their first meeting, Catherine wanted Henry to tell her how much he loved her, and that he would never leave her again. It seemed as if she was looking for someone to fill her void and that she was even a little crazy in visualizing Henry as her lost love. Even Lt. Henry could see that was a little crazy and was emotionally distraught. Nevertheless, he didn’t shy away from her; he embraced her because he too needed someone that he could love although he didn’t see it yet. Both of them had emotional problems that needed to be solved and were both a little crazy–they seemed perfect for each other.

In my paper I plan to analyze how their love matured and what events/changes were especially critical in their emotional awakening. It might also be interesting to examine to what extent is this a tragic novel and what devices and events make it seem this way. Although it seems like a tragic ending, the characters could not control their fate in the end at all. They did everything they could to make it and they did not have any tragic flaws that lead to their downfall. Their fate was out of their hands and in the hands of mother nature. It seems that Hemingway might be implying that no matter how hard you try to do everything right, your fate is never really in your own control. (635)