A Farewell To Arms
by Ernest Hemingway
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Book Reviews of A Farewell To Arms
Book Review: Wonderful Anti-War Novel By Hemingway In His Prime!
Summary: 5 Stars
This wonderful story by a young early Hemingway is perhaps, along with "For Whom The Bell Tolls", one of the finest anti-war novels ever written. In it we are introduced to a young and idealistic man, Frederick Henry, who, through love, experience and existential circumstance, comes to see the folly, waste, and irony of war, and attempts to make his own peace outside the confines of traditional conformity. For all of his obvious excesses, Hemingway was an artist compelled to delve deliberately into painful truths, and he attempted to do so with a style of writing that cut away all of the frills and artifice, so that at its heart this novel is meant as a exploration into what it means to confront the world of convention and deliberately decide to choose for what one feels in his heart as opposed to what one is expected to do. Of course, in so doing, the young ambulance driver becomes a full-grown adult, facing his trials with grace and courage. Still, what we are left with is a modern tragedy, one in which the characters must somehow attempt to resolve the irresolvable. Yet in all this emotional turmoil and existential 'sturm-und-drang' of two star-crossed lovers caught in the contradictions, deceptions, and brutality of the First World War, we are also treated to Hemingway's amazing powers of exposition at the peak of his prowess. Indeed, as with other Hemingway novels, it is Hemingway's imaginative and spare use of the language itself that wins the reader over. Unlike his predecessors, he sought a lean narrative style that cut away at all the flowery description and endless adjectives. In the process of parsing away the excesses, Hemingway created a clear, simple and quite declarative prose style that was truly both modern and revolutionary.
In what may be one of the most quoted passages in modern fiction, in "A Farewell to Arms" Hemingway gives us his personal view of the world's inevitable negative impact on all of us: "If a person brings so much courage into the world that the world must kill him to break him, so of course it kills him. The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those it cannot break it will kill. It kills the very good, the very gentle, and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these things the world will kill you too but there will be no special hurry." Here the human beings are caught in the murderous crossfire of brutal forces fighting to death, and they must flee to save themselves and their hopes for a better future away from the madness. Their journey towards safety is full of the poignancy of all such fragile ventures, and someone must pay the cost of their bravery, gentleness, and love.
What one encounters as a result is a story seemingly stripped to its barest essentials, superficially more like the newspaper man's pantheon of who, what, where, when, and why, and yet somehow transformed into a much more accurate and imaginative effort, one leaving the reader with a much more artful account of what is going on. One reads Hemingway quickly, at least at first, when one learns to slow down and drink in every word and every detail as it is related. For me and for millions of others, the true genius of Hemingway is to be found in his artful use of language. This book was one of Hemingway's finest successful forays into the world of letters, and the result of his collected works truly changed the face of modern fiction. Enjoy!
Book Review: Terse writing the Hemingway way
Summary: 4 Stars
It's interesting to me how fictional books written with the backdrop of World War 1 differ so greatly with those written with the backdrop of World War 2. The WW2 books almost universally focus on the struggle of good versus evil: the heroics of the Allies, and the despicable nature of the Nazis and those who supported them. A WW2 Ally soldier had no reason to wonder why he was fighting, and what the objective was. Afterwards, the soldier need only look at the Holocaust to know that he did right to kill his enemies on the battlefield, and that the loss of so many fellow soldiers was part of a noble effort. ("Gee, I wonder if it was wrong to shoot that Nazi," would probably never be a line in any novel).
Not so with WW1. In that war, it seems that no one was quite clear why they were fighting or what, exactly, the objectives were. Like any war, it was kill or be killed, but for what purpose exactly? (The same can be said from the point of view of the American soldier in the later part of the Vietnam War).
In "A Farewell to Arms," Hemingway sucessfully captures the futility and madness of the War, and the absolute insanity that people fighting in it were driven to. Since the two main characters are an ambulance driver and a nurse, we see the horrible injuries and deaths suffered by soldiers on the battlefield, and get a good introduction to the wartime practice of medicine in the early 20th Century. Hemingway drove an ambulance during WW1 himself, and clearly knows his stuff.
Don't ask me how, but "Farewell" is the first Hemingway book I've ever read. For some strange reason, I managed to avoid his work through High School (I recall that I perhaps was supposed to read "The Old Man of the Sea," but I either forgot it entirely, or read the Cliff notes). I have to say that I certainly enjoyed "Farewell," and plan to read more Hemingway in the future, but I struggled, at first, to get used to the writing. In the first 100 pages or so, I found the terseness and simplicity of the sentences to be a distraction, and wondered if, perhaps, the author was vastly over-rated. I also found the dialogue stiff and, on occasion, down-right bizarre. For instance, often the characters (especially Fred Henry) would respond to each other with a flat sounding "all right," which I thought didn't flow at all.
But after awhile, the Hemingway style started to make an impression on me and I appreciated it, not only in the war scenes, but also concerning the romance between Fred and Catherine, which, although incredibly corny at times, worked for me. You could see the tragedy at the end a few chapters away (the blissful moments in rural Switzerland simply could not last), but it effected me even so. Frankly, I still prefer authors who use more complex sentence structure, but, as I kept reading this book, I grew more appreciative of what Hemingway was trying to accomplish with his style.
PS: A good companion to "Farewell" is "All Quiet on the Western Front," which is from the point of view of a WW1 German soldier. Apparently,the other side had no clue why they were fighting that particular war either.
Book Review: It Is Hemingway's Best: His Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a great novel, a masterpiece, and part of the enjoyment is the drama; so, I have not described the plot elements and those should be left as surprises for the reader.
I had read "The Old Man and the Sea" by Hemingway and was reading an essay by Raymond Chandler, the famous detective writer and screenplay writer of the 1930s through to the 1950s. He made the comment in his essay on writing that "Farewell to Arms" set the standard for twentieth century fiction. With that encouragement I bought the book, read it, then ran out and bought most of Hemingway's other novels and a collection of his short stories. This novel from 1929 is his best work, and perhaps "For Whom The Bell Tolls" would be his second best novel. Some of his other works such as "Sun Also Rises" does not have the depth and balance of the present work. This is Hemingway's best with a good balance of prose, story, characters, drama, and length.
The Bloomsbury Guide has picked 375 top fiction authors, and among those 375 has picked 40 "masterpieces" and they include the present work. Hemingway's contemporary, F. Scott Fitzgerald did not have any of his novels among the top 40, and there is only a select group of American writers in the Bloomsbury guide - which includes all writers. Other masterpieces include Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," Lawrence's "Sons and Lovers," Tolstoys's "War and Piece" and Joyce's "Ulysses" - as a sample.
The story is based roughly on his own war experiences in Italy during the First World War. He was a reporter, then went into the ambulance corps in Italy, became wounded and was hospitalized as in the novel. The novel is more complex than his own experiences, and has much drama in later sections. It is written in the first person narrative. The protagonist is Frederic Henry, an American. He has a roommate, Rinaldi, who is an Italian surgeon and he meets an English nurse, Catherine Barkley.
The prose is simply outstanding, and the opening of the book is unforgettable:
"In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were some pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunk of the tress were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves."
Part of the fun reading the book is the plot and I would avoid knowing any more than that until you read the book. The prose is exceptional and on par with Fitzgerald, Henry James, Bellow, and similar writers. The opening scenes, and then later in the book, a boat trip on a Swiss lake are among the finest writing that I have ever read.
5 Star masterpiece.
Book Review: A Waste. A waste of an idea, a waste of time, and a waste of paper.
Summary: 2 Stars
It's World War I. There's death and dispair and darkness everywhere and yet amidst all the anguish, there comes the tale of two lovers and their sad struggle to live a complete life. It's the daring anti-war classic from the late great Ernest Hemmingway- A Farewell to Arms!
Sounds pretty promising, huh? Let's see how it REALLY is.
First things first, the Lovers-
Fred Henry is an American in the Italian army. He begins the story feeling rather mildly about the war and life in general until he accidentally falls in love and things begin to change. He is a totally self-absorbed, unsympathetic dick. He narrates the story and yet somehow we get little insight into any of his deeper emotions or motives. I literally hated him by the end.
Catherine Barkley is a beautiful English nurse who Henry falls for. She's still healing from her last lovers death when she meets him. At first she seems like she might turn out to be at least somewhat intresting, but the hope vanishes everytime she opens her mouth. She is shallow, moronic, ridiculous, and one of the most unrealistic and dislikable females characters I've ever read. Henry, however, falls desperately in love with her and her thick head of blond hair.
Next we have the plot-
As you know, it's WWI. Things aren't going so well. Henry mets Catherine. Henry gets injured and falls in love with Catherine. They spend almost all their time remarking how "sweet" and "fine" the other is and reassuring eachother they're really in love. Then they have some sex and Catherine gets pregnant. Henry cares somewhat. He's then forced to go back to war, however, but not before Catherine tells him she feels like a whore when he takes her to a hotel. This is the only intresting thing she ever says but she quickly retracts the statement as to not upset dear, darling Henry. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Henry deserts the army. This is one of the few exciting parts. Unfortunately, though, Henry soon goes back to Catherine. This is where is book takes a turn for the worst. The lovers breifly share happiness until Catherine has her baby, the baby dies and at last Catherine dies. Tragic.
My Opinion-
The book is dull. When Catherine died I was just glad the book was over. The prose in this novel is some of the most boring and terse I've ever read. The dialouge is some of the most irriating. Between Henry's emotionless "Yes", "No"s, and "All right"s and Catherine's pointless, opinionless chatter, I'm not sure how anyone could be grabbed or moved in the slightest. Neither character had much going for them and I couldn't care less about their miserable fates. Hemmingway could have turned this into something so much better if only he gave his readers some likeable people who we could love and relate to. I don't know about the rest of you, but I thought his was the biggest waste of an idea ever. Cheers!
Book Review: As much depth as paper dolls
Summary: 2 Stars
This was one of the most boring books I've read recently. I'd only read a few of Hemingway's short stories before this, and I liked them, so I wasn't prepared for his novels to be such a step down. I'm not denying he was brilliant, but at short stories, not the longer form. I'm even willing to read more of his books to see if it's true that not all of his books are as flat and boring as this one and certain others. I think the most advanced word in this book is "silhouette"; the rest reads like a story a third grader could have come up with, though even a third grader could write a more complex story, with more complex words and emotions. The only exciting and involving part of the book for me was after page 200, when Henry is escaping from being shot together with the other soldiers, holding on to the piece of driftwood and floating through the river. After he reached the hotel it got boring again, and there were still a bit over a hundred pages left to go.I felt absolutely nothing for these people. They had about as much depth as paper dolls, and it doesn't help matters any that they rarely say more than ten words at a time to one another. Catherine talks like a two year old, "Ooh, I love you, do you love me? I love you, darling. Why don't we get married?" Even a Barbie doll would have more depth of emotion if it came to life! At best I felt bad for the baby for maybe five seconds at most. A thirteen year old couple in love could do a better and more mature job of expressing their feelings for one another. And the prose just drags; nearly every passage reads something like "It was cold. It was dark. It was raining again. The train began to move. I was cold. I poured myself a tenth glass of cognac." Not exactly prose that leaps off of the page and makes you feel emotionally involved with the characters.
The love story was also a far stretch. Wasn't Catherine going with Henry's pal Rinaldi when they first met? And already on their first excuse of a date they're declaring they love one another, even though Henry admits to himself he doesn't really love her. I rolled my eyes; not another love story lacking discernable motivation, like the ones in 'Anna Karenina' or 'Doctor Zhivago'! (Although at least I felt emotionally involved with those characters, even though their love stories weren't given much explanation in the way of motivation.) God forbid there might have been any sexual or romantic tension instead of having characters fall into one another's arms after barely saying five words to one another.
There are some nice descriptive pieces in here, and I really liked the part where Henry is escaping, but other than that it just falls flat. After this disappointment, it will be awhile before I choke down another Hemingway novel. I hope it's true that not all of his books are as boring and lifeless as this one was.