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Summary: Love During the Chaos of War
Review: In Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms", World War I is used as a backdrop to the tumultuous love affair between an American born, Italian ambulance driver and an English nurse. The affair between Henry or "Tenente" as his friends call him on the war front and Catherine, is vividly depicted through many events. Through the use of vivid description and a first person narrative, Hemingway is able to show the reader how a person can lose their self identity and take on the identity of someone they love. This novel could not have taken place at a different time, without having the same effect that it did. If it had not been for the war, Henry and Catherine never would have found each other. It is ironic that amid the trenches of war, two lonely people fell in love. Amongst the chaos, Henry and Catherine's lives are changed forever One may notice Hemingway's style of writing begins with an immense amount of description and then opens up into riveting narration. His unique and renowned style of writing provides the reader with essential facts for understanding the novel, while allowing some room for the reader's imagination.
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Summary: Love and war
Review: Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms" is about a love affair between a man and a woman, and a love affair between a man and a war. Only someone like Hemingway would be able to find the right notes to combine these two contrasting themes in a sort of literary harmony, where each complements and augments the emotional force of the other, without resorting to contrived romantic overkill. The novel takes place in the last years of World War I, in which an American named Frederick Henry is serving as an ambulance driver in the Italian army. He meets and falls in love with an English nurse named Catherine Barkley; after he is badly injured in a mortar shell attack, he and Catherine consummate their love while he convalesces in a hospital in Milan. Using his trademark sharp dialogue, Hemingway shows how the presence of war in Henry's and Catherine's lives intensifies the rapid development of their relationship. When a crabby hospital superintendent suspects Henry is idly prolonging his convalescence, she gets him sent back to his ambulance post at the front. On his way to a battle ground to pick up wounded, he is arrested by Italian battle police who hear his foreign accent and think he is a German soldier disguised in an Italian uniform. He manages a daring escape and goes to a town where he finds Catherine again. When he is alerted that the Italian army is looking to arrest him for desertion, he realizes his only option is to escape to Switzerland under cover of night. The notion I get about Hemingway's writing of war is that, to him, it's a sport, a big game, that accepts physical suffering as a fair price to pay for the camaraderie and adventure; a game in which victories are celebrated with a lot of drinking, and losses are mourned with...a lot of drinking. This is not a criticism, just an observation; he writes with so much spirit and conviction on the subject of war that it's difficult to find fault with his style. This is exemplified most in Henry's decision at the end of the novel: At just a time when his life seems to be falling apart, he realizes he must "get back" to the war, not because he likes war, but because it gives him a will to live; it's in his blood as much as it sheds his blood.
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Summary: What You'd Expect from Hemingway
Review: A Farewell to Arms is a story of love, war, and the inevitability of the terrible. It is told in a distinctly Hemingway style that confused me when I first started reading it. The writing is terse, though occasionally descriptive, and the story is told through Lieutenant Henry. This style complements the plot, but can lead to confusion. Henry's distance from the war in the beginning of the novel can be immediately seen in his description of the war in the first chapter, but when reading this it is nearly impossible to feel what the soldiers must have felt. Only by utilizing the imagination can one enter the soldiers' minds and the minds of other characters. If the Hemingway style is appealing though, A Farewell to Arms can be read with minimal frustration. For readers not particularly interested in the horrors of war, the love affair between Catherine and Henry can make the novel interesting. Though he does not often describe his passionant love, Henry's actions show that he is deeply in love with Catherine. Fans of Hemingway should read A Farewell to Arms, though those who are overly-sensitive, easily confused, or enlisted in the army probably should not.
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Summary: A Farewell To Arms: What A Great Book!
Review: A Farewell To Arms is a basic Ernest Hemingway novel. A young man is in madly in love with a women who is half crazy. The main character, Henry, is an American who is fighting on the Italian army during World War One. Henry is injured by a mortar blast while he is eating in a trecnh with other soldiers. He is taken to the small hospital at the front where is around the half-crazed nurse, Catherine Barkely. Henry is moved to a hospital in the inner city so they can make room for other soldiers. Catherine is moved shortly after to help out. The two fall in love, somewhat, and spend most of their time together. I have not finished the book but I figure that the book cannot get any more boring (I'm not a big fan of reading anyways, so read it and decide for yourself).
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Summary: a nice book
Review: this is a really nice book, i had to read it for my english class and at first i didnt know what it was, when i read it, i really liked it. It had a beatifully sad ending thought, but i really liked it
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Summary: A pleasent surprise
Review: A farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway is in my opinion one of the greatest works of prose I have ever read. The story of two young and love struck individuals with a war all around them, and all they have is each other. Truly one of the greatest and most demanding books you'll ever read, the story not only involves the reader, but makes you feel for and with the characters and the ending which is the climax and best part of the book is indeed an emotional strain and feel for the characters. I'll even dare to say you'll enjoy every page of this book, because I know I did. The beginning is a bit slow but still very engaging and different events and characters only add to the splendor of the work. Indeed this is a very good and well-written novel, and I openly say that there would be no regret if you were to read this book, a novel that pleasantly surprised me and for that, I enjoyed it greatly.
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Summary: Wonderful Anti-War Novel By Hemingway In His Prime!
Review: 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!
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Summary: Farewell to Arms and Greetings to Great Literature
Review: There are no words that I could use to express the quality of this novel, you just have to read it for yourself. I do know that you really should read it, because it was one of the best books I've ever read and it really moved me. Great book, go out and get it!
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Summary: This is A Masterpiece of Literature
Review: I'm a 8th grade sudent who is studying at International School Bangkok. This was my first time that I picked up the Hemigway story, "A Farewell to Arms". It was challenging for me to read it because I've studied English for only 2years. A Farewell to Arms is Anti-War literature, a masterpiece that is write with a themes about the vanity of war. It also shows us the essence of Hemingway literature. But I didn't really like the way that the author created the maincharacter as a hero, and there was too much dialogue, but the affectionate love of the story between Henry and his girl friend gave me warm and sad emotions.
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Summary: Good prose bad dialogue
Review: Hemingway's sparse prose style is most evident in "The Sun also Rises" and this work. Some of the conversations between Frederic and Catherine in A Farewell to Arms are unreal and quite bad writing of dialogue by Hemingway. There is good prose in this novel so it is worth the trip if you like Hemingway. I believe overall that Hemingway's short story "Big Two Hearted River" is the best of Papa's corpus.
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