Rating: 
Summary: Quite Sad
Review: A Farewell to Arms was my first entry into the world of Ernest Hemingway and after reading it I plan on making a few more trips. Some here have said that Hemingway does not develop his characters enough but I beg to differ. Rather, I think that one of the best parts of the novel is the growth we witness in them, particularly in Henry. At first, I felt nothing towards him but as the novel crept slowly towards its inevitable conclusion I realized how human Henry had become and I began to feel for him. On the other hand, Catherine remains stagnant but I'm beginning to think that was intentional. She's sweet at the beginning but rather flat and annoying as the story progresses. Hemingway also manages to make the novel's setting frighteningly real, particulalry the battle and retreat sequences about two-thrids of the way through. In short, A Farewell to Arms is a worthwhile read and an excellent introduction to Ernest Hemingway.
Rating:
Summary: An American Classic
Review: "A Farewell to Arms" is considered by many critics the best novel ever written about World War I. Hemingway's account of the retreat from Caporetto is so realistic that many readers, particularly Italian readers have assumed the author was present to see what transpired. EH, however, was still in high school when the retreat took place. Hemingway's opening paragraph to the book has (on more than one occasion) been labelled the "best opening paragraph in American Literature." The famous "strong at the broken places" passage from chapter 34 is still widely quoted in popular culture. These reasons alone, in my humble opinion, make this novel "an American classic."
Rating: 
Summary: OK, but certainly not worthy of being called a classic
Review: I read this in high school and now again as an adult in my mid-40s. I am baffled that critics call this a classic (and I was a lit major). The characters lack any complexity, the story has little dramatic tension, and the characters' development is not insightful or even interesting. There are extended conversational passages that lead nowhere and just communicate the main emotion of the book: an ennui--perhaps caused by war, perhaps by the main character's own alienated personality.The only part that really had some insight and even tension(hence the two stars) is the first third in which Hemingway describes war itself and the sensation of being badly injured. This is clearly autobiographical and is much more alive than there rest of the book--after that, it's all predictable and uninteresting.
Rating:
Summary: An Anti-War Novel That Also Uncovers Life's Many Meanings
Review: This book clearly deserves more than five stars. A Farewell to Arms is the semi-autobiographical tale of an American lieutenant in the Italian army near the end of World War I. Though the book's action, you will see the gradual distintegration of the hero's commitment to the conflict and his faltering attempts to create a new personna. While this is clearly one of the greatest anti-war books of all time, it transcends that genre to look more directly at the nature of life's challenges and how we meet them. As such, A Farewell to Arms ranks as one of the greatest of all American philosphical novels as well. For Hemingway aficionados, you will be fascinated to see his ornate writing style before he developed his eventual, much-admired spare form. This is stream of consciousness Hemingway at its best. Lieutenant Henry is a man caught in the drift of events, without knowing what he stands for. He does his duty, but often out of habit rather than principle. When the full force of man and nature turn on him, he reverts to his instincts for self-survival. He wants little to do with the world, except in taking those delights that most please him. In the course of realizing and trying to overcome his emotional weaknesses, he simply isolates himself in new ways. Even love can only touch him when it is defined solely in his own terms. Hemingway sees personal progress as only being possible through extreme pain. "The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places." That's the good news. The bad news is that "those that will not break it kills." The world kills "the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially." This theme is carried out by the challenges of being a lieutenant in the ambulance corps, then being wounded in a mortar attack, going through surgery and recovery, dealing with a murderous retreat, and ultimately falling in love and dealing with loss. Lieutenant Henry is increasingly overwhelmed, and finds himself willing to attempt less and less. Although the story does not carry him forward through the rest of his life, you imagine that he remains an emotional cripple from these experiences for the rest of his life . . . having little faith or interest in his fellow humans. All of Hemingway's characters are emotionally crippled in one way or the other. Even if a shell does not hit them, they will never be the same from their war experiences. Whether they are driven by fear, love, or duty, the result is the same -- a disillusioned numbness that limits their ability to be alive. When pressed by the exigencies of the moment, each retreats to lick his or her wounds . . . cut off effectively from support. Whatever fine or infamous human emotion drives them, also condemns them. One of the particularly haunting aspects of the book is the portrayal of war as unending and inescapable. A modern reader naturally knows when World War I ended. At the time, people wondered if it would go on for a hundred years. That despair is well captured here. Another unforgettable feature is raising the question of who the enemy really is. Lieutenant Henry discovers that those be befriends, his allies, and nature itself can be even more dangerous to him than the military enemy ever has been. You get a chilling sense of the dark side of civilization that few novels even attempt to portray. Hemingway left Illinois at 17 to join the Kansas City Star as a reporter. He volunteered with the Red Cross in World War I at 18, first serving on the French front and later with the Italians. He was severely wounded in Italy, and was awarded the Italian Croce di Guerra. The first third of the book probably mirrors his own experiences very closely, and you will find a youthful vividness in those pages that will effectively put you amongst the battles and the boring sameness of waiting in between. Many have considered what man's inhumanity to man really means. World War I was one of the greatest examples of this terrible tendency. Reading this book provides a good opportunity to reconsider your own views about the meaning of such times in human history, and what the right things are to do. Imagine that you are any of the characters in this book. What could and should you have done differently? What would have been the probable consequences? What would have been the meaning of your decisions and actions? What lessons can you apply from this today? Basically, this book argues that moral progress only occurs through suffering. How else have you learned? How else could you learn? What does that mean about Hemingway's thesis? Look for the best . . . as well as seeing the best in the worst.
Rating:
Summary: stockyards
Review: I enjoy this book very much. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) had been an ambulance driver in the Great War (1914-1918) in Europe. The book he has written benefits from his first-hand experience in its subtle understanding of human nature under duress. Henry Frederic is an American ambulance driver in the Italian Army stationed on the Austrian Frontier. Catherine Barkley is a nurse from Scotland whom he meets there. First and foremost, this is a love story between these two people. The war provides an exciting backdrop. First Henry is severely wounded by a mortar shell. The second adventure is during the retreat of the Italian army. And the last adventure is when Henry and Catherine escape from Italy to Switzerland. Humour plays an important role in coping with stress, and Hemingway has many funny moments. My favourite is when a barber mistakenly thinks that Henry is an Austrian officer. "Ho ho ho," the porter laughed. "He was funny. One move from you he said and he would have--" he drew his forefinger across his throat. "Ho ho ho," he tried to keep from laughing." If you are interested in exciting wartime love stories or Ernest Hemingway, this book will be interesting to you.
Rating: 
Summary: The names of cities, the dates of battles
Review: I am in love with Hemingway's prose. His style, though often copied or imitated, is that of a master -- never duplicated. I almost believe he could write about the most mundane of things and it would be prose more worth reading than a good 75% of the books published. Here is a story about love and war. Old subjects, and thank God the writer knows that, and treats them as such. Back the the prose thing again. To dig just a bit deeper, Hemingway gives us a harsh and ugly world full of beautiful people. The war is senseless and awful, to be escaped, it seems the entire nature of the universe is to break and kill beautiful things. But inside of that, there are good people. Everywhere our hero goes, he finds decent, honest, giving, selfless people worth knowing, maybe even worth dying for. Maybe this is called existentialism. Personally, I disagree -- I see a beautiful, inherently good world full of selfish and broken people -- but Hemingway's worldview is, to say the least, poetic. There are a lot of different reasons to read books. One legit one is to escape -- but few, if any, would read, say, Dostoyevsky to escape. I usually read fantasy or sci-fi to escape. But I found this book, mostly because of Hemingway's enchanting prose (I just can't shut up about it) as an incredible mechanism to escape. A sample of that amazing prose: "I could remember Catherine but I knew I would get crazy if I thought about her when I was not sure yet I would see her, so I would not think about her, only about her a little, only about her with the car going slowly and clickingly, and some light through the canvas and my lying with Catherine on the floor of the car. Hard as the floor of the car to lie not thinking only feeling, having been away too long, the clothes wet and the floor moving only a little each time and lonesome inside and alone with wet clothing and hard floor for a wife."
Rating:
Summary: The Self
Review: People are individuals, society is a ruse. Our narrator is an island. He drifts without motivation- without hate for an enemy, concern for a cause, or love for a lover. To delay being subsumed by this nothingness, he avoids abstract thought, falls into alcohol, and fools himself that he has fallen in love. But it is only a delay. His story demands the writing style. Through Hemingway's high-tempo efficiency we learn of our narrator's capacity for prompt, clear thought, both to lead others, and to save his own life. We learn of his meandering shallowness, as he plays with a dog during his child's birth. And through Hemingway's intentional omissions, we learn that our narrator has no interest in his lover's past or future, he thinks not of his family, he neither sees nor values the beauty of his surrounds, and he experiences only a fleeting curiousity for absent buddies. Don't be distracted by the setting, 'Farewell to Arms' is honest, relevant and fascinating.
Rating:
Summary: How depressing
Review: While I knew that Hemingway would not give me a heart-warming tale, I kept hoping against hope that this novel would have a "happy" ending. Alas, it does not. This is to be expected. However, the novel is gorgeous not only in its style but also in its story. While the story of Henry and Catherine does not end happily, the events contained between the two covers is beautiful. It is a classic tale of undying and complete love. Why, if such a glowing review only four stars? Easily answered: I was depressed by the ending. While I knew it was coming, I didn't want it to. I would have much rather had the book end with the two lovers entering Switzerland. But, this would have been uncharacteristic of Hemingway.
Rating:
Summary: A Farewell to Arms
Review: In reading A Farewell to Arms, one is able to truly understand the many passions that abound within the souls of men...Hemingway's masterpiece, which details the epic struggle between life and death, between love and courage during the Great War, induces in the reader a whirlwind of emotions, beginning with trepidation and ending with an emptiness unrivaled in modern literature...It is, in its barest and also in its most complicated form, a passionate love story interrupted by spells of reality..By way of the author's customary, journalistic-type prose, and his conscious omission of superflous verbatim, the emotions of the characters and those of the reader become one...at the very end of the tale, however, the spirit of the lovers is abruptly retracted, and the reader is left sitting alone, forced to contemplate what just happened...that the novel can seem brief while simulateneously depicting a long, arduous war march, is certainly a credit to the author, and is partly what makes A Farewell to Arms one of the great novels of the Twentieth Century.
Rating:
Summary: Dated, mundane, and journalistic.
Review: Considering myself reasonably well-read, but never having delved into Hemingway, I picked up "A Farewell to Arms." I was disappointed. As a 20th Century novel, it pales beside the works of Evelyn Waugh, Mikhail Bulgakov, Somerset Maugham and even John Barth. "A Farewell to Arms" has not withstood the test of time. It is shallow, dated, predictable and characters are not well-formed. For a much better novel on the World War I era, try Ford Madox Ford's "Parade's End."
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