A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Section: Book Reports

The book A Farewell to Arms, written by Ernest Hemingway is about the love story of a nurse and a war ridden soldier. The story starts as Frederick Henry is serving in the Italian Army. He meets his future love in the hospital that he gets put in for various reasons. I thought that A Farewell to Arms was a good book because of the symbolism, the plot, and the constant moving of the main character. The symbolism in A Farewell to Arms is very much apparent. To the main character in novels, nights have always been a sign of death, or something negative to happen. Another one of the symbolism’s in A Farewell to Arms is when Henry tries to escape from the Italian army by jumping off one of the ships the army was traveling on and running away from the army. This water symbolized new, clean life that he was going to live from now on. At this time, Henry goes off and finds his wife to be. The plot in A Farewell to Arms was always active. They were never staying in one place too long. It had a very good story line, which was a love story that ended up in a tragedy. The main character’s wife got pregnant and she was off to have her baby when problems started occurring. They had to have a cesarean, and the baby dies, and when the mother of the child starts to hemorrhage Henry knows that it was over for his wife and he was right. From the beginning of the book until the end, the action was up. Ever since the front page Henry was traveling around to different towns so it was not boring for the reader. That made it very interesting for the reader because it was always a new town coming up so you were being introduced in the new characters quite often. As the story goes on, the writer is not introducing as many new people, but they are still traveling around quite a bit. I felt that the author’s planning of these types of events in this novel was put together very well! Ernest Hemingway is one of the world’s best known classic writers. He uses very strong symbolism that you the reader don’t always pick up. I am sure that I missed some of the symbolism that went on in the book. I picked up a few though and they were very interesting. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in a love story without a happy ending.