1. A Farewell to Arms ERNEST HEMINGWAY

2. A Farewell to Arms  Frederic Henry, and architecture student in Italy, has enlisted in the Italian army for reasons even he doesn’t know. He is in the ambulance corps.  Catherine Barkley evolves into a powerful love that changes his life.  In both facets of the story, death is universal, unavoidable, inexorable, as it is in real life.  War seems to be a perennial of human history.

3. A Farewell to Arms  There are five books that blend the two stories, one of war, and the other love.  Book One – Focuses on the war  Book Two – War moves to the background for the love story.  Book Three – War becomes dominant again.  Book Four – Balances both stories.  Book Five – Frederic feels alienated from war – like someone at a football game at another’s college.

4. Book One  Frederic Henry is faced with a choice of a disciplined existence or a life of sensuality, and for a time he chooses the latter.  From Miss Barkley we see the romantic notion of war in her past fantasies about her fiancé.  The contrast between romance and reality is vividly apparent.

5. Ernest Hemingway  Son of a doctor and musician.  Never went to college  Rejected for army service – bad eye  Worked in journalism with much success.  Married four times  Man of action – stereotypically male  In 1954 Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature for “Forceful style making mastery in the art of modern narration.”  Committed suicide in July 1961.

6. Ernest Hemingway – Prose  His prose is quite direct. It has been described as hard hitting, compact, disciplined, masculine, stoic, action-centered.  The Hemingway hero is “all-man,” but with a vulnerable side which he seems determined to disregard.  He rewrote the ending thirty-nine times.