Analysis of “Lost” Theme in A Farewell to Arms

盧夢竹

【Abstract】From the aspect of writing backgrounds, plot development and characters portrayed in the novel, conclusions that the novel reflects Ernest Hemingways mental attitude after World War I. the war is the root of love tragedy of the leading characters and life tragedy of the “lost generation” and several characters in the novel make up a bright side to the heavy theme of disillusionment and lose are drawn.

【Key words】lost; theme; analysis; characters

【摘要】從《永別了，武器》這部作品的寫作背景，情節發展及人物塑造等三方面進行評析，得出結論：該作品反映了第一次世界大戰后海明威迷惘的心理，戰爭是造成小說主人公愛情悲劇及戰后“迷惘的一代”的根源，作品中幾個角色構成了“迷惘”的主題中積極的方面

【關鍵詞】迷惘 主題 評析 人物

A Farewell to Arms is regarded as one of the two best novels of Ernest Hemingway. But from this novel disillusionment and loss is what mainly can be found, and the pessimistic theme seems not deserve the praise. In order to solve this puzzlement and get a complete understanding of the novel, I try to analyze the theme of this novel from its background, the development of its plot, and some characters the author set in the novel.

1. The background of the novel

The author Ernest Hemingway himself was just one of the “lost generation” and called the “leading spokesman” of them who “always put his own feeling and experience into fiction”. He took part in World War I and experienced a lot in the war, which provided him vivid subject matters in his works and can be also traced in the novel. A Farewell to Arms, as a novel with “obvious autobiographical origins”, inevitably contains the authors war experiences and thoughts, so a good understanding of the background of this novel is necessary for a good understanding of the work.

Hemingway became one of the “lost generation” after World War I. “Charged with enthusiasm by war propaganda with its catch words like democracy, patriotism and glory”, Hemingway was off to World War I as an ambulance driver and infantryman with the Italian army. But the war turned out to be a “trap” and “dirty trick” which hurt him seriously both spiritually and physically, Hemingway was severely wounded in the war. Hundreds of artillery fragments are taken from his body, but there were still some left permanently. He also suffered from a long-standing insomnia. The unbearable illness not only broke down his body but also affected his emotions so badly that he could not stop worrying and fearing whenever once his old illness broke out. The worse is the collapse of the traditional moral values. Glory and dreams were replaced by wounds, ideal and hope by vacancy. The young people at Hemingways age became pessimistic, disappointed and despaired. They hated the war but did not have clear target of life. “From detest against war and doubt of society, they built up a kind of attitude of believing in nothing except their personal feeling for they felt bitter to numb.” One of the famous American woman writers Gestured Stein even said, “You are all a lost generation.” As one of them, Hemingway was no exceptional. But a new system of moral values had not been set up yet just after the war. Hemingway had nothing to pursue and follow, and disillusionment and loss occupied his mind at that time.

A Farewell to Arms is right a record of Hemingways war experiences and a reflection of his mental condition in the 1920s. After World War I, Hemingway was at loss at first, and then he began to think soberly. He decided to take up writing as a profession, using his pen to write the mentality of their generation. Hemingway had a lot of war experiences that set in his mind deeply and firmly thus provided him with substantial writing materials for his works. Hemingway served in the Italian Army and was badly wounded in the legs. So did his hero Henry. The vivid description of Hemingways being wounded and the great retreating scene both came from what had happened to the author and what he had seen in the war. Like his private experiences used in his work, his mental attitude was also implied in the novel. A Farewell to Arms was written in the late 1920s when Hemingway was deep in pain from war. He was still in the state of loss and disillusionment, so his work was inevitably affected by and reflected his idea about life and the world at that period. Hemingway could not express any positive ideas but to include disillusionment and his feeling against war in the novel. And the author pessimistic thoughts decided the theme of A Farewell to Arms a pessimistic one.

2. The plot of the novel

The miserable love story between Henry and Catherine in the novel reveals that the war is the root of their tragedy and furthermore the root of the whole “lost generation” in real life. What happens to them--Henry wounded in battlefield and called to the front from his lover, they in the danger of being arrested, and later Catherine dies in difficult labor--all these have every possibility to happen in war time. However, if we sum up these happenings in the different development of their love, it is not hard to find the shadowy and predestined link between their love affair and the war. The following diagram explains this clearly:

H: Henry C: Catherine

When H meets C and likes her ----H is wounded

When H falls in love with C ---- H is called to the front

When H and C live quietly in Stresa ---- H is in danger of being arrested

When H and C flee to Switzerland ---- H loses his lover

It is very obvious that each time Henry and Catherine deepen their love, the war casts its shadow and disturbs them. And when they live happily in Switzerland----it seems that they have succeeded in escaping from the war---- the war gives them the most malicious blow ---- Catherine dies and the couple is separated forever. One single unhappy incident can be looked as an unfortunate coincidence, but four unhappy incidents cannot be looked as coincidences any more. By the way, the work is divided into five chapters four of which just show the relation in the diagram above. Probably this is one of the means by which Hemingway wanted to imply the doomed tragic connection between the love story and the war. Thereby, what happens to Henry and Catherine cannot be denied unnatural and unreasonable but it is really doomed. Even before Catherine dies, Henry has glimpsed the inevitability of death and suffering:

“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken place. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too there will be no special hurry”

It is right the war that kills the couple taking Catherines life, breaking Henrys ideal and making him a lost man. Since Henry is the typical character that Hemingway molded, Henry and Catherines love tragedy is the typical subject matter that Hemingway used in his fiction to mirror the painful was experiences and the mental condition of the generation of his age, the love tragedy has a common meaning and a representative effect on the tragedy of the “lost generation”, and the tragedy reveals the truth in real society, namely, the war is the root of the great tragedy in which a whole young generation is broken and lost. Through the character of Henry, Hemingway voiced thoroughly his strong feeling against war.

“I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious and sacrifice and the expression in vain. I had seen nothing sacred and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of the places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such so glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the number of roads, the names of rivers, the number of regiments and the dates. ”

3. A positive point of the theme

With the purpose of writing out his mental attitude and expressing disillusionment in A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway also implicitly conveyed his belief in a set of particular morals in a disordered world, which makes a bright side in his pessimistic theme. As one of the “lost generation” who were pessimistic, suspicious and despaired after World War I, Hemingway certainly put his idea of this kind into his work, especially in A Farewell to Arms, written in 1920s, when he was deeply lost. This is why the world in his work is “actually at war that it is marked everywhere with violence, present or possible, and a general feeling of hatred.”And disillusionment is the main impression on readers at the first reading of the novel. However, Hemingway cannot be seen as a nihilist who denies everything. In his pessimistic works, Hemingway still makes positive affirmation: “though life is meaningless and aimless, man should behave according to particular principles and live on sincerely, bravely in his own style.”Although the old traditional morals which had led people collapsed, Hemingway believed there were some good virtues which never corrupt and are worthy to follow and persist. Hemingway believed in a set of particular moralities such as honesty, bravery, integrity and endurance. In his novel, these moralities are always embodied in some common characters who are intimate friends of the hero. In A Farewell to Arms, Lieutenant Rinaldi, the priest and the heroine Catherine are the common but also particular characters manifesting these moralities. Rinaldi, the surgeon in the army, is a simple and honest person. He whole-heartedly rescues the wounded soldiers in the front, making big contribution with good sense of responsibility. “All summer and all fall he operates. He works all the time, doing everybodys work, and doing all the hard ones others leave to him.”The war robs him of the normal life pleasure, and overwork brings him weariness. In the end of novel he appears as a very nervous and pitiable man, nearly broken by the environment and the disease he gets. But at this time, he still insists in his position and does not give up. And Catherine, the best one of them, gentle and kindhearted, brave and romantic, gives all her love to her lover. When Henry goes to the front, she gives him a Saint Anthony, hoping that he will be safe in the fight. When she is pregnant, she soothes Henry “not worry or feel badly” and tells him that she “will try and not make trouble for him”. Later in a stormy night, she unhesitatingly flees to Switzerland with Henry, not caring about herself at all. Even just before death, struggling for many hours to give birth to her child, she still comforts Henry, “I will come and stay with you nights.”These characters cannot change the pessimism in the theme, but their existence makes the theme not a complete pessimistic one. The moralities rising from them are so beautiful that readers cannot help respecting and sympathizing with them. And in the disillusionment extended from the novel full of depressing air, what these characters act out makes up some bright and positive elements in Hemingways heavy theme.

4. Conclusion

In order to make clear why the theme in A Farewell to Arms is mainly depressing and thereby get a full understanding of the novel, I have analyzed the theme from its background, plot and some characters. As a book filled with Hemingways feelings, thoughts and personal experiences, A Farewell to Arms reflects exactly his war experiences and mental conditions in the 1920s. It is the authors thoughts of disillusionment and loss that decides the theme in the novel a mainly pessimistic one. The tragic love story in the novel extends the authors strong hatred of war and reveals that the war is the real root of the couples tragic ending in the novel and the formation of “lost generation” in the real society.

【References】

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