A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

First published: 1929

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Impressionistic realism

Time of plot: World War I

Locale: Northern Italy and Switzerland

Principal Characters

• Frederic Henry, an American serving with an Italian ambulance unit
• Catherine Barkley, an English nurse

The Story

Lieutenant Frederic Henry is a young American attached to an Italian ambulance unit on the Italian front. An offensive is soon to begin, and when Henry returns to the front from leave, he learns from his friend, Lieutenant Rinaldi, that a group of British nurses arrived in his absence to set up a British hospital unit. Rinaldi introduces him to Nurse Catherine Barkley. Between ambulance trips to evacuation posts at the front, Henry calls on Miss Barkley. He likes the frank young English girl in a casual sort of way, but he is not in love with her. Before he leaves for the front to stand by for an attack, she gives him a St. Anthony medal.

At the front, as Henry and some Italian ambulance drivers are eating in a dugout, an Austrian projectile explodes over them. Henry, badly wounded in the legs, is taken to a field hospital. Later, he is moved to a hospital in Milan. Before the doctor is able to see Henry in Milan, the nurse prohibits his drinking wine, but he bribes a porter to bring him a supply that he keeps hidden behind his bed. Catherine comes to the hospital, and Henry knows that he is in love with her. The doctors tell Henry that he will have to lie in bed for six months before they can operate on his knee. Henry insists on seeing another doctor, who says that the operation can be performed the next day. Meanwhile, Catherine manages to be with Henry constantly.

After his operation, Henry convalesces in Milan with Catherine as his attendant. Together they dine in out-of-the-way restaurants, and together they ride about the countryside in a carriage. Henry is restless and lonely at nights and Catherine often comes to his hospital room. Summer passes into autumn. Henry’s wound heals, and he is due to take convalescent leave in October. He and Catherine plan to spend the leave together, but he comes down with jaundice before he can leave the hospital. The head nurse accuses him of bringing on the jaundice by drink, in order to avoid being sent back to the front. Before he leaves for the front, Henry and Catherine stay together in a hotel room; already she has disclosed to him that she is pregnant. Henry returns to the front with orders to load his three ambulances with hospital equipment and go south into the Po valley. Morale is at a low ebb. Rinaldi admires the job that has been done on the knee and observes that Henry acts like a married man. War weariness is all-pervasive. At the front, the Italians, learning that German divisions have reinforced the Austrians, begin their terrible retreat from Caporetto. Henry drives one of the ambulances loaded with hospital supplies. During the retreat south, the ambulance is held up several times by wagons, guns, and trucks, which extend in stalled lines for miles. Henry picks up two straggling Italian sergeants. During the night, the retreat is halted in the rain for hours.

At daybreak, Henry cuts out of the long line and drives across country in an attempt to reach Udine by side roads. The ambulance gets stuck in a muddy side road. The sergeants decide to leave, but Henry asks them to help dislodge the car from the mud. They refuse and run. Henry shoots and wounds one; the other escapes across the fields. An Italian ambulance corpsman with Henry shoots the wounded sergeant through the back of the head. Henry and his three comrades strike out on foot for Udine. On a bridge, Henry sees a German staff car with German bicycle troops crossing another bridge over the same stream. Within sight of Udine, one of Henry’s group is killed by an Italian sniper. The others hide in a barn until it seems safe to circle around Udine and join the mainstream of the retreat toward the Tagliamento River.

By that time, the Italian army is nothing but a frantic mob. Soldiers are throwing down their arms and officers are cutting insignia of rank from their sleeves. At the end of a long wooden bridge across the Tagliamento, military carabiniere are seizing all officers, giving them drumhead trials, and executing them by the riverbank. Henry is detained, but in the dark of night he breaks free, plunges into the river, and escapes on a log. He crosses the Venetian plain on foot, then jumps aboard a freight train and rides to Milan, where he goes to the hospital in which he was a patient. There he learns that the English nurses went to Stresa.

During the retreat from Caporetto, Henry made his farewell to arms. He borrows civilian clothes from an American friend in Milan and goes by train to Stresa, where he meets Catherine, who is on leave. The bartender of the hotel in which Henry is staying warns Henry that authorities plan to arrest him for desertion the next morning; he offers his boat by means of which Henry and Catherine can escape to Switzerland. Henry rows all night. By morning, his hands are so raw that he can barely stand to touch the oars. Over his protests, Catherine takes a turn at the rowing. They reach Switzerland safely and are arrested. Henry tells the police that he is a sportsman who enjoys rowing and that he comes to Switzerland for the winter sports. The valid passports and the ample funds that Henry and Catherine possess save them from serious trouble with the authorities.

During the rest of the fall and winter, the couple stay at an inn outside Montreux. They discuss marriage, but Catherine will not be married while she is pregnant. They hike, read, and talk about what they will do together after the war. When the time for Catherine’s confinement approaches, she and Henry go to Lausanne to be near a hospital. They plan to return to Montreux in the spring. At the hospital, Catherine’s pains cause the doctor to use an anesthetic on her. After hours of suffering, she delivers a dead baby. The nurse sends Henry out to get something to eat. When he gets back to the hospital, he learns that Catherine had a hemorrhage. He goes into the room and stays with her until she dies. There is nothing he can do, no one he can talk to, no place he can go. Catherine is dead. He leaves the hospital and walks back to his hotel in the dark. It is raining.

Bibliography

Berman, Ronald. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and the Twenties. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2001. Print.

Beversluis, John. “Dispelling the Romantic Myth: A Study of A Farewell to Arms.” Hemingway Review 9.1 (Fall 1989): 18–25. Print.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms.” New York: Chelsea House, 1987. Print.

Donaldson, Scott, ed. New Essays on “A Farewell to Arms.” New York: Cambridge UP, 1990. Print.

Fantina, Richard. Ernest Hemingway: Machismo and Masochism. New York: Palgrave, 2005. Print.

Gajdusek, Robert E. Hemingway in His Own Country. Notre Dame, Ind.: U of Notre Dame P, 2002. Print.

Herndl, Diane Price. "Invalid Masculinity: Silence, Hospitals, and Anesthesia in A Farewell to Arms." Ernest Hemingway. Ed. Eugene Goodheart. Pasadena: Salem, 2010. 240–56. Print.

Lewis, Robert W.“A Farewell to Arms”: The War of the Words. Boston: Twayne, 1992. Print.

Magnum, Bryant. "Ernest Hemingway." Critical Survey of Long Fiction. Ed. Carl Rollyson. Pasadena: Salem, 2010. 1–10. Print.

Owens-Murphy, Katie. "Hemingway's Pragmatism: Truth, Utility, and Concrete Particulars in A Farewell to Arms." Hemingway Review 29.1 (Fall 2009): 87–102. Print.

Trogdon, Robert W., ed. Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Reference. New York: Carroll, 2002. Print.

Wagner-Martin, Linda. Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Life. New York: Palgrave, 2007. Print.

Wagner-Martin, Linda. Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms”: A Reference Guide. Westport: Greenwood, 2003. Print.