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A Farewell to Arms

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Plot summary

Alternate endings, publication and reception, autobiographical elements.

• When did American literature begin?
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A Farewell to Arms

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A Farewell to Arms , third novel by Ernest Hemingway , published in 1929. Its depiction of the existential disillusionment of the “ Lost Generation ” echoes his early short stories and his first major novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926). A Farewell to Arms is particularly notable for its autobiographical elements.

The plot of A Farewell to Arms is fairly straightforward. While working with the Italian ambulance service during World War I (1914–18), the American lieutenant Frederic Henry meets the English nurse Catherine Barkley. Although she still mourns the death of her fiancé, who was killed in the war, Catherine encourages Henry’s advances. After Henry is badly wounded by a trench mortar shell near the Isonzo River in Italy, he is brought to a hospital in Milan, where he is eventually joined by Catherine. She tends to him as he recovers. During this time their relationship deepens. Henry admits that he has fallen in love with her. Catherine soon becomes pregnant by Henry but refuses to marry him.

After the hospital superintendent, Miss Van Campen, discovers that Henry has been hiding alcohol in his hospital room, he is sent back to the front. During his absence, morale on the front had significantly worsened. During the Italian retreat after the disastrous Battle of Caporetto (1917), he deserts the army, just barely escaping execution by Italian military police . Back in Milan , Henry searches for Catherine. He soon learns that she has been sent to Stresa , some 95 miles (153 km) away. Henry journeys to Stresa by train. Once there, he reunites with Catherine, and the couple flee Italy by crossing the border into neutral Switzerland.

Upon arrival, Henry and Catherine are arrested by Swiss border authorities. They decide to allow Henry and Catherine—who masquerade as architecture and art students seeking “winter sport”—to stay in Switzerland. The couple pass several happy months in a wooden house near Montreux. Late one night Catherine goes into labour. She and Henry take a taxi to the hospital. A long and painful labour ensues, and Henry wonders if Catherine will survive. Sadly, their son is stillborn. Soon after, Catherine begins to hemorrhage and dies with Henry by her side. He tries to say goodbye but cannot. He returns to their hotel alone, in the rain.

In A Farewell to Arms , Hemingway provided a realistic and unromanticized account of war. He wanted readers to experience the events of the novel as though they were actually witnessing them. Using a simple writing style and plain language, he omitted inessential adjectives and adverbs, rendering the violence of the Italian front in sparing prose. To give readers a sense of immediacy, Hemingway used short declarative clauses and made frequent use of the conjunction and . Many years after the publication of A Farewell to Arms , Hemingway explained that he used the word for its rhythmic quality: it was, he said, a “conscious imitation of the way Mr. Johann Sebastian Bach used a note in music when he was emitting a counterpoint.” The same language animates the protagonist’s voice, thoughts, and dialogue . The effect is similarly lifelike. Hemingway authentically replicated the way soldiers speak in times of war—profanities and all. (At the request of the publisher, Hemingway’s editor, Maxwell Perkins , replaced the profanities with dashes. Hemingway reportedly reinserted the words by hand in a few first-edition copies of the novel, one of which he gave to Irish novelist James Joyce .)

Although Hemingway referred to the novel as his Romeo and Juliet , the tone of A Farewell to Arms is lyric and pathetic rather than tragic. Grief turns the hero away from, rather than toward, a deeper examination of life. Hemingway’s depiction of Henry reflects the pathos of the Lost Generation, whose members came of age during World War I. The conclusion of the novel—in which Catherine and the baby die, leaving Henry desolate—is emblematic of the Lost Generation’s experience of disillusionment and despondency in the immediate postwar years.

Interpretations of the title vary. The novel may take its name from a 16th-century poem by the English dramatist George Peele . In Peele’s lyric poem, conventionally called “A Farewell to Arms (To Queen Elizabeth),” a knight laments that he is too old to bear arms for his queen, Elizabeth I:

His helmet now shall make a hive for bees; And, lovers’ sonnets turn’d to holy psalms, A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees, And feed on prayers, which are Age his alms: But though from court to cottage he depart, His Saint is sure of his unspotted heart.

Peele’s poem reflects some of the core themes of Hemingway’s novel: duty, war, and masculinity. However, there is no evidence to suggest that Hemingway knew of the poem’s existence, let alone took its title. As some scholars noted, Hemingway selected the title relatively late in the publishing process, while performing manuscript revisions. These scholars argued that the title—and, by extension , Peele’s poem—had no influence on the writing or shaping of the novel.

Another interpretation of the novel’s title stresses the dual meaning of the word arms . In deserting the Italian army, the protagonist bids farewell to “arms” as weapons. When Catherine dies, he bids farewell to the loving “arms” of his mistress. This interpretation of the title blends the two major themes of the novel: war and love.

In 1958 Hemingway told George Plimpton of The Paris Review that he “rewrote the ending to [A] Farewell to Arms , the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.” He claimed that he had trouble “getting the words right.” Historians have since determined that Hemingway actually wrote 47 endings to the novel. The endings range in length from a few sentences to several paragraphs. Some endings are bleaker than others. In one particularly grim ending, titled “The Nada Ending,” Hemingway wrote, “That is all there is to the story. Catherine died and you will die and I will die and that is all I can promise you.” In another ending, Henry and Catherine’s baby survives. This ending—appropriately titled “Live-Baby Ending”—was the seventh conclusion Hemingway wrote.

Hemingway sought advice on the ending from F. Scott Fitzgerald , his friend and fellow author. Fitzgerald suggested Hemingway end the novel with the observation that the world “breaks everyone,” and those “it does not break it kills.” In the end, Hemingway chose not to take Fitzgerald’s advice. Instead, he concluded the novel with these last lines:

But after I had got [the nurses] out and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn’t any good. It was like saying good-bye to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.

Hemingway wrote and revised A Farewell to Arms in 15 months. The work was first published serially in the United States in Scribner’s Magazine between May and October 1929. Charles Scribner’s Sons reportedly paid Hemingway $16,000 for the rights—the most the magazine had ever paid for a serialized work. In the late 1920s, Scribner’s Magazine had an average annual circulation of about 70,000. Despite attempts by the publisher to censor Hemingway’s work, many subscribers cancelled their subscriptions to the magazine. They cited (among other things) Hemingway’s bad language and “pornographic” depictions of premarital sex as reasons for terminating their subscriptions. Authorities in Boston outright banned the magazine. On June 21, 1929, The New York Times reported :

The June issue of Scribner’s Magazine was barred from bookstands...by Michael H. Crowley, Superintendent of the Police, because of objections to an installment of Ernest Hemingway’s serial, ‘A Farewell to Arms.’ It is said that some persons deemed part of the installment salacious .

Scribner’s defended Hemingway’s work, claiming “the ban on the sale of the magazine in Boston is an evidence of the improper use of censorship which bases its objections upon certain passages without taking into account the effect and purpose of the story as a whole.” The publisher argued that the work was neither immoral nor “anti-war.”

A Farewell to Arms first appeared as a novel in the United States in September 1929. Scribner’s ordered an initial print run of about 31,000 copies. Hemingway numbered and signed 510 first-edition copies. The novel was Hemingway’s first best seller; it sold some 100,000 copies in its first 12 months. Unlike the serial, the novel enjoyed a generally warm reception. A New York Times review described it as “a moving and beautiful book.” In November 1929 the London Times Literary Supplement deemed it “a novel of great power” and Hemingway “an extremely talented and original artist.” The American novelist John Dos Passos —Hemingway’s contemporary and sometime friend—called the novel “a first-rate piece of craftsmanship by a man who knows his job.”

In Italy, news of the novel’s publication was not received well. Many Italians resented Hemingway’s (highly accurate) depiction of the Italian retreat after the Battle of Caporetto. The fascist regime under Benito Mussolini banned the novel. Some scholars speculated that the ban was instituted in part because of a personal conflict between Hemingway and Mussolini. Years before, Hemingway had interviewed Mussolini for The Toronto Daily Star . In an article published in 1923, Hemingway referred to Mussolini as “the biggest bluff in Europe.” A Farewell to Arms was not published in Italy until 1948.

Since its publication in 1929, Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms has been translated into many languages, including Arabic, Italian, Japanese, and Urdu. A number of revised editions have been published. Notably, in July 2012, Scribner’s published an edition of the novel containing all 47 alternative endings, in addition to pieces from early drafts.

A Farewell to Arms has been praised for its realistic depiction of war. Its realism has often been attributed to personal experience: the novel is informed in no small part by Hemingway’s own wartime service. Although Hemingway spent less time and had a more limited role in World War I than his protagonist, the resemblance between his experience and Henry’s is nonetheless striking.

During World War I, Hemingway worked as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross . Like Henry, he served on the Italian front and suffered a severe injury on the Austro-Italian front. On the night of July 8, 1918, while handing out chocolate and cigarettes to soldiers, Hemingway was struck by fragments of an Austrian mortar shell. He was wounded in the foot, knee, thighs, scalp, and hand. In all, he absorbed more than 200 pieces of shrapnel—by his own count, 237.

In the aftermath of the explosion, the injured Hemingway reportedly carried a man to safety. (He was subsequently awarded a medal of valour for this action, among several others.) Hemingway was ultimately taken to a Red Cross hospital in Milan, where he met and fell in love with a nurse named Agnes von Kurowsky. At age 26, von Kurowsky was seven years his senior. Although she did not fully reciprocate his love, von Kurowsky was fond of Hemingway and enjoyed his company. In a diary entry on August 25, 1918, she wrote that Hemingway “has a case on me, or thinks he has. He is a dear boy and so cute about it….” Once Hemingway began to recover from his injuries, the pair attended operas and horse races together. In September 1918, about two months after Hemingway’s injury, von Kurowsky volunteered for service in Florence during an influenza outbreak. She and Hemingway maintained correspondence. In her letters, von Kurowsky called Hemingway “Kid.” He called her “Mrs. Kid” and “the missus.”

Von Kurowsky’s feelings for Hemingway were never as deep as his affection for her. She broke off the relationship in a letter dated March 7, 1919, not long after Hemingway returned to his home in Oak Park , Illinois. In the letter, von Kurowsky explained that she was “still very fond” of Hemingway but “more as a mother than as a sweetheart.” According to his sister, Marcelline, Hemingway vomited after reading the letter. Years after Hemingway’s death in 1961, his son, Jack, called the loss of von Kurowsky the great tragedy of his father’s early life.

Von Kurowsky almost undoubtedly served as the source for the heroine in A Farewell to Arms . When asked about Hemingway’s novel in 1976, she said, “Let’s get it straight—please. I wasn’t that kind of girl.” She objected to the insinuation that she and Hemingway were lovers, insisting that Catherine Barkley was an “arrant fantasy” and that the affair in the hospital was “totally implausible.”

A Farewell to Arms was one of the most widely read war novels of the 20th century. It was published during the period between World War I and World War II , a time when war novels were very popular in the United States and around the world. A Farewell to Arms was published in the same year as Erich Maria Remarque ’s magnum opus Im Westen nichts Neues ( All Quiet on the Western Front ), which details the daily horrors of war on the Western front in laconic understatement. Remarque’s characters, like Hemingway’s, are remarkably disillusioned with the war. Hemingway and Remarque together set the precedent for future war novelists Evelyn Waugh , Kurt Vonnegut , Joseph Heller , Tim O’Brien , Sebastian Faulks, and others whose work expresses a cynical attitude toward war and violence.

A Farewell to Arms

By ernest hemingway, a farewell to arms study guide.

World War I began in 1914 and ended on Nov. 11, 1918. Fought primarily between the Triple Alliance powers of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Triple Entente countries of England, France, Russia, Italy, and the U.S. (Italy defected from the Triple Alliance in 1915; the U.S. joined the war in 1917), the Great War, as it was called, with its vast scope, modernized weaponry, and vague political struggle over land, laid waste to Europe's landscape and population. Roughly half of the 70 million men and women serving in the war were killed, injured, or taken prisoner.

A Farewell to Arms is greatly informed by Hemingway's own wartime experience. Rejected from the U.S. army for his poor eyesight (which he later falsely claimed was due to boxing), Hemingway's determination to join the war effort landed him a post with the Red Cross as an ambulance driver on the Italian front. He jumped at the chance to be a canteen-provider on the front lines, handing out chocolate and cigarettes to the troops during battle, and on July 8, 1918 he was hit in the leg by an Austrian mortar shell. Despite the wound, he managed to carry an Italian soldier to the nearby command post. However, machine-gun fire struck him in the knee and foot, and he was eventually sent to a hospital in Milan, Italy. A similar injury befalls Henry in the novel.

During his convalescence, the 19-year-old Hemingway had an affair with an American Red Cross nurse seven years his senior, Agnes von Kurowsky. This experience inspired Henry's romance with Catherine in the novel, though Hemingway most likely embellished it; most scholars believe Agnes, a committed nurse, never let him move beyond kissing and did not reciprocate his intense feelings. Though she did not die during the war, as Catherine does, Agnes eventually rejected Hemingway via a letter.

The painful emotions of a broken body and heart no doubt embittered Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms (1929), which some critics consider the finest novel to come out of the war and Hemingway's personal best, reflected the widespread disillusionment with war - and with a world that allows such barbarity - of Hemingway's young but weary post-WWI "Lost Generation."

A Farewell to Arms Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for A Farewell to Arms is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Why is Helen jealous of Catherine and Henry?

Helen is jealous of Catherine and Henry because she thinks that their relationship will inadvertently effect her friendship with Catherine.

Henry-Character Traits

Henry is described as good at his job; a cool-headed, unselfish man who exercises grace under pressure when he is injured and when he must shoot a deserting engineering officer. He is also loyal and steadfast.

What extended meaning do we find in his statement, "It was not my show anymore"(232).

In context, this quote reveals Frederick's ongoing ability to detach himself from events, circumstances, and people. His desire to leave the war is not emotional... his desire to return to Catherine is somewhat emotional, but in the end, his...

Study Guide for A Farewell to Arms

A Farewell to Arms study guide contains a biography of Ernest Hemingway, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About A Farewell to Arms
• A Farewell to Arms Summary
• Character List
• Book One, Chapters I-VI Summary and Analysis

Essays for A Farewell to Arms

A Farewell to Arms literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Farewell to Arms.

• Natural Symbolism, Death, and Language
• The Need for Repetition: Hemingway's Sparse Landscape in A Farewell to Arms
• No Separate Peace
• Superstition Versus Religion and Its Parallels to Love as Seen Through the Relationship Between Catherine and Frederic in A Farewell To Arms
• Escape Via Love and Intoxication

Lesson Plan for A Farewell to Arms

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to A Farewell to Arms
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• A Farewell to Arms Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for A Farewell to Arms

• Introduction
• Plot summary
• Background and publication history
• Critical reception

A Farewell to Arms

Ernest hemingway, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

A Farewell to Arms takes place in Italy during World War I, and the lives of all the characters are marked by the war. Most of the characters, from Henry and Catherine down to the soldiers and shop owners whom Henry meets, are humanists who echo Hemingway's view that war is a senseless waste of life. The few characters that support the war are presented as zealots to be either feared, as in the case…

Love and Loss

Much is made throughout the novel of Henry's aversion to falling in love. Yet in spite of his natural cynicism about love, he falls for Catherine . At the other end of the spectrum, Catherine craves love to an unstable degree, to the exclusion of everything else in the world. But their relationship is always surrounded by loss: the loss of Catherine's former lover to war before the novel begins, and the foreshadowing of the…

Reality vs. Fantasy

Throughout A Farewell to Arms , Hemingway shows how the harsh truths of reality always infiltrate and corrupt the distracting fantasies that characters create to make themselves feel better. In terms of war, Hemingway shows how ideals such as glory and honor quickly fade when one is confronted with the stark or absurd realities of battle—for instance, when Henry is maimed by a mortar shell while eating macaroni and cheese.

Many characters create escapist fantasies…

Self vs. Duty

Henry is an ambulance driver and Catherine is a nurse, so each of them has a responsibility to others during wartime. However, as Henry's love for Catherine deepens and Henry begins to see that the war is unjust, he begins to adopt a philosophy of "every man for himself." When the Italian Army fractures during its retreat and the military police Henry because he is an officer, Henry makes a final break from the army…

Henry is a classic Hemingway man: a stoic man of action with a personal code of honor who also enjoys the pleasures of life. For instance, the three doctors who fail to treat Henry's leg are the antithesis of Hemingway men. Besides being timid and unsure, they fail the test of manhood by refusing to drink with Henry when he offers.

While Henry has many attributes of a Hemingway man at the start of the…

A saying that came out of the trenches, or foxholes, of World War I was, "There are no atheists in foxholes." Henry , who sees the world as a bitter realist, does not love God. However, he is not above turning to religion in times of crisis, as can be seen in the St. Anthony medallion he puts under his shirt before going into battle or his moving, desperate prayer when Catherine is dying. While…

A Farewell to Arms

Ernest hemingway.

293 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1929

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“The war seemed as far away as the football games of some one else's college.”

And you’ll always love me won’t you? Yes. And the rain won’t make any difference? No.

"The fact that the book was a tragic one did not make me unhappy since I believed that life was a tragedy and knew it could have only one end. But finding you were able to make something up; to create truly enough so that it made you happy to read it; and to do this every day you worked was something that gave me a greater pleasure than any I had ever known. Beside it nothing else mattered."

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 afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

We were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. But with Catherine there was almost no difference in the night except that it was an even better time. 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 every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

تو انقدر دل دار و خاموشی که من اصلا یادم میره داری درد می‌کشی.

من مریض نیستم. زخمی‌ام.

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A Farewell to Arms

Ernest Hemingway is the notorious tough guy of modern American letters, but it would be hard to find a more tender and rapturous love story than A Farewell to Arms. It would also be hard to find a more harrowing American novel about World War I. Hemingway masterfully interweaves these dual narratives of love and war, joy and terror, and—ultimately—liberation and death.

It will surprise no one that a book so vivid and deeply felt originated in the author's own life. Hemingway served as an ambulance driver for the Italian army in World War I. Severely wounded, he recuperated in a Red Cross hospital in Milan where he fell in love with one of his nurses. This relationship proved the model for Frederic and Catherine's tragic romance in A Farewell to Arms.

"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you..." —from the essay "A Letter to Cuba"

More Details about the Book

Introduction to the book.

Ernest Hemingway's third novel, A Farewell to Arms (1929), was crafted from his earliest experience with war. As a teenager just out of high school, Hemingway volunteered to fight in the First World War but was rejected because of poor eyesight. Instead, he drove a Red Cross ambulance on the Italian front, where he was wounded in 1918 by a mortar shell. While recovering in a hospital, Hemingway fell in love with Agnes von Kurowsky, a nurse seven years his senior. She did not reciprocate his passion, however, and rejected his marriage proposal five months after their first meeting.

These events were thinly fictionalized by Hemingway a decade later into A Farewell to Arms , with its tragic love story between an American ambulance driver and an English nurse. Lieutenant Frederic Henry meets Catherine Barkley in a small town near the Italian Alps. Though Catherine still mourns the death of her fiancé, killed in the war, she encourages Frederic to pursue her. Badly wounded at the front, Frederic finds himself bedridden in a Milan hospital, but Catherine arrives to look after him. It is here that their initial romance deepens into love. While Frederic recovers from surgery and prepares to return to action, Catherine discovers that she is pregnant—a surprise that delights and frightens them both. Though the couple has escaped the war, there are dangers that cannot be anticipated or avoided. The final chapter is one of the most famous, and heartbreaking, conclusions in modern literature.

This rather simple plot does not explain the appeal of A Farewell to Arms . It is Hemingway's writing style that transforms the story into a great tragedy. The critic Malcolm Cowley considered it "one of the few great war stories in American literature; only The Red Badge of Courage and a few short pieces by Ambrose Bierce can be compared with it." By omitting most adjectives and using short, rhythmic sentences, Hemingway tried to give the reader a sense of immediacy, of actually witnessing the events in his writing. He once described his method this way: "I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg." His spare prose and laconic dialogue made him the most widely imitated American writer of the 20th century.

"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was." —Ernest Hemingway, from the essay "A Letter to Cuba"

About Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

Ernest Hemingway may have been the most famous novelist in the English language during his lifetime. Idolized by readers, envied by fellow writers, and adored by many for the romantic lifestyle that he created for himself, Hemingway the writer must always be distinguished from Hemingway the public figure. The first was a sensitive and exacting artist; the second was a larger-than-life image maintained for tabloid consumption. As early as 1929, Dorothy Parker was moved to remark: "Probably of no other living man has so much tripe been penned or spoken."

The adulation that Hemingway inspired is not difficult to explain. By turns tough and tender, he lived a life of exuberant masculinity—which included hunting for big game in Africa, for Nazi submarines in his fishing boat off Key West, or for the best bar in Paris. He celebrated bullfighting, boxing, hunting, and even warfare as manly pursuits worthy of respect. His years were rife with adventurous accident, including an anthrax infection while on honeymoon in France, and two successive plane crashes on safari. Second-degree burns resulting from a bushfire accident prevented him from traveling to Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize. He won the Silver Medal of Military Honor in the First World War and the Bronze Star Medal in the Second. A leader of the so-called "Lost Generation" and a Modernist, Hemingway's closest friendships included literary giants Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and James Joyce. He was an intellectual and a celebrity, and one of the few Americans to find both roles congenial. He married four times and lived to see 18 of his works published. He died a millionaire, a close friend of movie stars such as Gary Cooper, and a winner of both the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes. In many ways, his career was the stuff of legends.

Such success did not, however, alleviate his personal struggles. For a man so publicly celebrated and revered, he could be curiously reticent—he wanted no biography written about his life, and he left a will that blocked any publication of his letters. His later years were marked by severe depression, for which he underwent electro-convulsive therapy. Suffering from acute paranoia, he believed for a time that federal agents were after him. Years of alcoholism and organ damage wreaked havoc on his body; digestive complications, high blood pressure, and failing eyesight troubled him constantly. Ernest Hemingway eventually committed suicide in 1961, following the path of his father and two siblings.

Hemingway and the Lost Generation

Though he had served as an ambulance driver during the First World War, Ernest Hemingway's decisive years in Europe started in 1921, when he arrived in France with a letter of introduction from the writer Sherwood Anderson. In those postwar years, Paris had become the home of many expatriate writers, including Ezra Pound, James Joyce, E. E. Cummings, Ford Madox Ford, and Gertrude Stein. Hart Crane and F. Scott Fitzgerald were frequent visitors. It was this circle of mostly American writers that Hemingway joined when he arrived; and while "the Lost Generation" was Gertrude Stein's phrase, it was Hemingway who immortalized it in the epigraph for his 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises . The book was so popular that, by 1934, Malcolm Cowley could note, "It was a good novel and became a craze—young men tried to get as imperturbably drunk as the hero, young women of good families took a succession of lovers in the same heartbroken fashion as the heroine, they all talked like Hemingway characters and the name was fixed."

Recently married and employed as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star newspaper, Hemingway spent his days interviewing leaders such as Mussolini and writing fiction. He soon became Ford's assistant editor at The Transatlantic Review , an important literary magazine. In 1923, the American author and publisher Robert McAlmon printed Hemingway's first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems , in Paris. Hemingway would later complain that all he earned from this book "was the enmity of McAlmon, because it sold out while his own volumes remained in stock."

Another American, Sylvia Beach, opened a bookshop called Shakespeare & Company in 1919, and it soon became a center of literary life in Paris. The store even loaned its poorer patrons rare books, such as D. H. Lawrence's banned Lady Chatterley's Lover . It was shut down in 1941, supposedly because Beach would not allow a German officer to buy the last copy of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake ; Beach had been the first to print Joyce's Ulysses in 1922.

Why were so many American writers living abroad? Paris was a cheap place after the war, with none of the strictures to be found back home, such as Prohibition. Daring innovators in all the arts lived there—like Picasso, Stravinsky, and Modigliani—and many were neighbors in the cheap districts of Montparnasse. The artistic and intellectual ferment of those years moved Hemingway to write: "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."

Discussion Questions

• What do we know of Frederic Henry's and Catherine Barkley's lives before the novel begins? As the novel's narrator, why would Frederic choose to tell us so little about their past?
• At the beginning of their romance, Frederic treats his relationship with Catherine like a game. When does he fall in love? Why does it happen?
• What role does religion play in the novel? How does Frederic's view of the priest compare to the other officers'?
• Why is Catherine afraid of the rain? Why does Frederic fear the night? How do both the rain and the night foreshadow the novel's tragic conclusion?
• Even before the retreat at Caporetto, Frederic considers that "abstract words such as glory, honor, courage" are "obscene beside the concrete names of villages." What does he mean by this?
• Identify a passage that vividly describes World War I. Does the novel make any assertions about war in general, or World War I in particular?
• After his desertion, Frederic says that, "anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation." Are his actions justified?
• The novel's action begins in the late summer of 1915; it ends in spring 1918. Has Frederic changed during this period of time? Is there any redemption at the end of this tragedy?
• Toward the end of the novel, Count Greffi tells Frederic that love is a religious feeling. Does Frederic agree? Why or why not?
• How would you describe Hemingway's style of writing and his characters' dialogue?
• The words "bravery" and "courage" are echoed through the novel. Who is the novel's hero? Who is the most courageous character?

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Literature Approved

Reviewers are just professional "fangirls"., a farewell to arms by ernest hemingway.

A featured classic novel.

The Synopsis:

In 1918 Ernest Hemingway went to war, to the  war to end all wars . He volunteered for ambulance service in Italy, was wounded, and twice decorated. Out of his experiences came  A Farewell to Arms . Hemingway’s description of war is unforgettable. He recreates the fear, the comradeship, the courage of his young American volunteer, and the men and women he meets in Italy with total conviction. But  A Farewell to Arms  is not only a novel of war. In it, Hemingway has also created a love story of immense drama and uncompromising passion.

A Farewell to Arms  is a classic novel that many authors, readers, and literature-loving humans greatly enjoy, not only for the story contained in the pages, but also for Hemingway’s unique way of capturing the story. Most of Hemingway’s novels are well-known and again, most are quoted often.

In this particular novel, our focus is on the Lt. and his love as they go through a brutal war in Italy. The graphics and dialogue as we read this book bring the war to life in ways that only Hemingway could do and keep us compelled to read more.

As for the content, the language usage can be very vulgar at times and the romance is very sexual. There are no scenes in which the romance is shown clearly to the reader, however the conversations that the couple has can be decently descriptive.

Overall, this book is one that possibly can only be enjoyed by fans of Hemingway’s style and I recommend it to be kept at an audience of Seniors in high school or college students. I give it 3 out of 5 stars.

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A Farewell to Arms (Markham English IV AP): A Farewell to Arms

• A Farewell to Arms
• Video and Audio Recordings

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• Last Updated: Feb 8, 2024 1:11 PM
• URL: https://libguides.montgomerybell.edu/hemingwayafarewelltoarms

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A farewell to arms, common sense media reviewers.

Classic war novel still speaks to today's readers.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

When Ernest Hemingway wrote A Farewell to Arms in

Hemingway's classic novel includes some humor and

There are plenty of decent people in Hemingway's n

Hemingway's depiction of the first World War is ex

Sex is more suggested than graphic in Hemingway's

Similar to the sexual content of the book, vulgar

Lots of wine and alcohol varieties mentioned in th

Frederic Henry and his cohorts drink continually t

Parents need to know that Ernest Hemingway's masterful 1929 World War I novel, A Farewell to Arms, offers a suitably brutal look at combat and the job of a military ambulance driver. As in other books by this essential author, language is very carefully chosen, showing the way writers can make a greater…

Educational Value

When Ernest Hemingway wrote A Farewell to Arms in 1929, it was a contemporary novel, but today it's a period piece. The novel depicts an ambulance driver's personal view of the Italian Campaign of World War I, and readers get a window into Italian rural life, the dangers faced by wartime medical personnel and civilians, and gender roles during the 1920s.

Positive Messages

Hemingway's classic novel includes some humor and peaceful--even cheerful--moments, so it's not a relentlessly dark book, but overall the author tells us that war is chaotic and cruel, and soldiers aren't the only casualties. Also, it's possible to find love in the direst situations.

Positive Role Models

There are plenty of decent people in Hemingway's novel: Narrator Frederic Henry is a loyal, level-headed antihero; Catherine Barkley is brave in a stiff-upper-lip way; and most of the other medical personnel and civilians that Henry encounters are generous. However, Henry and many of his friends drink heavily and engage in casual sex; they're not necessarily teen role model material.

Violence & Scariness

Hemingway's depiction of the first World War is extremely effective: Most of the fighting is described in the abstract, happening at some distance from the main characters, who mention hearing shelling. So, when the author decides to include detailed, almost medical descriptions of people being injured or killed, the impact is profound. In one scene, Henry describes part of a man's leg being held on by a tendon and his own knee being blown apart. Suspected traitors are shot point blank, with no questions asked. There are also powerful descriptions of wounded men crying and dying in pain.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Sex is more suggested than graphic in Hemingway's novel. This is in part because the original version of the book--which included more explicit sexual activity and language--was edited in an effort to satisfy censors of the day. However, characters do visit brothels (referred to as "bawdy houses"), and there's some passionate kissing between Frederic Henry and Catherine Barclay. Henry describes a fantasy, as well, about being naked with Catherine in a hotel. Though their lovemaking is not clearly described, readers are told that Catherine joins Henry in his hospital bed.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Similar to the sexual content of the book, vulgar language was mainly struck from the original novel in an effort to please censors at the time the book was published. Dashes were added to four-letter words such as "sh-t" and "f--k," and there's a passage where the narrator humorously, and obviously, talks around the "F" word repeatedly. Language that remains in the latest edition of the book incudes several uses of the word "whore" and one "N" word.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Lots of wine and alcohol varieties mentioned in the novel, but no mentions brand names.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Frederic Henry and his cohorts drink continually throughout the novel: wine, cognac, grappa, etc. Henry drinks with breakfast, and he drinks while recovering from a leg wound in the hospital, resulting in a case of jaundice. A character drinks during her pregnancy. There's also a bit of cigarette smoking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Ernest Hemingway's masterful 1929 World War I novel, A Farewell to Arms, offers a suitably brutal look at combat and the job of a military ambulance driver. As in other books by this essential author, language is very carefully chosen, showing the way writers can make a greater impact with some restraint than with relentless graphic violence. The violence Hemingway describes is truly shocking, including detailed descriptions of soldiers' wounds and deaths, and the cursory executions of suspected spies. There's also some sexual activity (passionate kissing, non-graphic mentions of sex in a hospital bed, and a man's fevered fantasy). The original edition of A Farewell to Arms included curse words and more detail about the characters' sex lives, but almost all of that was edited to please 1920s censors. Still, the presence of "s-t" and "f--k" with dashes inserted and a character's unmarried pregnancy were enough to get the novel banned in some countries. Characters drink alcohol constantly, including one character drinking during pregnancy, and ther's some cigarette smoking.

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What's the Story?

In Ernest Hemingway's classic World War I novel A FAREWELL TO ARMS, American expatriate Frederic Henry has enlisted with the Italian army as an ambulance driver. His job requires as much waiting as driving, and Henry fills many of those quiet hours with drinking and socializing with other medical personnel. Henry begins a flirtatious involvement with an English nurse named Catherine Barkley, and after Henry is wounded, the couple's relationship deepens. Once Henry has recovered, he's sent back to the battlefront, where it becomes clear that it's time for him to cut his losses and take Catherine out of Italy.

Is It Any Good?

Hemingway's genius rested in his carefully crafted, deceptively simple sentences. A Farewell to Arms , in particular, may be easy to read, but it's not easy to take. The author is unstinting in creating a full-color picture of life during wartime: the waiting, the suffering, the erosion of morals and ethics, and the deep bonds that are formed between comrades in arms. It is simply a brilliant novel, revealing the ravages of war as well as the author's great affection for Italy.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how war is portrayed in Farewell to Arms . What is Hemingway's point of view about war? How is this novel similar to or different from other war books you've read?

Hemingway was known for writing about manly men who drank to excess. How did you feel about the drinking in this novel? Did it seem realistic or over the top?

How do you feel about the end of Farewell to Arms ? What's Hemingway saying by ending the book this way?

Book Details

• Author : Ernest Hemingway
• Genre : History
• Topics : History
• Book type : Fiction
• Publisher : Hemingway Library
• Publication date : January 1, 1929
• Publisher's recommended age(s) : 15 - 18
• Number of pages : 352
• Available on : Paperback, Audiobook (unabridged), Hardback, iBooks, Kindle
• Last updated : June 5, 2022

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