Wednesday, September 14, 2005
As I initially started reading Book One of "A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest Hemingway, I immediately assumed that this would not be an easy book to read. The first chapter, despite being only two pages long, and the earlier parts of the second chapter instantly left me confused and removed from the story. Right away the reader is injected into the narrator’s account of his surroundings, without giving any information about the narrator or the context of the situation. All I could gather was that our nameless narrator seemed to be involved in a war, and that, judging by the presence of a king, he was not in the United States. However, by about the fourth chapter, I was caught up on the basics of the story: our narrator is Lieutenant Henry, an American driving an ambulance for the Italians in World War I.
While reading the story, I was struck by how much the lives of Henry and the other men reminded me of a fraternity. The men all live in a villa and eat together, socialize, and seem to come and go as they please. Henry has a roommate, named Rinaldi, with whom he forms a friendship. Up until Henry’s injury from an enemy mortar shell, the book doesn’t even seem like it’s taking place in the midst of a war. When Henry and the others speak of it, they never use specifics or arguments in their oppositions to the war; instead, they just use such general blanket statements as "I say it’s rotten. Jesus Christ, I say it’s rotten," (pg. 35) or "There is no finish to a war." (pg. 50)
It was this separation from the war that made the First Book more appealing to me as I read on. I have never found much interest in the usual, in-the-trenches style war stories, so it ended up being a relief for me to find Henry doing such mundane things as admiring the landscape, drinking, going on leave, and starting a relationship with a V.A.D. from a nearby British hospital. In fact, the book became so disconnected from the war early on that I found the injury and view of the carnage of battle to be somewhat obligatory, as if Hemingway felt that he had to put something war-like into Book One. However, I expect that as the books progress, the focus of the book will soon shift out of Henry’s comfortable villa and trips to Catherine Barkley, and become more like the war stories that I am used to (and never really cared about).
While reading the story, I was struck by how much the lives of Henry and the other men reminded me of a fraternity. The men all live in a villa and eat together, socialize, and seem to come and go as they please. Henry has a roommate, named Rinaldi, with whom he forms a friendship. Up until Henry’s injury from an enemy mortar shell, the book doesn’t even seem like it’s taking place in the midst of a war. When Henry and the others speak of it, they never use specifics or arguments in their oppositions to the war; instead, they just use such general blanket statements as "I say it’s rotten. Jesus Christ, I say it’s rotten," (pg. 35) or "There is no finish to a war." (pg. 50)
It was this separation from the war that made the First Book more appealing to me as I read on. I have never found much interest in the usual, in-the-trenches style war stories, so it ended up being a relief for me to find Henry doing such mundane things as admiring the landscape, drinking, going on leave, and starting a relationship with a V.A.D. from a nearby British hospital. In fact, the book became so disconnected from the war early on that I found the injury and view of the carnage of battle to be somewhat obligatory, as if Hemingway felt that he had to put something war-like into Book One. However, I expect that as the books progress, the focus of the book will soon shift out of Henry’s comfortable villa and trips to Catherine Barkley, and become more like the war stories that I am used to (and never really cared about).
# posted by Kevin5671 @ 7:19 PM 
