general

Ernest Hemmingway captures both the brutality of war and the tenderness of love in the novel "A Farewell to Arms." Hemmingway does an exceptional job of portraying warfare though due to his own experiences of it during World War I. While Hemmingway does give a great amount of detail about a person's life during war he also does show what effects love can have on their life. He also shows the struggle a young person deals with during times of hardships, which give many meanings. Some of the dialogues in this story seem extremely fake which makes it hard to believe at times.

A young ambulance driver for the Italian Army named Frederic Henry is the story's main character. Early in the novel he meets a beautiful young nurse named Catherine Barkley and quickly falls in love with her. Throughout the rest of the novel Frederic is faced with many troubles trying to survive the war, which he despises, and trying to be with his love, Catherine. The events that occur between those two characters have such meaning behind them that they make up for the rather simple plot. The themes are so realistic that almost anyone who reads them can relate to a sense and will understand Hemmingway's intentions behind them.

I recommend this book to anyone that wants to read a fairly simple yet emotional romance story. This novel appropriately shows the life of a young person affected both by war and love and how their lives are changed forever because of them. This is one of Hemmingway's great novels and anyone who enjoys his style of writing would have trouble setting this book down.

I enjoy the writing in this book by Mr Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). It was a gift from my sister's family, and I am glad I had the oppotunity to read it. The liner notes write that he did more to change the English-language novel than any other twentieth-century writer. His "sparse and unemotional style is probably the most imitated." In 1953, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his novella "The Old Man & the Sea"; then, in 1954, he received a Nobel Prize for Literture. "A Farewell to Arms" (1927) was his greatest success up to that time. Mr Hemingway writes an almost auto-biographical account of a love story during war time. Like the protagonist, Henry Frederick, he drove an ambulance for the Red Cross on the Austro-Italian Border during the European Great War (1914-1918). Mr Hemingway was wounded, hospitalised and fell in love with one of the Red Cross nurses who cared for him, Ms Agnes von Kurowsky. The book he has written draws on these experiences and the result is a stirring description of people's reactions and behaviours during the stresses of war. Henry Frederick drives an ambulance on the Austro-Italian Border during the Great War. He meets Ms Catherine Barkley, who is from Scotland and is working as a nurse in an English Hospital unit. The three great adventures in this book are Frederick's recovery from his battle wound, his involvement in the Italian retreat, and finally, when he and Catherine escape. The narrative of the Italian retreat is quite impressive to me because Mr Hemingway captures a feeling a hopelessness. It reaches an horrifying level as he decribes the Italian soldiers shooting their own officers. Throughout, I am impressed with the description of the coping methods different characters use. Many times humour is a source of relief. My favourite anecdote is when the Italian barber mistakes Henry for an Austrian officer. The porter cannot contain his laughter at the thought of our hero under the sharp razor. If you are interested in the writings of Mr Ernest Hemingway, or in romance against a wartime setting, this book will be interesting to you.

Ernest Hemingway beautifully manages to take us through the ordeals a young man experiences in life. I am 14 and recently my dad past away, and as I read the book I was touched and amazed by Hemingway description of death. Especially at the end I found it impossible not to commiserate with narrator's ordeal with death.