TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of  Contents  2

I.  Introduction  3

II.  Symbolism  4

1.  Rain  4

1.1.Symbolising  death  4

1.2.As  a substitute for emotions  4

1.3.Foreshadowing  bad events in the future  5

1.4.  Reflecting a fear of the unknown  6

2.  Mud  7

3.  Water  7

4.  The Mountains  8

4.1.  Expressing safety  8

4.2.  Helping Catherine and Fredric to escape to Switzerland  9

4.3.  Giving a feeling of home  9

5.  Catherine  10

6.  The Priest  10

7.  The Plains  11

III.  Conclusion  12

VI.  Bibliography  14

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I. INTRODUCTION

The novel A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, which was published in the late 1920´s in Great Britain, represents a perfect example of Hemingway´s unique style.

On the one hand you can read A Farewell to Arms as a tragic lovestory, in which Fredric Henry, a young American, and Catherine Barkley, a British nurse, who both volunteer for the Italian Army in World War I, fall in love with each other.

The lovestory ends in a tragic scene because Catherine Barkley dies after she has born their dead child.

On the other hand you can read this novel as a thrilling war drama that takes place in Italy and Switzerland and lets the reader take part in the life of the young Lieutenant Henry, who tells us about the war and what he experiences there.

The plot of the novel shows perfectly the unique style of Hemingway:

He succeeds in combining the two contradictory items love and war, which actually do not fit together.

The problem with my task, which is to discuss the symbols in A Farewell to Arms is that you can find a wide range of symbols in Hemingway´s work.

But it is almost entirely up to the reader which one of them he considers as important or relevant to discuss.

Because of this it has to be decided which symbols are the most important ones without tangling up by irrelevant ones.

As a matter of fact completeness is not the sense of my work, I will rather try to point my view on those symbols of whom I think are important such as the rain, the water, the mountains and the plains.

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II. Symbolism

1. RAIN

1.1. Symbolizing death

Hemingway gives a special symbolic meaning to the rain by putting it around the story like a frame. That means it rains in the first chapters of the novel and in the last ones. At the beginning he writes

At the start of the winter came the permanent rain and with the rain came the cholera. But it was checked and in the end only seven thousand died of it in the army. 1

This is the first time in the story that rain and death are connected. But it is definitely not the last because it is carried throughout the whole story without being broken. The interrelation of rain and death is very strong.

In this example the rain is not only a companion of death like in many other parts of the book, it is even the cause of it. So he intensifies the symbolic meaning of rain here.

1.2. As a substitute for emotions

Another point in this example is that Hemingway doesn´t write anything about pity or sympathy for the dead. He just writes that it is permanently raining. Rain is used here to reveal emotions so that they do not need to be mentioned at all.

To turn it around, the emotions or reactions are replaced by natural symbols such as rain.

Besides, Hemingway uses rain repeatedly to create a sad atmosphere in several parts of the book.

¹ Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. London: Arrow Books, 1994. 4.

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In the other part of the frame, the end, rain plays a big role, too. Catherine Barkley has serious problems with the birth of their child and they are forced to perform a ceasarean delivery. While Catherine is at the maternity ward Fredric says

I walked up and down the hall. I was afraid to go in.

I looked out the window. It was dark but in the light from the window I could see it was raining. 2

The baby is born dead and in the end Catherine dies, too. “ It seems she had one hemorrhage after another.” 3

In this example rain is expressing that a sad incident is happening. Catherine and her baby both die. That is why rain is used as a symbol for death here, too.

Hemingway turns the original meaning of rain around and uses it in a different way. The two things which are often connected with rain are growth and food for nature. Without rain, no human being and no animal could exist. That´s why the original meaning has a positive character.

But everytime when rain appears in the book Hemingway wants to express that something bad is happening right now or will happen in the future. Rain is an elemt to foreshadow bad events.

1.3. Foreshadowing bad events in the future

This is the case when Catherine is talking about her death. Even when she talks about it rain plays a big role. She says that she´s “[…]afraid of the rain because sometimes I see me dead in it. […] And sometimes I see you dead in it.” 4

Later Hemingway writes “She was crying. I comforted her and she stopped crying. But outside it kept on raining.” 5

Rain is mentioned twice here. At first in Catherine´s foreshadowing, which will become true in the end. This shows that Hemingway uses rain to foreshadow bad events in the future, in this case Catherine´s death.

² Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. London: Arrow Books,1994. 287.

³ A Farewell to Arms, 293.

⁴ A Farewell to Arms, 114.

⁵ A Farewell to Arms, 114.

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