عنوان الموضوع : American literature reflection - en anglais
كاتب الموضوع : chahinez
مقدم من طرف منتديات ايمازيغن

AMERICAN LITERATURE REFLECTION
Henry and Catherine's attitudes toward war

Earnest Hemingway, born in Oak Park, Illinois, 1899, was considered one of the most popular writers in American literature history, who received a Pulitzer Prize for his novel, The old man and the sea, in 1952. However, most critics agree that A farewell to arms (1952), instead, is Hemingway's most accomplished novel for its comprehensive description of the famous World War I and the complex mentality of the characters. Remarkably, these are built up by Hemingway using a straightforward and calm prose style almost without any narration or explanation of the writer, yet the underlying message can hardly be misinterpreted.
Two main characters in A farewell to arms are Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley. Henry was an American lieutenant ambulance driver who participated in the war without taking any side. Catherine was an English nurse whose fiancé had just been killed in the war. In chapter 4, they met each other for the first time when Rinaldi, Henry's close friend, convinced Henry to go with him to visit Miss Barkley. While Rinaldi talked to Helen Ferguson, another nurse, Henry had a chance to get acquainted with Catherine. During the conversation, one of the two main subjects that they discussed was war. Being in different situations with different viewpoints, Henry and Catherine expressed different attitudes toward the war in which they were involved at the moment.
From the beginning, when Catherine mentioned Henry's position as "in the Italian army," he immediately corrected that it was "only the ambulance," which meant he was just a driver, not a soldier. Henry did not even know the reason why he was involved in this war, although he had been serving in the Italian army for a while ("Why did you do it? - I don't know."). In other chapters of the novel, especially chapter 1, where Henry first described his situation, readers can find that Henry joined the army but he neither wanted the glory of victory, nor had any strong belief in things that he had been doing. War is strange to him and does not belong to his responsibility; thus, war is nothing but a physical and psychological torture for Henry. Later in the conversation, Henry gave his opinion that the war could not always go on because "it will crack somewhere." However, he suggested his neutrality by stating that both the Italians and Germans might crack, "anybody may crack." Readers can also recognize that Henry did very little talking through out the dialogue with Catherine: he barely said more than two sentences each time he spoke, giving brief and concise comments ("It was a ghastly show", "You have beautiful hair", "Very much", "It will crack somewhere", etc.), even when he and Catherine engaged in a debate in which they have different ideas and arguments. This fact could either be the result of his reticent and cold nature or his tiredness after several years serving in the army, or most likely, both.
Unlike Henry, Catherine did most of the talking and expressed her ideas quite clearly through some narration. Catherine could not be neutral: she served for England, one of the belligerent parties; moreover, she lost her fiancé, who "was a very nice boy" and was engaged with her for eight years, in the war. Interestingly, Hemingway revealed a sharp development of Catherine's attitude toward the war. At first, Catherine saw the war through a romantic lens. Despite the fact that she had to see many injured and dead soldiers on the front as she was a nurse, she thought the front was "silly" but "very beautiful." She also dreamt about the day when her fiancé would come to the hospital where she worked "with a sabre cut, [...] and a bandage around his head. Or shot through the shoulder. Something picturesque." To Catherine, the war had been nothing but a competence in which each wound meant a glorious mark of bravery - she could not see the destructive nature of the war at all. However, after the death of her fiancé, she somehow changed her viewpoint as she could not escape the reality: her fiancé "didn't have a sabre cut, they blew him all to bits." She was even more regretful and bitter since she could not do anything for her fiancé before he died: "He could have had anything he wanted if I would have known. I would have married him or anything. [...] But then he wanted to go to war and I didn't know." Yet Catherine did not stay outside of the war because she "was brought up to think there was [always an explanation for everything]" (which Henry ironically said to be "awfully nice"). This time, she blamed her fiancé death on the war and the belligerents, especially her own side, which meant Britain, Italy and France. That might be the reason why she thought these countries "will crack in France, they can't go on doing things like the Somme (the battle where her fiancé was killed) and not crack," while she believed the Germans would not fail. At this point, readers can see that Catherine's attitude toward the war had become much more bitter and resentful than what she had thought before, although the reason for this change was very personal and did not effectively help her to realize the essence of the matter.
All in all, in A farewell to arms, Hemingway had created a world in which war was like a ghost haunting and filling the minds of everybody who involved in it, including the two main characters Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley. Even though they might have different attitudes toward the war, they shared the same feelings that the war could not bring them what they wanted. The message from the writer, therefore, was anti-war, and would be fully demonstrated by Henry and Catherine's escape at the end of the novel.





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