A Farewell To Arms Research Paper

Death is really hard to deal with, especially if it is someone you love. The protagonists from Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls, along with Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and others in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried are all forced to deal with death during wartime. The effects of death among these soldiers vary from emotional numbness, self-sacrifice, to guilt.
Death in Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms is a small but important part of the novel. The deaths of Catherine Barkley and her baby and how death is handled by the main characters are different. The main character, Frederic Henry, is a lieutenant in World War One. He is an American ambulance driver for the Italian forces. While staying in a hospital
She becomes pregnant with his baby, so he escapes from the war to be with her. The two escape to Switzerland where they settle down into a cottage to wait for the baby to come. Catherine had an easy pregnancy, and she was rarely sick (Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms 320). They go on walks because it is good for Catherine. They go to the hospital in the middle of the night, so Catherine can deliver the baby. To help with the pain, the doctor gives Catherine some medicine gas, and she tells Frederic that she is not afraid of death (Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms 319). Frederic leaves the delivery room so Catherine can have privacy, but he starts to worry. “And this was the price you paid for sleeping together. This was the end of the trap. This was what people got for loving each other” (Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms 320). The doctor comes out to tell Frederic that he is going to do a Cesarean delivery because of complications (Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms 321). Frederic and Catherine talk before surgery, and she asks for more gas. She says that it no longer works, which worries Frederic. Catherine