The novel I read was A Farewell to Arms. It was written by Ernest Hemingway. The overall difficulty reading of this book was easy. Even though the book was uninteresting, it was easy to comprehend. Because of the book being uninteresting it took a while to read.
The plot is told by its main character, Second Lieutenant Frederic Henry. He is an American put in an Italian ambulance unit stationed near the battlefront with the Austrians. His friend Lieutenant Rinaldi, an Italian surgeon introduces Frederic to Catherine. She’s Rinaldi’s romantic interest, but she starts to focus more on Frederic. Frederic thinks Catherine is very and attractive and as they get closer he finds out that her fiancée died in the war. She and he go through this love game.
Frederic gets wounded in his legs during an Austrian artillery attack and is sent to a field hospital. His friend Rinaldi and a priest he knew came to visit him. Frederic gets transferred to a hospital in Milan where he is visited by Catherine, and she manages to have herself reassigned there to be by his side. He first learns that has to wait six months for and operation on his legs but when he asks is there any other option, a surgeon could in less time. After the operation he gets leave and during this leave, he plans a trip with Catherine so they can spend more time together. Catherine ends up getting pregnant, but Frederic has to go back to war. Time passes and Frederic and Catherine hide out and she has a still born baby boy. She dies in the process from hemorrhage.
The character I chose to analyze was Catherine Barkley. In the book she’s an English nurse with the Red Cross, during World War 1. Some of her traits were strong, independent, and an assertive woman. She does experience the conflict of complications during labor and dies because of it. This conflict would be classified as man vs. self. The theme of the story is Love and Pain. Text in the novel that supports this is that support this are that Catherine announces to Henry that she is in mourning for her dead fiancée, so she wants to distance herself from the pain of her loss. The tragedy in novel is that their love, even when genuine, could never be more than temporary in this world.
In conclusion, this book was fairly easy, but took a long time to get to the point.
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