A Farewell To Arms
Deadly Downpour: Rain as A Symbol of Mortality in A Farewell to Arms
Rain is usually considered to have many meanings in literature and cultures around the world. In the Bible, rain is used to symbolize cleansing and rebirth. To the Native Americans, rain was viewed as a life saver, an important part of their culture that was woven into their everyday life that allowed them to live a healthy and prosperous lifestyle. Ernest Hemingway, much like the Native Americans, wove rain into the everyday life of his protagonists. However, Hemingway gives rain a new and darker meaning in A Farewell to Arms: Mortality. Through the use of symbolism and metaphor, Ernest Hemingway uses rain to highlight the mortality and fear that his characters refuse to …show more content…
While Frederic does not literally die, he does go through an emotional transformation that ultimately ends with Frederic’s emotional death as a result of his loss. The first experience that leads to Frederic’s emotional death is the death of his and Catherine’s son. This should have been a dark and depressing moment for Frederic, yet he reacts in a way completely opposite than expected. Rather than react with sadness and depression, Frederic barely has a reaction at all: “So that was it. The baby was dead” (Hemingway 279). This moment is the start of Frederic’s emotional death and links him to his physically dying family. At this point in the novel things begin to go downhill for Frederic, and the foreshadowing of his emotional death by Catherine seems more and more likely to be …show more content…
Rain is a constant in A Farewell to Arms, appearing at almost every major plot point in this novel, so much so that it is practically an unspoken character of Hemingway’s. In A Farewell to Arms, people are conditioned to fear death, the eminent threat that is constantly watching over their shoulders during a time of war. However, the real threats are those that follow the rain. When introduced to us, the rain killed 7,000 people in the fall because of cholera. Rain accompanies the deaths of most characters in this novel, not because of considence but because rain is just as much a danger to the characters as the war itself is. Throughout the novel, many other lives are taken, but no deaths are felt more than those of Frederic and his family, all of whom died in some form during a rainstorm. In A Farewell to Arms, rain is symbolic for the destruction and death felt and witnessed by those involved in the war, especially
Rain is usually considered to have many meanings in literature and cultures around the world. In the Bible, rain is used to symbolize cleansing and rebirth. To the Native Americans, rain was viewed as a life saver, an important part of their culture that was woven into their everyday life that allowed them to live a healthy and prosperous lifestyle. Ernest Hemingway, much like the Native Americans, wove rain into the everyday life of his protagonists. However, Hemingway gives rain a new and darker meaning in A Farewell to Arms: Mortality. Through the use of symbolism and metaphor, Ernest Hemingway uses rain to highlight the mortality and fear that his characters refuse to …show more content…
While Frederic does not literally die, he does go through an emotional transformation that ultimately ends with Frederic’s emotional death as a result of his loss. The first experience that leads to Frederic’s emotional death is the death of his and Catherine’s son. This should have been a dark and depressing moment for Frederic, yet he reacts in a way completely opposite than expected. Rather than react with sadness and depression, Frederic barely has a reaction at all: “So that was it. The baby was dead” (Hemingway 279). This moment is the start of Frederic’s emotional death and links him to his physically dying family. At this point in the novel things begin to go downhill for Frederic, and the foreshadowing of his emotional death by Catherine seems more and more likely to be …show more content…
Rain is a constant in A Farewell to Arms, appearing at almost every major plot point in this novel, so much so that it is practically an unspoken character of Hemingway’s. In A Farewell to Arms, people are conditioned to fear death, the eminent threat that is constantly watching over their shoulders during a time of war. However, the real threats are those that follow the rain. When introduced to us, the rain killed 7,000 people in the fall because of cholera. Rain accompanies the deaths of most characters in this novel, not because of considence but because rain is just as much a danger to the characters as the war itself is. Throughout the novel, many other lives are taken, but no deaths are felt more than those of Frederic and his family, all of whom died in some form during a rainstorm. In A Farewell to Arms, rain is symbolic for the destruction and death felt and witnessed by those involved in the war, especially