Farewell to Arms Writing Prompt Response

Love was a strong connection between the two main characters in the book. In A Farewell to Arms it was shown that love was preserved in the midst of a great war. Fredrick Henry is first introduced to Catherine by his friend Rhinaldi. At first, Catherine was just supposed to be a sex toy for Fredrick Henry, the main character of the novel and he wasn’t planning to start a relationship with her. He didn’t truly fall in love with her until he got badly wounded and was put into a hospital. After Mr. Henry impregnated Catherine, he feels a real sense of affection and responsibility towards her. Frederic started off in the beginning of the book as a character that spends time in cat houses with prostitutes. He didn’t even know why he was an American fighting an Italian war. When Frederic got wounded in the war he was in a hospital bed for a couple of months. At this time his connection to Catherine became much deeper. They went past flirtatious activities and began to actually love each other. Henry was no longer infatuated with Catherine, he loved her. The doctor of the hospital forced Frederic to get back to the front where he belonged because he was drinking wine all day. He got jaundice from drinking too much. He couldn’t leave his love to be sent back to the front. Hemmingway doesn’t make war look a very good thing. He shows the numerous amounts of people who died from the useless war. Many of Henry’s comrades died from the war. Passini died in one of the dugouts. He was hit my exploding grenades. His leg blew off and he died from excessive bleeding. Another friend, Aymo died from being shot by paranoid Italians. Both these deaths are from the war and are, in Frederic's estimation, random and unavoidable. Even though, Henry escaped death himself twice, he still believes that unless both sides of a war give up, war will never come to an end. To escape this ill-fated useless war, Henry escapes from the war and he wants to leave with Catherine to somewhere he won’t see the war. Henry stops reading the paper because he is tired of the news. The news never changes; it is always talking about people dying and nobody advancing. He escapes with Catherine to Switzerland, where they live on a mountain peacefully. Even though, Henry would sometimes feel like a criminal and disloyal for leaving Rhinaldi and the Priest, he still sees the well-being and love for Catherine as a bigger issue. The rainy weather outside during the night of her pain foreshadowed a future problem. His whole world crumbles down when Catherine’s child birth goes wrong and Catherine herself says that she might die. After the boy actually dies from an entangled umbilical cord, it foreshadowed Catherine’s eminent death to come. After she died, he had nothing else and was lonely and lost all hope. His loneliness exemplified the nature of the world; the life of one must always come to an end and that this world is only a temporary place. At the beginning of the novel, Henry believes he is an atheist. However, he still listens to the holy priest. Count Greffi also states that the love for a woman is an act of devotion on par with religious feeling. He also wears the St. Anthony Medallion that Catherine gave to apparently keep him safe. He abides her and wears the charm. In the end of the book, it is obvious that he is a changed man and he prays to god to not to let Catherine die. However, his preaching to god in the end didn’t work, and Catherine died.